The Reality of Abstractions

The reach of ideas into the world of abstractions is a property of the knowledge that they contain, not of the brain in which they happen to be instantiated. A theory can have infinite reach, even if the person who originated it is unaware that it does. However, a person is an abstraction too. And there is a kind of infinite reach that is unique to people, the reach of the ability to understand other nations. This ability is itself an instance of the wider phenomena of universality to which i turn next. Now i won't turn theire next. I'd like to stay with this theme of mathematics and the theme of the reality of abstractions - how we can explain what