INTUITION. The term comes from the Latin intuitio, which is derived from intueri, meaning to look at attentively (with astonishment or admiration), gaze at, contemplate, or pay attention to. At first confined to direct visual experience, the term came to denote the process of insight as well as its object. Intuition in this first sense is a direct "look" at a particular thing that shows itself immediately in its concrete fullness without the mediation of any other knowledge, procedure, or content. The roots of this meaning lie in the visual character of the Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew mentalities as reflected in the Platonic-Augustinian tradition. In the later and wider sense, the word designates the direct apprehension of an object in its present, concrete reality through either sense perception (including memory and imagination) or the intellect. Intuition is today almost exclusively understood in a metaphorical sense; the word designates...