ABSTRACT
It is a common claim in the modelling literature in philosophy of science that abstracting is the act of omitting some aspects of a natural system that are deemed irrelevant. Although this conception of abstraction rightly points to the need that modellers have to leave out unnecessary details and isolate relevant features of the target investigated, it overlooks a fundamental creative component of abstraction that cannot be explained in terms of omission. Looking at modern theories of abstract art, in particular those traceable in the educational program of the Bauhaus at Weimar and Dessau (1919–1933), can provide insight about the cognitive potential of abstraction beyond omission: abstractions can prompt the spatial imagination of the viewers, leading to the appreciation of previously unnoticed, insightful relations between the various aspects constituting an object or event in the world. A case in scientific research is introduced to illustrate how acts of abstracting in modelling practices can have a similar cognitive potential than in artistic creation. Namely, investigations in fluid dynamics carried out by Ludwig Prandtl and Friedrich Ahlborn, also in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century, were fundamentally supported on the creation of visual abstract spaces, where interacting lines and planes triggered the spatial imagination of the viewers, leading to a novel understanding of the behaviour of fluids.
