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An idea ( Greek: ιδέα) is the result of thinking. ( Thought, Concept)

Idea is the term used in both popular and philosophical terminology with the general sense of "mental picture" or "understanding".

Today many people believe that ideas are a new sort of intellectual property like a copyright or patent. There are some who believe that there is a realm in which ideas exist and that we only discover these ideas in much the same way that we discover the Wikiwiki world.

To "have no idea how a thing happened" is to be without a mental picture of an occurrence. In this general sense it is synonymous with the idea of concept in popular usage.

1 In Philosophy

In philosophy, the term “idea” is common to all languages and periods, but there is scarcely any term which has been used with so many different shades of meaning.

1.1 Plato

• Plato utilized the concept of idea in the realm of metaphysics. He asserted that everything has an ideal form which exists in your mind but a chair that exists in reality was merely an imperpect version of the idea or concept that you have about chairs in your mind. (see archetype)

• From this doctrine, it follows that these ideas are the sole reality (see also idealism), in opposition to it are the empirical thinkers of all time who find reality in particular physicalAntonym of psychical. The word physical " when used alone, has several possible meanings in the English language. It can refer to the body. It can specify the quality of an object to occupy space. objectEtymology: The word object comes from the latin word objectum a noun form of objectus which in turn comes from objicere which means to throw or put something before someone. Objicere comes from ob "in front of" (related to the Greek epi and jacere "throw"s (see hylozoismHylozoism is the philosophical doctrine that all material things possess life. Some of the ancient Greek philosophers taught a version of hylozoism. Thales, Anaximenes, and Heraklitus all taught that there is a form of life in all material objects, and th, empiricismEmpiricism is the school of Epistemology (in philosophy or psychology) that virtually all knowledge is the result of our experiences. See John Locke's Tabula rasa or "blank slate" theory. Radical Empiricism holds that our knowledge is essentially nothing, etc.).

1.2 John Locke

• In striking contrast to Plato’s use of idea is that of John LockeJohn Locke ( August 29 1632 — October 28 1704) was a 17th century philosopher concerned primarily with society and epistemology. An Englishman, Locke's notions of a " government with the consent of the governed" and man's natural rights— life, liberty, an, who defines “idea” as “whatever is the object of understanding when a man thinks” (Essay on the Human Understanding (I.), vi. 8). Here the term is applied not to the mental process, but to anything whether physical or intellectual which is the object of it.

1.3 David Hume

• HumeDavid Hume ( April 26, 1711 August 25, 1776), Scottish philosopher and historian and, with Adam Smith and Thomas Reid among others, one of the most important figures in the Scottish Enlightenment. Hume is sometimes regarded as the third and most radical o differs from Locke by limiting “idea” to the more or less vague mental reconstructions of perceptions, the perceptual processA process is a naturally occurring or designed sequence of operations or events, possibly taking up time, space, expertise or other resource, which produces some outcome. A process may be identified by the changes it creates in the properties of one or mo being described as an “impression.”