Within the history of analytic philosophy, L.S. Stebbing was among the few figures who explicitly saw something important and worth defending in the early Whitehead’s philosophy of nature, even if she was unwilling to go along with the later Whitehead’s change of direction. This chapter examines Stebbing’s responses to Whitehead primarily during the period, around the 1920s, before her focus turned to her better-known discussions of what she called ‘directional analysis’. Stebbing produced a series of detailed responses to Whitehead, endeavouring to render his theses and concepts as precise and clear as possible, so as to salvage those worth defending. During this time, some of Stebbing’s original views are presented as solutions to problems found in Whitehead. This chapter demonstrates that, within this Whiteheadian framework, Stebbing developed an original conception of abstraction and its significance for the methodology of science. Apart from reconstructing Stebbing’s theory of abstraction, this chapter highlights its relevance to contemporary debates in the philosophy of science, especially concerning the conception of abstraction as selective attention.