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2 ideas
| 12998 | Understanding grasps the agreements and disagreements of ideas [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Ordinarily, when ideas are thoroughly understood, their agreements and disagreements are apparent. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 4.02) | |
| A reaction: In other words, there is a holistic aspect of understanding, which makes us ask how understanding ever gets off the ground. Is it not possible to understand a single idea in isolation? |
| 12960 | We understand things when they are distinct, and we can derive necessities from them [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: We understand the things of which we are aware only when we have distinct ideas of them accompanied by the power to reflect and to derive necessary truths from those ideas. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.21) | |
| A reaction: A rather startling way of putting it, but we also say that good understanding brings the power to predict. What must you understand in order to predict? What has to happen next! |