As the breadth of usefulness of an observed pattern increases, and the pattern becomes detached from any one specific situation (or to put it differently, attachable to a large number of otherwise dissimilar situations), the pattern will more and more be conceptualized as a principle.

Because the best means of increasing breadth of applicability of a pattern is abstraction, it can appear that principles are purely abstract, which is true in a sense, but not in the commonsense sense.

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It’s funny that the etymology of the word “principle” comes from the Latin word principium ‘source,’ from princeps, princip– ‘first, chief.’ This suggests that a principle comes first, and this is certainly how we tend to interpret principles. However, in truth what appears to come first actually comes last, and what seems to command the behavior of phenomena actually follows.