Nick_A wrote: ↑Do you recognize a difference between knowing and understanding?
I think, if I scrunch up all my neurones, I can manage that, yes.
A person can know the rules of chess but do not understand them. They cannot play the game. Understanding is relative. A player with a USCF rating of 2600 understands the game better than a 1600 player. Understanding is proven by the ratio of wins and losses and the quality of opponents.
It is different in life. There is no scale to determine who understands the purpose of life so people just argue opinions. The Oracle told Socrates he was the wisest man in Athens because he knew he didn't know yet also knew such a scale of objective quality must exist.
Yes, we are limited in the visible realm to subjective opinions of circles. However we can believe a perfect circle exists in the intellectual realm. That is what we are attracted to at the depths of our being.I think we develop in our minds generalised and typical models, not "perfect" ones.
Is a forest the same as the sum of its trees? A scientist can study the life of particular trees while the philosopher can study the life of a forest and its connection to other forests and the life of the planet and how it is related to the solar system. Finally the philosopher considers as a hypothesis how all these relationships comprise the lawful wholeness of our great universe. True understanding requires both the knowledge of particulars and of the forms they originated from. knowledge of the objective facts of science in the visible realm and the objective values of the intellectual realm the philosopher seeks to experience above Plato's divided line is the definition of an intelligent human being.Science and philosophy have many commonalities, and quite a few differences, but I don't recognise the distinction you are making here as being in any way significant or helpful. Science is tactics, while philosophy is strategy? I don't think that captures a worthwile distinction.