Talk:Understanding
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WTF is that bit about Edison? A joke? I couldn't find anything like it on the page that it links to.
I personally think if a computer can react well enough to all the relevant questions, he understands the language in concern. The reality is that most AIs are far from it!
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Can someone tell me how the word "understand" originated? "Under" means below, and "stand" means to move to an upright position from a seated position (for instance). But how did the two words come to be combined inro one to attain its present meaning?
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Interesting question. The closest I can come is a sense whereby we stand under, or support, the statement that we understand. However, nobody seems to know how the term developed. Anybody got any other clues?
TonyClarke 19:34, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
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I don't know the etymology of this word either, but intuitively it seems to me that -stand, in this case, does not refer to the act of moving to an upright position but instead a support or foundation, as in a pedestal. To understand a thing is to therefore place support beneath it. So, someone may simply know a thing they have been told because they believe it to be true and remember it well enough to repeat it. But a deeper kind of knowledge is understanding, in which case an explanation of the thing including foundational knowledge can be supplied.
Understanding seems to me to be tiered. For instance, if I am told that a mountain can spew lava (and nothing else), I may believe it because I may have heard it from a trustworthy source. This constitutes knowledge of volcanoes and very little understanding—perhaps the only understanding held in this case is understanding of the possibility of existence. If I witness a volcano with my own eyes, then I have increased my understanding with the knowledge of specific observables of such an event. I have become what journalists refer to as a primary source, which is important in journalism, I suspect, because of the understanding involved. If I become a geologist or a vulcanologist, then my understanding of volcanoes is increased vastly because of my ability to recognize and predict their presence, explain their inner workings, etc. Deeper understanding provides for my ability to provide more and more foundational knowledge, beyond simply awareness of the possibility of existence, to knowledge of actual existence, to knowledge of operation, and potentially knowledge such a foundational nature that prediction of future behavior and characteristics can be obtained.
By the way, can anyone explain why knowledge of who gave a command is a necessary prerequisite to understanding the command itself? That seems a bit of a stretch to me, though it is certainly true in certain cases, it is by no means a general property of understanding a command IMHO. Should this be removed?
Severoon 11:19, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
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Added {{cleanup-tone}} on July 15, 2005. The first person familiar tone is inconsistent with the other articles and should probably be updated. I don't think I'm the right guy to do it, and I don't want to mess up the meaning of the article, so here's hoping someone ambitious can fix it. - Chairboy 20:06, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Understanding
To understand is to know the cause, i.e. acquire wisdom. Yesselman 15:25, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
To understand is to mitigate the loss of Peace of Mind.
perhaps, the word understanding, in itself, represents the equilibrium of chaos
This article needs some serious work. It definitely needs a warning label of the "this article is not finished" type.
[edit] Clean up tag
I added a CU tap since I belive the tone of the article is mostly not appropriate. Articles are, for example, not expected to be written in first person. Introgressive 20:41, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Bad examples
I think that the cases used are not good examples, or are at least badly worded 81.165.230.85 (talk) 17:48, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
