Commonly confused words: concept or conception?

For most of us happiness is the overriding aim in life but there is one formidable obstacle to achieving it – few of us have a clear CONCEPTION of what happiness is. For Socrates, a famous Greek philosopher, there was an inextricable link between a person’s well-being and knowledge. You can become truly happy once you have rationally examined every aspect of your life and made sense of the world you live in. Socrates is supposed to have said: ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’.

Rational examination of your life is all about CONCEPTS. For example, you have chosen the career of a judge in the hope of promoting justice. Whether your decisions as a judge will make you happy or not will hinge on how clearly you have formulated the CONCEPT of justice. However, the answer to the question ‘What is justice?’ may elude you.


What method did Socrates suggest for defining CONCEPTS? Socrates’s mother was a midwife – she helped women to give birth to babies. Socrates compared giving birth to babies to giving birth to the truth. He would go to the Athenian Agora, a place where Athenians gathered to buy and sell goods, and would engage market-goers in a conversation to examine their values and beliefs and alter their CONCEPTIONS of the world. All his dialogues with his fellow-citizens were open-ended, which meant Socrates had no pre-determined answers to the questions he asked but wanted the man he was talking to to arrive at his own answer or at a new understanding of a familiar concept.

THE AGORA OF ATHENS

Socrates thought that it was in the power of the individual to shape his destiny and the key to living a good life was self-knowledge and a deliberate effort to overcome your ignorance. ‘Wisdom begins in wonder’, the great Athenian thinker said. Question conventional assumptions, challenge traditional concepts, have an insatiable curiosity about life and happiness will be within your reach.

Let us try to examine the difference between ‘concept’ and ‘conception’. Both words can be traced back to the Latin verb ‘concipere’, which meant ‘take into the mind, absorb mentally’. Yet, ‘conception’ ends in –ion and this suffix points to some process, action or condition. Use ‘conception’ when you are forming an idea in your head, trying to understand it. 

SOCRATES

Let us compare two sentences from our text:

Sentence 1 Few of us have a clear CONCEPTION of what happiness is.
Sentence 2 What method did Socrates suggest for defining CONCEPTS?

If sentence 1 is more about our individual understanding of what happiness is, sentence 2 is about some abstract, universal ideas, such as the concept of freedom or the concept of cause and effect.

Look at two more examples that illustrate this difference:

The book provides students with the basic CONCEPTS of economics. (Macmillan Collocations Dictionary 2010) –Here: ‘concepts’ stands for universally accepted ideas and principles

Sentence 2 We now have a clearer CONCEPTION of the problem. (Oxford Collocations Dictionary for students of English 2009) – In this sentence CONCEPTION means ‘understanding’.

The ‘process’ meaning of ‘conception’ is also evident in such sentences as She was with the band from its CONCEPTION. or He directed the project from CONCEPTION to production.

In these examples CONCEPTION describes creating a new idea or thing.

Practise using CONCEPT and CONCEPTION. Decide on the best option for each of the following sentences:

1. Socrates would engage market-goers in a conversation to examine their values and beliefs and alter their a. CONCEPTS b. CONCEPTIONS of the world.

2. They have no a) CONCEPT b) CONCEPTION of what women really feel and want.

3. The idea of soul is a religious a) CONCEPT b) CONCEPTION.

4. As an abstract a) CONCEPT b) CONCEPTION, the notion of time may be difficult for children to grasp.

5. The plan was brilliant in its a) CONCEPT b) CONCEPTION but failed because of lack of money.

6. Our a) CONCEPTS b) CONCEPTIONS of our own society may not always be accurate.