Intelligibility

A 12th-century painting by Song Dynasty artist Wang Ximeng. Principles of Vision insists on the artist assuring himself that he distinctly sees what he attempts to represent. What he sees, and how he represents it, depend on other principles...- George Henry Lewes.

Intelligibility relates to the objects or concepts that have intelligibility that may be called intelligible. That which is intelligible is the degree to which something is intelligible. It also means the quality of recorded speech of every word being understandable. In phonetics, Intelligibility is a measure of how comprehensible speech is, or the degree to which speech can be understood. Intelligibility (philosophy) is what can be comprehended by the human mind in contrast to sense perception.

See also:

Awareness

Understanding

CONTENT : A - F , G - L , M - R , S - Z , See also , External links

Quotes

Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author

A - F

I find the selectivity of erotic love - the choice of this man or this woman - much more intelligible if liking the person is the origin of sexual interest, rather than the other way. - Mortimer Adler.

• I find the selectivity of erotic love - the choice of this man or this woman - much more intelligible if liking the person is the origin of sexual interest, rather than the other way.
  • Mortimer Adler, Mortimer J. Adler On The Great Idea Of Love- Part 3, Bookofjob.org.

• If 'bounded by a surface' is the definition of body there cannot be an infinite body either intelligible or sensible. Nor can number taken in abstraction be infinite for number or that which has number in numerable. If then the numerable can be numbered, it would also be possible to go through the infinite.
  • Aristotle, Physics, Digireads.com Publishing, 1 January 2004, p. 35.

• The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.
  • Walter Bagehot, in English Constitution No III. The Monarchy quoted in The Fortnightly Review, Volume 2, Marshall, 1865, p. 103.

• The first attempt at a response: there must have been a fall, a decline, and the road to salvation can only be the return of the sensible finite into the intelligible infinite.
  • Hans Urs von Balthasar, My Work: In Retrospect, Ignatius Press, 1993, p. 99.

• I am an anarchist, a political and social w:HuguenotHuguenot; I deny everything and affirm naught but myself: because the sole truth of which I have material and moral proof and tangible, comprehensible and intelligible evidence, the only real, startling, non-arbitrary truth not susceptible to interpretation, is myself. I am. There I have a positive fact. Everything else is abstraction and, in mathematics, would be designated as "x", and unknown quantity; and I need not trouble myself with it.
  • Anselme Bellegarrigue, Anarchist Manifesto, April 1850.

• We see that pedantry has never been held in such esteem for the government of the world as in our times, and it offers as many paths of the true intelligible species and objects of infallible and sole truth as there are individual pedants.
  • Giordano Bruno, The heroic enthusiasts (Gli eroici furori): An ethical poem, Volume 2, G. Redway, 1889

Space is not an empty homogeneous medium, but full of intricate differences, intelligible and real, though not with our common reality. - John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir.

• Space is not an empty homogeneous medium, but full of intricate differences, intelligible and real, though not with our common reality.
  • John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, The Strange Adventures of Mr Andrew Hawthorn & Other Stories, Penguin UK, 29 January 2009, p. 163

The paradoxes of wave and particle, it must make the world inside the atom and the wide spaces of the universe equally intelligible... - John Desmond Bernal.

• The paradoxes of wave and particle, it must make the world inside the atom and the wide spaces of the universe equally intelligible. It must have a different dimension from all previous world views, and include in itself an explanation of development and the origin of new things.
  • John Desmond Bernal, Science in History, Watts, 1957, p. 595.

• Knowledge was not a problem for the ruling philosophy of the Middle Ages; that the whole world which man's mind seeks to understand is intelligible to it was explicitly taken for granted. That, people subsequently came to consider knowledge a problem implies that they had been led to accept certain different beliefs about the nature of man and about the things he tries to understand.
  • E.A. Burtt, The metaphysical foundations of modern physical science, Рипол Классик, p. 2.

