INTELLIGENCE
was taken from Latin. It appeared at about 1390, and was given the short and
simple definition of “the faculty of understanding.”
The
essential definition of FACULTY was “the power of doing anything.” About 1490/
a hundred years later, a second slightly expanded definition had been
established.
INTELLIGENCE referred not only to the faculty of understanding but
to “Understanding as a quality admitting of degree, specifically with reference
to superior understanding, quickness of mental apprehension, and sagacity. “
The one
that has had the most “reality” during modernist times: “INTELLIGENCE, in
psychology, is the general mental ability involved in calculating, reasoning,
perceiving relationships and analogies, learning quickly, storing and
retrieving information, using language fluently, classifying, generalizing, and
adjusting to new situations.”
At first
take, this modern definition seems to cover just about everything necessary to
describe intelligence and say that it exists as such. But it does not. The word
“understanding” is not even mentioned in it.
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