Corbin avatar Corbin 45 minutes ago | link
More generally, abstractions are universal properties (WP, nLab). For example, the natural numbers (WP, nLab) are the universal way to count the size of discrete collections.
See also Shutt’s take on abstraction and abstractive power, which is also category-theoretic but defines abstractiveness as a sort of derivative of expressiveness, itself a derivative of semantics
interesting comment on lobsters