 Pound contrasts this empiricism against knowledge gained through increasingly abstract definitions . As an example , Pound relates what might happen if a European is asked to define " red " . After the initial response that red is a color , Pound imagines asking for a definition of color and having it described in terms of vibration , with vibration then defined in terms of energy , and that successive abstractions eventually reach a level where language has lost its power . Returning to empiricism , Pound reminds the reader that the progress of science increased rapidly once " Bacon had suggested the direct examination of phenomena , and after Galileo and others had stopped discussing things so much , and had begun really to look at them " . Pound provides several other examples of the same contrasting ideas throughout the first chapter , ranging over topics as diverse as chemistry , Chinese writing , and Stravinsky . At the end of the chapter he summarizes his argument by claiming abstraction does not expand knowledge . 
