50 Examples of Understanding

John Spacey, May 28, 2023

Understanding is to know about something. Things can be known in many different ways and from many different perspectives. For example, you might understand someone's argument at the logical, emotional, social or political level. It is also possible that you will understand all of these elements at the same time. The following are common examples of understanding.

Aesthetic and artistic understanding	Background knowledge
Biased understanding	Commercial awareness – understanding a business and industry
Comprehension	Conceptual understanding
Contextual knowledge	Critical insight
Cultural understanding	Deep understanding
Emotional perception	Empathy and compassion
Empirical knowledge – based on observation	End-to-end understanding
Ethical understanding	Experiential knowledge – based on experience
Financial knowledge	Global awareness
History awareness	Intuition
Know-how	Linguistic understanding
Listening comprehension	Local knowledge
Mathematical and numerical comprehension	Moral understanding
Musical knowledge	Objective Understanding
Partial understanding	Personal understanding
Philosophical insight	Political understanding
Practical knowledge	Psychological perception
Qualitative understanding	Quantitative understanding
Reading comprehension	Reflective understanding
Scientific understanding	Self-awareness
Self-knowledge	Social perception
Spatial intelligence	Structural understanding
Symbolic understanding – meaning of symbols	Systemic understanding – knowledge of systems
Technical and technological understanding	Understanding why
Visual comprehension	Working understanding – similar to know-how

Systemic understanding is understanding of complex things known as systems where there are many paths of cause and effect such that change can produce unintended consequences.

Comprehension has to do with processing information such as listening, reading and visual comprehension.

Intuition is understanding where you can't identify its source such that it appears to be a non-conscious process. This is an important type of high speed thinking that has interesting dimensions.

Know-how is the ability to do things.

Objective understanding is the ability to understand universal or observable things beyond your personal experience or opinion.

Spatial intelligence is the ability to understand 3d space over time.

Structural understanding is knowledge of how things fit together in the big picture.

Different types of understanding produce different results. For example, linguistically and culturally peanuts are known as nuts but are scientifically understood as legumes.

50 Examples of Understanding

Knowledge

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