I love this quote....

"Excessive abstraction is a very common error. Keep the references to concrete instances in mind, and do not give the abstract structures an existence of their own. Treating ideas as things (reification), done to excess in politics and religion, has no doubt murdered more people than any other cognitive error."

William L. Burke
Spacetime, Geometry, and Cosmology (1980)

Reading his book now. Carefully this time, and not in the hurried rush I did when I was taking his class and thinking about other things like whether I wanted to jump ship from mathematics to become a humanities major. It's sort of a painful experience, because he died 4 months after I graduated so I can't exactly call him up or email him with any questions, which sucks. And I also remember all of those amazing conversations I had with Kevin about physics and poetry and music that semester when it would not stop raining and we were both struggling with Burke's homework. I hate regrets, but I regret taking those moments for granted and just assuming the rest of my life would be filled with people like Kevin and I would always be able to have talks like that with someone. I also regret not having kissed him once during those uncountable number of times when we were drunk together and he made a pass at me which I did not catch because I was so fucking socially clumsy and clueless at the time. And still am, I guess. *sigh*