starting from scientific abstractions and attempting to work our way back to the consciousness that conceives of these abstraction is an example of looking through the wrong end of the telescope. what does it mean to be "looking through the wrong end of the telescope"? it means to try to prove or explain something self-evident by something that is not. not everything can be proved: “...it is obvious that there are many things of this kind, and to prove what is obvious by what is not is the mark of a man who is unable to distinguish what is self-evident from what is not.”

Aristotle says elsewhere (N.E., Book 1):

And we must not overlook the distinction between arguments that start from first principles and those that lead to first principles. It was a good practice of Plato to raise this question, and to enquire whether the true procedure is to start from or to lead up to one's first principles, as in a race-course one may run from the judges to the far end of the track or the reverse. Now no doubt it is proper to start from the known. But ‘the known’ has two meanings—‘what is known to us,’ which is one thing, and ‘what is knowable in itself,’ which is another. Perhaps then for us at all events it proper to start from what is known to us.