• Surely this voice meant our Teacher; for it is he that can collect the indications which lie scattered on all sides. A singular light kindles in his looks, when at length the high Rune lies before us, and he watches in our eyes whether the star has yet risen upon us, which is to make the Figure visible and intelligible.
  • Thomas Carlyle, The Works of Thomas Carlyle, Cambridge University Press, 11 November 2010, p. 31.

• With a painter's temperament, all that's needed are the means of expression sufficient to be intelligible to the wide public.
  • Paul Cezanne, Inspiring Impressionism: the Impressionists and the art of the past, Denver Art Museum, 2007, p. 255.

• It has been one of my difficulties, in arguing this question out of doors with friends or strangers, that I rarely find any intelligible agreement as to the object of the war.
  • Richard Cobden, in Thomas Curson Hansard Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, Great Britain. Parliament, 1855.

• [In] the unconscious, perfectly natural, irony of self-delusion, in all parts intelligible to the intelligent reader, without the slightest suspicion on the part of Autobiographer, I know of no equal in literature.
  • Samuel Tylor Coleridge, in Ian Duncan Scott's Shadow: The Novel in Romantic Edinburgh, Princeton University Press, 2007, p. 234.

• Now, we have already demonstrated, that a falsehood can never be clearly conceived or apprehended to be true, because a falsehood is a mere non-entity; and whatsoever is clearly conceived or understood, is an entity. Nay, the true knowledge or science which exists nowhere but in the mind itself, has no other entity at all besides intelligibility ; and therefore, whatsoever is clearly intelligible.
  • Ralph Cudworth, Johann Lorenz von Mosheim, in The True Intellectual System of the Universe: With a Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, Volume 3, 1845, p. 636.

• [As a corollary of the new Atomic doctrine] ...the creation of a system of symbolic notation, which not only made the nature of chemical compounds and processes easily intelligible and easy of recollection, but, by its very form, suggested new lines of inquiry.
  • John Dalton, in Thomas Henry Huxley Collected Essays, Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, 29-Dec-2011, p. 71.

• These are no doubt more methodical and complete, but are intelligible only after a little preliminary experience. The entire aim of these notes is to help the beginner acquire this preliminary experience a little faster.
  • René Daumal, Mount Analogue, Penguin, 1 June 2004, p. 65.

• Few are good for much; the conceits have not even the merit of being intelligible: it would perhaps be difficult to select three passages that we should care to read again.
  • John Donne, in Henry Hallam Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Volume 2, A.C. Armstrong, 1894, p. 248.

• To know that what is impenetrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties - this knowledge, this feeling that is the core of the religious sentiment.
  • Einstein, in Conrad P. Pritscher Einstein & Zen: Learning to Learn, Peter Lang, 2010. P.131

... indispensable means to such a Doctrine: a manifestation, the sole aim of which is, with the Knowledge thus acquired, — by which knowledge alone a Will, clear and intelligible to itself and reposing upon itself without wavering or perplexity, is possible, — to return wholly into Actual Life; — not into the Life of blind and irrational Instinct which we have laid bare in all its nothingness, but into the Divine Life which shall become visible to us. - Johann Gottlieb Fichte.

• Thus then does the Doctrine of Knowledge, which in its substance is the realisation of the absolute Power of intelligising which has now been defined, end with the recognition of itself as a mere manifestation in a Doctrine of Wisdom, although indeed a necessary and indispensable means to such a Doctrine: a manifestation, the sole aim of which is, with the Knowledge thus acquired, — by which knowledge alone a Will, clear and intelligible to itself and reposing upon itself without wavering or perplexity, is possible, — to return wholly into Actual Life; — not into the Life of blind and irrational Instinct which we have laid bare in all its nothingness, but into the Divine Life which shall become visible to us.
  • Johann Gottlieb Fichte, in Oliver Joseph Thatcher The Ideas that Have Influenced Civilization, in the Original Documents, Ropberts-Manchester Publishing Company, 1833, p. 329.

