Intelligence, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom

This is just off the top of my head. I'm going to try to differentiate intelligence, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. I googled once on this subject and came up with little but scattered things, nothing really immediately striking me as definitive, so, here goes...

Intelligence is ability to apprehend things. To get the gist of things being presented to you in an instructional way or when engaged in some activity in real time. Degrees of speed and clarity play a role. I lack in this a bit. I studied classical piano (before the internet), and it never occurred to me to buy a recording of a piece I was working on just to see how it actually should sound. A more intelligent person would have thought of that. Just one example. I was young. Still. 

Knowledge means you aren't ignorant. You *at least* aren't ignorant. You may be dumb, but you're not ignorant. You know basic things. You're relatively up-to-date on basic things. You have a decent vocabulary. You know some basic history and geography thus having some perspective in time and space. You have basic knowledge of cultural things. Etc. 

Understanding I believe applies to subjects. They can be very big, general subjects like universal human nature, or more narrow subjects like being an automobile mechanic. It's characterized as an ability to see parts in relation to a whole. Many professional intellectuals have knowledge of parts of something but lack a vision of the whole, and hence do not have understanding of the subject. Economists can be like this. Not Adam Smith, though, he had parts-in-relation-to-the-whole understanding.

Wisdom has to do with choice and action. Knowledge and understanding as applied to real life events and situations and circumstances. A wise sea captain might choose to take an action to avoid a bad storm that a rookie sea captain perhaps might not have taken. The wise sea captain had a lifetime of experience to draw upon. 

So there it is, off the top of my head. I think I did a pretty good job. I had no idea what I was going to write when I started.  

+ + + + + + +

Pt. 2

So a person can be relatively intelligent and have knowledge but have no understanding or wisdom.

Another person can develop understanding of something and even have wisdom without perhaps being the smartest (intelligence) person in the room.

A general can have knowledge and understanding of the art of war but no wisdom on the battlefield. 

The ultimate, I think, is to use what degree of intelligence God has given you and apply yourself to get general knowledge; then apply yourself to get understanding of big subjects (and perhaps a handful of smaller ones that interest you); and along the way, maybe despite yourself, become a wisened old elf when the chips are down.