As Arthur Koestler once put it, some of us tend to see the individual as 'a multitude of one million divided by one million,' an
abstract unit that can be plus or minus depending on its usefulness to our social causes.
Murray Rothbard stated the following very important fact about money: "Money is not an
abstract unit of account, divorceable from a concrete good; it is not a useless token only good for exchanging; it is not a 'claim on society'; it is not a guarantee of a fixed price level.
His production, like the opera itself, is slow and static, played out on Fan Yue's
abstract unit set, largely consisting of bleacher-like risers and hanging cables.
This principle is essential for a correct understanding of the scholastic monetary theory, for it applied to the unit of account in its double meaning, that is, as a pure number or
abstract unit and as a standard or thing referred to as a unit of account.
When students step into my classroom on the first day of the
abstract unit, they find themselves in the Escher world of inventive perspective.
The first stanza of Transtromer's poem "Island Life, 1860" was analyzed as containing both concrete and
abstract units. The tide provided the first simple noun phrase, island, which was counted as concrete.
An artist could, for example, use a thicker material to create large scenic structures for
abstract units like rocks and trees.
Architecture lies at the formal core of all the artworks, from floor pieces that resemble building models, photos that depict them, and shelves that echo their modular nature, to boxes and planks that function as
abstract units. Conceptually, "Settlements" was an exercise in observation and commentary on the complex poetics of the ever-changing urban landscape--in which space is occupied not only by buildings and bodies but by residue of all sorts, and spatial meaning can always be reassigned.
Using a linear model relies upon comparing units of length, using an area model relies upon comparing units of area and using a discrete model of fractions relies upon comparing
abstract units composed of other units (abstract composite units).
Phonemes are
abstract units which exist in the listeners' mind.
In fact, the dot scale probably made more sense than such
abstract units as degrees Fahrenheit or degrees Celsius.
For they construct the whole universe out of numbers - only not numbers consisting of
abstract units; they suppose the units to have spatial magnitude.