Abstract:
In the no longer existing South African journal Quaestiones Informaticae, "An Approach to Defining Abstractions, Refinements and Enrichments" was published by Derrick Kourie more than twenty years ago. At some occasion, about two years ago, Derrick Kourie had asked and encouraged me to review his original topics, such as to re-construct and re-present them from a different perspective. In this festschrift chapter, in honour of Derrick Kourie's 65th birthday, I outline the results of my attempt at fulfilling Derrick Kourie's collegial request. For this purpose I shall first recapitulate the key concepts of Kourie's original paper, since that paper has more or less fallen into oblivion and cannot be easily retrieved from the public domain any more. Thereafter Kourie's notions of abstraction, refinement and enrichment are re-defined in a different (more classical) theoretical framework. Finally those notions are contextualised with respect to the related notion of retrenchment developed since the mid-1990s by Banach, Poppleton, et al
Description:
Note that the related Chapter 1 in the above-mentioned book published by Shaker Verlag contains three Figures, as well as a long list of Acknowledgments, which are OMITTED in this pre-print version.
