Spelling, words, and sentences form an interesting case to consider in these terms. What is a word? It is not any of its representations, however mis-spelled or mis-pronounced. Is a word a pure Platonic concept, and its forms generated by an understanding of its “rule”? Most characterize words as symbols, but symbols don’t have any particular “rule” relating concept to expression. The mappings are arbitrary, although (mostly) codified as languages — which leads us to sentences. Is the (effective) infinitude of (sensible) sentences compelling evidence of a generator in the abstract rule sense you postulate above?

To know “wax” is an interesting question, actually: do you know a “true” abstraction of wax, or some set of “truly” disconnected things connected by the word? It seems odd to answer this by appealing to reductionism: a division of waxes into their constituent parts will reveal certain commonalities, and the sets of things you know as wax are the entailed consequences of those commonalities, and (to some extent) the enviroment. It seems odd, both as kind of philosophical reversal, and in the case of conceptual knowing, like the (common-English) concept of a group. Or is that those things which are reduced to find their abstraction are physical things, and those which are … simplified? there’s a sense of leaving detail behind, instead of exploring it — are nonphysical things?