User:Drow/sandbox

History of the term
The term "intelligence" derives from the Latin nouns intelligentia or intellēctus, which in turn stem from the verb intelligere, to comprehend or perceive. In the Middle Ages, intellectus became the scholarly technical term for understanding, and a translation for the Greek philosophical term nous. However, this term was strongly linked to the metaphysical and cosmological theories of teleological scholasticism, including theories of the immortality of the soul, and the concept of the Active Intellect (also known as the Active Intelligence), and this entire approach to the study of nature was strongly rejected by the early modern philosophers such as Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and David Hume, all of whom preferred the word "understanding", instead of "intellectus" or "intelligence", in their English philosophical works. (Hobbes for example, in his Latin De Corpore, used "intellectus intelligit", translated in the English version as "the understanding understandeth", as a typical example of a logical absurdity.) The term "intelligence" has therefore become less common in English language philosophy, but it has later been taken up (with the scholastic theories which it now implies) in more contemporary psychology.


 * I don't deny that your version sounds better, at least to me, that I am not an English native or everyday speaker (which is why I asked your opinion on the page's text), but the problem is that at the end of "the ability to perceive or infer information, and..." (which I consider to be a wonderful definition, and therefore I wouldn't delete it) there isn't any supporting source cited... So, starting the page with that definiton is not a good idea, I think, at least until a supporting source is provided. Tell me what you think of it. ~


 * Yes, but my question is: does the current page's text actually transmit the ambiguity I talked about? I'm not a native nor a everyday English speaker, that's why I ask that to you.