For some, abstract knowledge of what had happened became coupled with empathy - we were people, just like them.

The days of universities being ivory towers catering solely to the pursuit of academic, arcane and abstract knowledge are fading into history.

A surgeon, for example, would need to show that he or she had the right technical skills rather than simply demonstrate abstract knowledge.

To get out of it, in turn, entails a different mode of evasion, in which abstract knowledge substitutes for the painful process of learning from experience.

Maybe we get abstract knowledge from concrete data because we already know a lot, and especially because we already have an array of basic abstract concepts, thanks to evolution.