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This post is a collection of quotes about understanding. There are 17 quotes divided into 6 sections. The painting above is by Paul Signac titled The Pine Tree at Saint Tropez (1909).
A. Understanding is the condition of knowing the explanation of something (2)
B. Understanding is the condition of having competent knowledge in something (2)
C. An explanation is a description of why something happens or happened (2)
D. An explanation is a description that makes something clear (3)
E. Meditation leads to higher understanding (5)
F. Systematic analysis organizes our thinking (3)
A. Understanding is the condition of knowing the explanation of something
Mark Twain (1835-1910, writer):
1. "We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter." (A Tramp Abroad, 1880)
Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872, philosopher):
2. "The first philosophers were astronomers. The heavens remind man... that he is destined not merely to act, but also to contemplate." (The Essence of Christianity, 1841)
B. Understanding is the condition of having competent knowledge in something
Laurent Schwartz (1915-2002, mathematician):
3. "At the end of the eleventh grade, I took the measure of the situation and came to the conclusion that rapidity doesn't have a precise relation to intelligence. What is important is to deeply understand things and their relations to each other. This is where intelligence lies." (A Mathematician Grappling with his Century, 2001)
Albert Einstein (1879-1955, physicist):
4. "By means of such concepts and mental relations between them, we are able to orient ourselves in the labyrinth of sense impressions." (Physics and Reality, 1936)
C. An explanation is a description of why something happens or happened
Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855, mathematician):
5. "By explanation the scientist understands nothing except the reduction of the least and simplest basic laws possible, beyond which he cannot go, but must plainly demand them; from them however he deduces the phenomena absolutely completely as necessary." (Quoted in Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science by Guy Waldo Dunnington)
Linus Pauling (1901-1994, biochemist):
6. "Life is too complicated to permit a complete understanding through the study of whole organisms. Only by simplifying a biological problem - breaking it down into a multitude of individual problems - can you get the answers." (Interview with Neil A. Campbell, 1986)
D. An explanation is a description that makes something clear
Socrates (470-399 BC, philosopher):
7. "Everything is plainer when spoken than when unspoken." (Quoted in Phaedrus by Plato)
John Searle (1932-now, philosopher):
8. "Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself." (Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind, 1993)
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860, philosopher):
9. "From every page and every line, there speaks an endeavor to beguile and deceive the reader, first by producing an effort to dumbfound him, then by incomprehensible phrases and even sheer nonsense to stun and stupefy him, and again by audacity of assertion to puzzle him, in short, to throw dust in his eyes and mystify him as much as possible." (Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real)
E. Meditation leads to higher understanding
Isaac Newton (1642-1726, physicist)
10. "I keep the subject constantly before me, and wait until the first dawnings open slowly, by little and little, into a full and clear light." (Quoted in Biographia Britannica)
Rene Descartes (1596-1650, philosopher):
11. "We ought to give the whole of our attention to the most insignificant and most easily mastered facts and remain a long time in contemplation of them until we are accustomed to behold the truth clearly and distinctly." (Rules for the Direction of the Mind, 1628)
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951, philosopher):
12. "There is no more light in a genius than any other honest man, but he has a particular kind of lens to concentrate this light into a burning point." (Culture and Value, 1980 posthumous)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791, composer):
13. "Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius." (Goodreads.com)
John Locke (1632-1704, philosopher)
14. "We are the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment." (Hand Book: Caution and Counsels)
F. Systematic analysis organizes our thinking
Hesiod (8th century BC, poet):
15. "It is best to do things systematically, since we are only human and disorder is our worst enemy." (AZQuotes.com)
Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994, philosopher):
16. "The best way of presenting such knowledge is the list - and the oldest scientific works were indeed lists of facts, parts, coincidences, problems in several specialized domains." (Farewell to Reason, 1987)
E. O. Wilson (1909-now, biologist):
17. "The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and only later works like a bookkeeper." (Letters to a Young Scientist, 2013)
