Don't fear abstraction - that's as far as we'll get in plenty of cases, especially when we're talking about the epistemology of the sciences; in any case, there's always an element of human control involved - once opinionated humans are put in charge of articulating abstractions, we tend towards elegance, orthogonality, the stuff that makes you grin.
Fear leaky abstractions, though.
I'm guessing it's also why "hard" classes in school start with the concepts rather than the magic (physics is a perfect example). You can't really go far if you don't get the concepts.
I've been doing some training lately for new hires, and I am inclined to start with the concepts and then teach the magic, but I wonder if it's the most effective way to learn in the short term?