• We have the duty of formulating, of summarizing, and of communicating our conclusions, in intelligible form, in recognition of the right of other free minds to utilize them in making their own decisions.
  • Ronald Fisher, Chances Are: Adventures in Probability, Penguin, 27 February 2007, p. 155.

G - L

Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end. - Milan Kundera.

• Scientific knowledge helps us mainly because it makes the wonder to which we are called by nature rather more intelligible; and also in that it gives our ever-heightened life new skills to avert what is damaging and to introduce what is useful.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections, Penguin UK, 01-Dec-2005, p. 97.

• Those in the crossing must in the end know what is mistaken by all urging for intelligibility: that every thinking of being, all philosophy can never be confirmed by “facts”, i.e. beings Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy.
  • Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy: From Enowning, Indiana University Press, 1999], p. 307.

• That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise.
  • David Hume, in Joel Feinberg, Russ Shafer-Landau Reason and Responsibility: Readings in Some Basic Problems of Philosophy, Cloth: Readings in Some Basic Problems of Philosophy, Cengage Learning, 2008., p. 222.

• I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.
  • Thomas Huxley, in Kelly Warman-Stallings Who's ? Right: Mankind, Religions and the End Times, AuthorHouse, 31 January 2012, p. 7.

• Missionaries, whether of philosophy or of religion, rarely make rapid way, unless their preachings fall in with the prepossessions of the multitude of shallow thinkers, or can be made to serve as a stalking-horse for the promotion of the practical aims of the still larger multitude, who do not profess to think much, but are quite certain they want a great deal. Rousseau's writings are so admirably adapted to touch both these classes that the effect they produced, especially in France, is easily intelligible.
  • Thomas Henry Huxley, On The Natural Inequality of Men (January 1890): Preface and Table of Contents to Volume I, Results and Methods, of Huxley's Collected Essays., Clark University

If the potential of every number is in the monad, then the monad would be intelligible number in the strict sense, since it is not yet manifesting anything actual, but everything conceptually together in it. - Iamblichus.

• If the potential of every number is in the monad, then the monad would be intelligible number in the strict sense, since it is not yet manifesting anything actual, but everything conceptually together in it.
  • Iamblichus on Theological number quoted in Lionel March in Architectonics of Humanism: Essays on Number in Architecture, Wiley, 8 December 1998, p. 31
  • This work is often attributed to Iamblichus, and no other, but the attribution is not considered definite, but is from the translation by Robin Waterfield: The Theology of Arithmetic : On the Mystical, Mathematical and Cosmological Symbolism of the First Ten Numbers (1988) - Theologumena arithmeticae: ad rarissimum exemplum Parisiense emendatius descripta (1817) Latin text online.

• One out of the one Intelligible world; he is stationed in the middle of the Intelligible Powers, according to the strictest sense.
  • Julian (emperor), Julian the emperor: containing Gregory Nazianzen's two Invectives and Libanius' Monody with Julian's extant theosophical works, G. Bell and sons, 1888 , p. 233.

• For this reason I believe that the light of the Sun bears the same relation to things visible as Truth does to things intelligible.
  • Julian (emperor), in Marion Mills Miller The Classics, Greek & Latin: v. 1. Epic literature, V. Parke, 1909, p. 314.

• Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end.
  • Milan Kundera, in Charles Peake James Joyce, the Citizen and the Artist, Stanford University Press, 1 January 1977, p. 63

• Principles of Vision insists on the artist assuring himself that he distinctly sees what he attempts to represent. What he sees, and how he represents it, depend on other principles. To make even this principle of Vision thoroughly intelligible in its application to all forms of Literature and Art, it must be considered in connection with the two other principles sincerity and beauty, which are involved in all successful works.
  • George Henry Lewes, The Fortnightly Review, Volume 1, Marshall, 1865, p. 589.

