Insight is the understanding of a specific cause and effect in a specific context. The term insight can have several related meanings:
- a piece of information
- the act or result of understanding the inner nature of things or of seeing intuitively in Greek called noesis
- an introspection
- the power of acute observation and deduction, penetration, discernment, perception called intellection or noesis
- an understanding of cause and effect based on identification of relationships and behaviors within a model, context, or scenario (see artificial intelligence)
An insight that manifests itself suddenly, such as understanding how to solve a difficult problem, is sometimes called by the German word Aha-Erlebnis. The term was coined by the German psychologist and theoretical linguist Karl Bühler. It is also known as an epiphany.
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Famous quotes containing the word insight:
“Let him [the President] once win the admiration and confidence of the country, and no other single force can withstand him, no combination of forces will easily overpower him.... If he rightly interpret the national thought and boldly insist upon it, he is irresistible; and the country never feels the zest of action so much as when the President is of such insight and caliber.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Light half-believers of our casual creeds,
Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will’d,
Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds,
Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill’d.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“I know that I will always be expected to have extra insight into black texts—especially texts by black women. A working-class Jewish woman from Brooklyn could become an expert on Shakespeare or Baudelaire, my students seemed to believe, if she mastered the language, the texts, and the critical literature. But they would not grant that a middle-class white man could ever be a trusted authority on Toni Morrison.”
—Claire Oberon Garcia, African American scholar and educator. Chronicle of Higher Education, p. B2 (July 27, 1994)