It is advisable to seek (non-contradictory!) ways of combining different types of abstraction instead of using just one. It will be recalled from the previous chapter’s discussion of perception that the skilled observer is one who can use many schemata and knows their limitations and the extent to which they are compatible.
Sayfa 86
In popular usage, the adjective ‘abstract’ often means ‘vague’ or ‘removed from reality’. The sense in which the term is used here is different; an abstract concept or an abstraction, isolates in thought a one-sided or partial aspect of an object.
Sayfa 87
The relation between yourself and a lump of earth is external in the sense that either object can exist without the other. (...) Relation between the master and slave is internal or necessary, in that what the object is is dependent on its relation to the other; a person cannot be a slave without a master and vice a versa.
Sayfa 89
Asymmetric internal relations can also be distinguished in which one object in a relation can exist without the other, but not vice versa. The relations of money and banking systems, state and council housing are examples.
Sayfa 90
Social structures do not endure automatically, they only do so where people reproduce them; but, in turn, people do not reproduce them automatically and rarely intentionally.
Sayfa 96
The relationship between causal powers or mechanisms and their effects is therefore not fixed, but contingent. (...) To say that the relationship of a power to its conditions is contingent is not to suppose that the latter are uncaused, only that they are caused by different mechanisms.
Sayfa 107