Reification

When analysing anything in a philosophical manner, it is important to remember that reality is generally reality. Merely a tautological admonition? I think not.

But why not? I think the answer is simple: reality is messy. The various grids, pidgeonholes, and abstractions we construct to try to confine it are generally quite neat and tidy. We form them and adhere to them without seeming to notice poor reality, bucking and kicking at the straitjacket we are attempting to cram it into.

The epistomological consequences, if not absolutely devastating, are quite disconcerting. Hence, the reformations that rippled through the European church from the 14th to the 16th centuries become reified as The Reformation. Hence, convenient but messy concepts like three oxen, three ships, three noses become reified as threeness, a concept that is perhaps totally absurd. Not to say that these abstractions cannot be helpful to us, sort of like cognitive shortcuts, but they should never be confused for objective reality or, worse, be exalted above objective reality. Reality is a tussle, a sea, a song, a war, a love poem. Let's hear for the Nominalists.