Kantian meditation

[timelets]

It is quite admissible
                   to cogitate 
the soul 
       as simple, 
              for the purpose of 
enabling ourselves to 
              employ the idea 
of a perfect 
          and 
              necessary unity
of all the faculties
                  of the mind 
as the principle of 
             all our inquiries into 
its internal 
             phenomena, although 
we cannot cognize 
              this unity 
                     in concreto.

But...

The simple is never
                 presented 
                     in experience; 
and, if by substance 
               is here meant 
                  the permanent object of 
sensuous intuition,
                    the possibility of 
a simple phenomenon
             is perfectly 
                         inconceivable.

--- Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason.

Comments

[juan_gandhi]

That's about category theory?

[timelets]

It's from Section III: The Discipline of Pure Reason in Hypothesis.

My take on it is that simple is the ultimate abstraction. A move from experience to abstraction is impossible, unless we are willing to ignore vast chunks of reality.

I guess it applies to Category Theory too because it has "simple" objects and arrows. But once you get into implementation, the objects and, especially, the arrows become quite a mess.