understanding

What's important is changing perspective and this frees the mind in understanding.

"Understanding"

Such as strange word this is. It is used probably multiple times every day by most English speaking humans, with nary a thought given to its implications. To "understand" something is to not only gain knowledge of something, but to put the knowledge into its proper context. One can be told that something is true, but if one does not understand why it is true, and the implications of its truth, one has knowledge but not understanding.

But let's think about this word for a second. It implies something very peculiar: that one is standing under what is "understood"! How very interesting. Does this bias a person who learns of something to always view themselves as beneath what is learned, always receiving from something considered above themselves what is understood? Why not "overstanding"?

Could it be that the very idea of understanding carries with it a cultural bias? Could it be that the idea of understanding reinforces a sort of inferiority complex when it comes to learning of things, where one must humble himself in order to learn the proper context of something? If one "understands" something, who "overstands" what is given to the person who "understands"? Are there people who "overstand", who rather than looking with upturned eyes to figure out the proper context of something, subjectively assign the proper context as it means to them, thus "standing over" the idea and assigning it meaning, rather than receiving the meaning?

It's amazing how easily humans use words without thinking of the subconscious effects they have. For most, the proper context will always be the learner being a humble person being told what something means, humbly looking up at the object of contemplation, and accepting the apparent meaning given to him.

Un`der*stand"ing, a.

Knowing; intelligent; skillful; as, he is an understanding man.

© Webster 1913.

Un`der*stand"ing, n.

1.

The act of one who understands a thing, in any sense of the verb; knowledge; discernment; comprehension; interpretation; explanation.

2.

An agreement of opinion or feeling; adjustment of differences; harmony; anything mutually understood or agreed upon; as, to come to an understanding with another.

He hoped the loyalty of his subjects would concur with him in the preserving of a good understanding between him and his people. Clarendon.

3.

The power to understand; the intellectual faculty; the intelligence; the rational powers collectively conceived an designated; the higher capacities of the intellect; the power to distinguish truth from falsehood, and to adapt means to ends.

There is a spirit in man; and the inspiration of the Almighty them understanding. Job xxxii. 8.

The power of perception is that which we call the understanding. Perception, which we make the act of the understanding, is of three sorts: 1. The perception of ideas in our mind; 2. The perception of the signification of signs; 3. The perception of the connection or repugnancy, agreement or disagreement, that there is between any of our ideas. All these are attributed to the understanding, or perceptive power, though it be the two latter only that use allows us to say we understand. Locke.

In its wider acceptation, understanding is the entire power of perceiving an conceiving, exclusive of the sensibility: the power of dealing with the impressions of sense, and composing them into wholes, according to a law of unity; and in its most comprehensive meaning it includes even simple apprehension. Coleridge.

4.

Specifically, the discursive faculty; the faculty of knowing by the medium or use of general conceptions or relations. In this sense it is contrasted with, and distinguished from, the reason.

I use the term understanding, not for the noetic faculty, intellect proper, or place of principles, but for the dianoetic or discursive faculty in its widest signification, for the faculty of relations or comparisons; and thus in the meaning in which "verstand" is now employed by the Germans. Sir W. Hamilton.

Syn. -- Sense; intelligence; perception. See Sense.

© Webster 1913.