EXPLORING ABSTRACT THOUGHT: THE GUIDING BOUNDARIES OF ITS EARLIEST DOMAINS - Betsey Price (Session 26)

Entangled Histories Seminar Series — Session 26

EXPLORING ABSTRACT THOUGHT: THE GUIDING BOUNDARIES OF ITS EARLIEST DOMAINS

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Speaker: Prof. Betsey Price (Glendon College, York University)

• Date: Wednesday, 17 June 2026
• Time: 17:00 (5:00 PM) Central European Summer Time (CEST / Rome Time)
• Platform: Zoom - Online
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Abstract

Abstraction—the intellectual process of stripping away all the attributes specific to particular entities to obtain shared descriptives applicable to all members of a group or class—permitted Aristotle, among the first, to establish generalities (information or knowledge, rules or laws) about a group or class. There is little argument that abstraction or the exercise of thinking abstractly, in that it deals with extrapolated concepts and intangible ideas, is a higher-order reasoning and a skill that requires guidance to acquire.

Imparting this guidance was for Aristotle an overt part of his mission. He strove explicitly to explain the relationship between the physical things we can directly experience through our senses and their abstractions. Partly due to ‘new’ knowledge and partly due to relaxing his strict epistemological, ontological, and pedagogical guidelines, however, it seems that the intellectual rationales, by which Aristotle had created the boundaries for grouping abstractions, became less and less clear to subsequent thinkers and teachers into and well through the Middle Ages and to our intellectual era today.

The importance of examining the roots of domains of abstract thought, it is argued, is that ensuing confusion in the academic curriculum has reached the point of putting the value of the entire educational system in peril.

About the Speaker

Betsey Price is Professor Emerita of History and Multidisciplinary Studies at Glendon College, York University (Toronto, Canada), and an internationally recognised scholar in the medieval history of ideas, science, and technology. Her research focuses on the history of astronomy, the intellectual contributions of medieval thinkers such as Albertus Magnus and Henry of Ghent, and the development of academic disciplines in the Middle Ages.

She is the author of Medieval Thought (Blackwell, 1992) and co-author of Verification in Economics and History (Routledge, 2011). In addition to serving as Director of the Journal of Income Distribution, she is President of the International Albertus Magnus Society and Publisher at Ad Libros Publications Inc. in New York.

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