Real Abstraction in the History of the Natural Sciences

Abstract

This chapter discusses the epistemological implications of real abstraction. Considering the problem as a conceptual field of application, the authors try to channel this concept into the field of natural sciences and in particular to an epistemology of a physics based on the history of technology, a field in which the operations of practical abstraction are already long established. The use of the concept of real abstraction in the history of science presupposes that technical devices can be studied to recognize such real abstractions.