Abstraction

And then one more recent book is Visible Thinking.

Hidden Gifts to People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions.

And it has a chapter on animal consciousness.

It also discusses visual thinkers like me who tend to be good with mechanical stuff but also good with animals.

And I have Animals Make Us Human.

That has a chapter on horses and a lot of information on clicker training.

And then my most recent book is Visual Thinking, Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions.

And the thing that worries me is our educational system is screening out some of the visual thinkers like me.

five men have a capacity for religion no animal except man has this the lowest races of men use tools but no other animal does this this is so universally admitted by science that the presence of the rudest tools of stone is considered a sufficient trace of the presence of man if stone hatchets or hammers or arrow-heads are found in any stratum though no human bones are detected anthropologists regard this as a sufficient proof of the existence of human beings in the period indicated by such a geologic formation the only tools used by animals in procuring food in war or in building their homes are their natural organs their beaks teeth claws c it may be added that man alone wears clothes other animals being sufficiently clothed by nature no animals make a fire though they often suffer from cold but there is no race of men unacquainted with the use of fire no animals possess a verbal language animals can remember some of the words used by men and associate with them their meaning but this is not the use of language it is merely the memory of two associated facts as when the animal recollects where he found food and goes to the same place to look for it again animals have different cries indicating different wants they use one cry to call their mate another to terrify their prey but this is not the use of verbal language human language implies not merely an acquaintance with the meaning of particular words but the power of putting them together in a sentence animals have no such language as this for if they had it would have been learned by men man has the power of learning any verbal language adelung and vater reckon over three thousand languages spoken by men and any man can learn any of them the negroes speak their own languages in their own countries they speak arabic in north africa they learn to speak english french and spanish in america and oriental languages when they go to the east if any animals had a verbal language with its vocabulary and grammar men would long ago have learned it and would have been able to converse with them again no animal except man is capable of self-culture as an individual animals are trained by external influences they do not teach themselves an old wolf is much more cunning than a young one but he has been made so by the force of circumstances you can teach your dog tricks but no dog has ever taught himself any yet the lowest savages teach themselves to make tools to ornament their paddles and clubs and acquire certain arts by diligent effort birds will sometimes practise the tunes which they hear played till they have learned them they will also sometimes imitate each other's songs that is they possess the power of vocal imitation but to imitate the sounds we hear is not self-culture it is not developing a new power but it is exercising in a new way a natural gift Yet we must admit that in this habit of birds there is the rudiment at least of self-education.

all races of men are capable of progress in civilization many indeed remain in a savage state for thousands of years and we cannot positively prove that any particular race which has always been uncivilized is capable of civilization but we are led to believe it from having known of so many tribes of men who have emerged from apathy ignorance and barbarism into the light of science and art so it was with all the teutonic races the goths germans celts lombards scandinavians so it was with the arabs who roamed for thousands of years over the deserts a race of ignorant robbers and then filled with the great inspiration of islam flamed up into a brilliant coruscation of science literature art military success and profound learning what great civilizations have grown up in china india persia assyria babylon phoenicia egypt greece rome carthage etruria but no such progress has ever appeared among the animals as their parents were five thousand years ago so essentially are they now nor are animals religious in the sense of worshipping unseen powers higher than themselves my horse showed a sense of the supernatural but this is not worship these are some of the most marked points of difference between man and all other animals now these can all be accounted for by the hypothesis in which locke and leibnitz both agreed namely that while animals are capable of reasoning about facts they are incapable of abstract ideas or we may say with coleridge that while animals in common with man possess the faculty of understanding they do not possess that of reason coleridge seems to have intended by this exactly what locke and leibnitz meant by their statement when my dog don heard the word apple he thought of the particular concrete apple under the tree and not of apples in general and their relation to pears peaches etc don understood me when i told him to go and get an apple and obeyed but he would not have understood me if i had remarked to him that apples were better than pears more wholesome than peaches not so handsome as grapes i should then have gone into the region of abstract and general ideas now it is precisely the possession of this power of abstract thought which will explain the superiority of man to all other animals it explains the use of tools for a tool is an instrument prepared not for one special purpose but to be used generally in certain ways a baboon like a man might pick up a particular stone with which to crack a particular nut but the ape does not make and keep a stone hammer to be used on many similar occasions a box of tools contains a collection of saws planes draw-knives etc not made to use on one occasion merely but made for sawing cutting and planing purposes generally still more evident is it that the power of abstraction is necessary for verbal language we do not here use the common term articulate speech for we can conceive of animals articulating their vocal sounds but a word is an abstraction the notion is lifted out of the concrete particular fact and deposited in the abstract general term all words except proper names are abstract and to possess and use a verbal language is impossible without the possession of this mental faculty in regard to self-culture it is clear that for any steady progress one must keep before his mind an abstract idea of what he wishes to do this enables him to rise above impulse passion instinct habit circumstance by the steady contemplation of the proposed aim one can arrange circumstances restrain impulse direct one's activity and become really free in like manner race has become developed in civilization by the impact of abstract ideas sometimes it is by coming in contact with other civilized nations which gives them an ideal superior to anything before known sometimes the motive power of their progress is the reception of truths of science art literature or religion it is not necessary to show that without abstract universal and necessary ideas no religion is possible for religion being the worship of unseen powers conceived as existing as active as spiritual necessarily implies these ideas in the mind of the worshipper we find then in the soul of animals all active affectionate and intelligent capacities as in that of man the only difference is that man is capable of abstract ideas which give him a larger liberty of action which enable him to adopt and aim and pursue it and which change his affections from an instinctive attachment into a principle of generous love add then to the animal soul the capacity for abstract ideas and it would rise at once to the level of man meantime in a large part of their nature they have the same faculties with ourselves they share our emotions and we theirs they are made a little lower than man and if we are souls so surely are they Are they immortal? To discuss this question would require more space than we can here give to it.

For my own part, I fully believe in the continued existence of all souls at the same time assuming their continued advance.

The law of life is progress, and one of the best features in the somewhat unspiritual theory of Darwin is its profound faith in perpetual improvement.

I think the way you said it's better than I could probably say it, but here's the way that I split it up.

Abstract, thinking based, abstraction based, the invisible often at play is where technicians love to operate versus the physical and the spatial.

It's also what makes them really good, because they're soft and a lot of things going on in the background with problems and issues that aren't technically the equipment, and it's like process.

It's system.