An abstraction is a representation which hides all but certain essential characteristics of its referent, and is therefore compact and descriptive of a generic class of entities: namely, those which share certain essential characteristics. Abstractions are the building blocks of ontologies; they are efficient codes which compress reusable regularities.
For instance, the abstraction that "chair" embeds to constrains the referent's function and form-template, but not its precise material, location in spacetime, or instance. In programming, abstractions may be functions or object templates with free parameters.
┌───────────── ABSTRACTION TOPOLOGY VIEWER ─────────────────┐
│ Visualizing Compression of Reality into Essential Form │
│━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━│
│ │
│ Example: Chair Abstraction Hierarchy │
│ ┌────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ │ │
│ │ Level 0: Pure Form (Most Abstract) │ │
│ │ ╭──────────╮ │ │
│ │ │ [ sit ]│ <- Function: Support sitting │ │
│ │ ╰──────────╯ │ │
│ │ ▲ │ │
│ │ Level 1: Essential Structure │ │
│ │ ┌─────┐ │ │
│ │ │ ▀ │ <- Surface │ │
│ │ │ │ │ <- Support │ │
│ │ └─┬─┬─┘ <- Base │ │
│ │ ▲ │ │
│ │ Level 2: Variable Implementation │ │
│ │ ╔═══════╗ ┌─────┐ ╭─────╮ │ │
│ │ ║█████████║ │▓▓▓▓▓│ │░░░░░│ │ │
│ │ ║█ │ █║ │▓ │ ▓│ │ │ ░│ │ │
│ │ ╚═╤═╤═╝ └─┬─┬─┘ ╰─┬─┬─╯ │ │
│ │ ▲ │ │
│ │ Level 3: Concrete Instances (Most Specific)│ │
│ │ 🪑(wood) 🪑(metal) 🪑(plastic) ... │ │
│ └────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
│ │
│ Abstraction Properties: │
│ │
│ Information Density vs Abstraction Level │
│ ┌──────────────────────────────────────────── │
│ │Info│ │ │
│ │ │███ │ │
│ │ │██████ │ │
│ │ │█████████ │ │
│ │ │████████████ │ │
│ │ └─────────────────────> Abstraction │ │
│ └────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
│ │
│ Template Structure: │
│ ┌────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ class AbstractEntity { │ │
│ │ essential_properties: {...} │ │
│ │ variable_properties: <free parameters> │ │
│ │ constraints(): {...} │ │
│ │ } │ │
│ └────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
│ │
│ [Analyze Pattern] [Generate Template] [View Hierarchy] │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