The Transience of Concrete Concepts

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." Albert Einstein

The illusion that we live in a world where you can touch things and 'here' and 'there' are separate places.

These two long cherished assumptions of how the world was 'thought' to work was overturned in the early 1900's when Quantum mechanics was reified.

• First was realism. Unlike classical physics, which says the world exists independently of observers and observations, quantum theory strongly implies that reality does not exist, or at least has no meaning, until it is observed. [Schrödinger's Cat]
• The second problem was “non-locality”.  Quantum Entanglement – what Einstein termed “spooky action at a distance” – in which events in one region of space-time can seemingly instantaneously affect events elsewhere, even light years away. This goes against Einstein’s relativity, in which no influence can travel faster than the speed of light.

Definition of reify

transitive verb

: to consider or represent (something abstract) as a material or concrete thing : to give definite content and form to (a concept or idea)

… the diversity rationale also insultingly assumes that black students bring a black "point of view," Asians an Asian one and so on, thus reifying the very barriers of race and ethnicity that affirmative action is meant to erase.

— James Traub

Reify is a word that attempts to provide a bridge between what is abstract and what is real.

In general use, it refers to the act of considering or presenting an abstract idea in real or material terms, or of judging something imagined (conceived in the mind) by a concrete example.