Embodied Abstraction as Via Negativa: Probability, Constraint, and the Irrational Clarity of Concepts

Abstract concepts are often regarded as the pinnacle of rational cognition. Yet we argue that abstraction is not primarily a constructive rational procedure but an embodied process of structured exclusion. Rather than accumulating shared features across instances, abstraction operates through via negativa: it prunes the space of possibilities by eliminating states incompatible with biological, thermodynamic and cultural constraints. We formalize this process probabilistically as iterative restriction and renormalization of the sample space. Using the example of food and energy, we demonstrate that conceptual clarity emerges not from complete representation but from systematic deletion of complexity. We further argue that abstraction exhibits a recursive topology in which bodily constraints generate concepts that in turn reshape those constraints, forming a Möbius-like probabilistic loop. The apparent rationality of abstraction thus conceals an underlying irrational compression driven by survival and cognitive economy.