This article is exploratory in nature and attempts to address the following two questions: What is the role of abstractions in sociology? and How can you learn to become better at using them? Noting that there exists next to no literature in sociology on the topic of abstraction, a presentation is first made of two statements on this subject by Durkheim and Weber. Their content can be summarized as follows: abstractions are produced through isolation and generalization. Durkheim and Weber, like other sociologists, do not, however, address the issue of the general nature of abstraction, and for this, some ideas by Charles S. Peirce and Alfred North Whitehead are brought in. They suggest that an abstraction is characterized by the fact that its nature is derived from the reality of another phenomenon. The consequences of this view for sociology are discussed. The article ends with an attempt to show what a practical definition of abstraction would look like, in which the focus is on how to construct and use an abstraction, rather than on just define it in a formal manner.

中文翻译：

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关于抽象在社会学中的使用：经典及超越

这篇文章本质上是探索性的，试图解决以下两个问题：抽象在社会学中的作用是什么？你怎样才能学会更好地使用它们？注意到几乎没有关于抽象主题的社会学文献，首先介绍了涂尔干和韦伯关于这个主题的两个陈述。它们的内容可以概括如下：抽象是通过隔离和泛化产生的。然而，像其他社会学家一样，涂尔干和韦伯并没有解决抽象的一般性质的问题，为此，引入了查尔斯·皮尔斯和阿尔弗雷德·诺斯·怀特黑德的一些观点。他们认为抽象的特点是其性质源于另一种现象的现实。讨论了这种观点对社会学的影响。文章最后试图展示抽象的实际定义应该是什么样子，其中重点是如何构造和使用抽象，而不仅仅是以正式的方式定义它。