Famously, literacy pedagogy briefly swung towards “memorize lots of english words, and then once you’ve ground on that task for a while introduce the abstract rules of phonics” with disastrous results.
If anything, phonics isn't really abstract, and memorizing probably feels abstract to a young child. It's from the perspective of the learner whether there is a clear, concrete thing to learn or something abstract and general. A child likely isn't just approaching memorizing words as a task for memorization, but rather trying to find out the rules behind the pronunciations and failing. Phonics is what those rules are.