Some people have observed that much of the writing about System Engineering isn’t “garden variety reading”. This is unfortunate, but true. The discipline tries to be universally applicable, so cannot help but be more than just a little abstract.
As a concept, “abstraction” here is exactly according to the dictionary usage: we set aside all but a certain flavor of information about the developmental problem at hand in order to focus our attention on a particular aspect. When dealing with abstractions, we mostly encounter a simplified idea of a thing rather than the thing itself.
The opposite of “abstract” is “concrete”. It turns out that, although “abstract” things aren’t “concrete”, you can still bang your head pretty hard. The difference is that, when you bang your head on something concrete, you’ve done it from the outside in. When you bang your head on something abstract, you’ve done it from the inside out1. Be prepared to read, cogitate, gestate, re-read, paraphrase, and (most especially) challenge.
Footnotes- Did you see that one coming?[↩]