ce, of a number of boats, the mind abstracts a certain common
quality or qualities in virtue of which the mind affirms the general
idea of "boat." Thus the connotation of the term "boat," being the sum
of those qualities in respect of which all boats are regarded as alike,
whatever their individual peculiarities may be, is described as a
"concept." The psychic process by which a concept is affirmed is called
"Conception," a term which is often loosely used in a concrete sense for
"Concept" itself. It is also used even more loosely as synonymous in the
widest sense with "idea," "notion." Strictly, however, it is contrasted
with "perception," and implies the mental reconstruction and combination
of sense-given data. Thus when one carries one's thoughts back to a
series of events, one constructs a psychic whole made up of parts which
take definite shape and character by their mutual interrelations. This
process is called _conceptual synthesis_, the possibility of which is a
_sine qua non_ for the exchange of information by speech and writing. It
should be noticed that this (very common) psychological interpretation
of "conception" differs from the metaphysical or general philosophical
definition given above, in so far as it includes mental presentations in
which the universal is not specifically distinguished from the
particulars. Some psychologists prefer to restrict the term to the
narrower use which excludes all mental states in which particulars are
cognized, even though the universal be present also.

In biology conception is the coalescence of the male and female
generative elements, producing pregnancy.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The word "conceit" in its various senses ("idea," "plan," "fancy,"
"imagination," and, by modern extension, an overweening sense of one's
own value) is likewise derived ultimately from the Latin _concipere_.
It appears to have been formed directly from the English derivative
"conceive" on the analogy of "deceit" from "deceive." According to the
_New English Dictionary_ there is no intermediate form in Old French.

CONCEPTUALISM (from "Concept"), in philosophy, a term applied by modern
writers to a scholastic theory of the nature of universals, to
distinguish it from the two extremes of Nominalism and Realism. The
scholastic philosophers took up the old Greek problem as to the nature
of true reality--whether the general idea or the particular object is
more truly real.