section_path: Etymology
section_name: Etymology
paragraph_text: Etymology
  
  The word intelligence derives from the Latin nouns intelligentia or intellēctus, which in turn stem from the verb intelligere, to comprehend or perceive. In the Middle Ages, the word intellectus became the scholarly technical term for understanding and a translation for the Greek philosophical term nous. This term, however, was strongly linked to the metaphysical and cosmological theories of teleological scholasticism, including theories of the immortality of the soul, and the concept of the active intellect (also known as the active intelligence). This approach to the study of nature was strongly rejected by early modern philosophers such as Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and David Hume, all of whom preferred "understanding" (in place of " intellectus " or "intelligence") in their English philosophical works. Hobbes for example, in his Latin De Corpore, used " intellectus intelligit ", translated in the English version as "the understanding understandeth", as a typical example of a logical absurdity. "Intelligence" has therefore become less common in English language philosophy, but it has later been taken up (with the scholastic theories that it now implies) in more contemporary psychology.