Abstraction’s power is to allow the wielder to represent huge amounts of information in a single object. Layers of abstraction allow the entire universe to be summarized by a single node, on top of a hierarchy of lower level representations. The tool is dangerous, making ideas inaccessible and hiding distorted information. It’s foundational to the way that we think. This book is about how Abstraction operates. How it allows us to create, to analogize, and to build knowledge out of information.