M - R

Good design is making something intelligible and memorable. Great design is making something memorable and Meaningful - Dieter Rams

• Even a god could not formulate a proposition on historical subjects like 2 x 2 = 4, for what is intelligible in history can be formulated only with reference to problems and conceptual constructions which themselves arise in the flux of historical...
  • Karl Mannheim (1936), in S. Restivo Mathematics in Society and History: Sociological Inquiries, Springer, 30 November 2001, p. 112.

• This is the common algebraical method, which is concise, simple, and perspicuous; and is sufficient for all useful purposes in practical mathematics. The method is clear and intelligible to all persons who know the first principles of algebra. The rudiments of algebra ought to be taught before geometry, because algebra may be applied to geometry in certain cases, and facilitates the study of it
  • Francis Nichols, in Elements of geometry: Being chiefly a selection from Playfair's geometry, A. Walker, 1829, p. 1.

• The special reason has to do with the fact that in every civilization, however generally prosaic, however addicted to the short-time point there are certain alien spirits who, while outwardly conforming to the requirements of the civilization around them, still keep a disinterested regard for the plain intelligible law of things, irrespective of any practical end. They have an intellectual curiosity, sometimes touched with emotion.
  • Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, the State, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1950, p. 208.

• In Algebra, [likewise], the letters are symbols which, passed through a machinery of argument in accordance with given laws, are developed into symbolic results under the name of formulas. When the formulas admit of intelligible interpretation, they are accessions to knowledge; but independently of their interpretation they are invaluable as symbolical expressions of thought.
  • Benjamin Peirce, American Journal of Mathematics, Volume 4, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1881, p. 216

It is said that the beauty and good of the soul consists in her similitude to the deity...Indeed, whatever is desirable is a kind of good, since to this desire tends. But they alone pursue true good, who rise to intelligible beauty, and so far only tend to good itself; as far as they lay aside the deformed vestments. - Plotinus.

• It is said that the beauty and good of the soul consists in her similitude to the deity...Indeed, whatever is desirable is a kind of good, since to this desire tends. But they alone pursue true good, who rise to intelligible beauty, and so far only tend to good itself; as far as they lay aside the deformed vestments.
  • Plotinus, in Golgotha Press 50 Classic Philosophy Books, BookCaps Study Guides, 2011, p. 993.

• Good design is making something intelligible and memorable. Great design is making something memorable and Meaningful.
  • Dieter Rams, in Gavin Ambrose, Paul Harris Basics Design 01: Format: Second Edition, A&C Black, 1 May 2012, p. 151.

• In philosophical terms, it is the thesis that anything that talk of objectivity can do to make our practices intelligible can be done equally well by talk of inter subjectivity. In political terms, it is the thesis that if we can just keep democracy and reciprocal tolerance alive, everything else can be settled by muddling through to some reasonable sort of compromise.
  • Richard Rorty, in Louis Menand The Future of Academic Freedom, University of Chicago Press, 15 December 1998, p. 38.

S - Z

• One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature at any rate, of prose fiction, and the comparative absence, in the two great classical languages, of what we call by that name.
  • George Saintsbury, The English Novel, epub eBooks.

• The difficulty, as in all this work, is to find a notation which is both concise and intelligible to at least two people of whom one may be the author.
  • Abdus Salam, in Silvan S Schweber Qed and the Men who Made it, Universities Press, 1999, p. 529.

• For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.
  • Arthur Schopenhauer, The Art of Literature and The Art of Controversy, Digireads.com Publishing, 1 January 2010, p. 13

• I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of [hard-core pornography] material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.
  • Justice Potter Stewart, in Hahn Guide To Unix & Linux, Tata McGraw-Hill Education, p. 14.

• The object of pure physics is the unfolding of the laws of the intelligible world; the object of pure mathematics that of unfolding the laws of human intelligence.
  • James Joseph Sylvester, in Mukherjee, et al., Rudiments of Mathematics Part 1, Academic Publishers, p. 817.

• Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice.
  • Arnold J. Toynbee, in Dr. Norman Vincent Peale Enthusiasm Makes the Difference, Simon and Schuster, 15 May 2003, p. 8.