Intuition has never been more devalued than in our rational-scientific age.

At a wine bar in Corsica, I ordered a glass of Vermentino and shared some low-key wine talk with the sommelier who brought it to me. After a time, I ordered another glass, and we spoke again. I like testing my intuitions, so I said, at point blank, “You write poetry, don’t you?” The chap, taken aback by my sorcery, confirmed that he did indeed write poetry, and even that some of his poems had been published.

An intuition is a disposition to believe elaborated without hard evidence or conscious deliberation. I say “disposition to believe” rather than “belief” because an intuition is usually held with less certainty or firmness than a belief; and “believe” rather than “know” because an intuition is not justified in the normal sense, and not necessarily true or accurate.

It is not just that intuition is arrived at without hard evidence or conscious deliberation, but that these can impede it. “I am not absentminded” wrote the polymath GK Chesterton, “it is presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.”

Intuition versus instinct

Intuition is often confused with instinct. Instinct is not a sense about something, but a more or less strong tendency towards a particular behaviour that is innate and common to the species. “Anna stepped back, intuiting that the dog would follow its instinct and attack.”

Although instincts are ordinarily associated with animals, human beings also have quite a few, even if they are, or can be, strongly modified by culture, temperament, and experience. Examples of human instincts include any number of phobias (fear of heights, fear of spiders…), territoriality, tribal loyalty, and the urge to procreate and rear their young. These instincts are often distorted or sublimed: for example, tribal loyalty may find an outlet in sport, and the urge to procreate may take the more rarefied form of romantic love.

Aristotle says in the Rhetoric that human beings have an instinct for truth, and in the Poetics that we have an instinct for rhythm and harmony.

The psychology of intuition

If intuition is not instinct, how does it operate?

An intuition involves a coming together of facts, concepts, experiences, thoughts, and feelings that are loosely linked but too disparate and peripheral for deliberate or rational processing. As this reflection is sub- or semi-conscious and the workings are hidden, an intuition appears to arise ex nihilo, out of nothing and nowhere, and cannot, or at least not readily, be justified.

What makes an intuition so hard to support and argue for is that it is founded less on arguments and evidence than on the interconnection of things. It hangs, delicately, intricately, and invisibly, like a spider’s web.

The surfacing of an intuition, which can also occur in dream or meditation, is often mingled with a concordant feeling such as joy or fear, or simple pride and pleasure at the supreme cognitive and human achievement that an intuition represents.

How to invite intuition

If this is how intuition works, then we can invite intuition by expanding the range of our experiences, and by tearing down the barriers, such as biases, fears, and inhibitions, that are preventing them from coalescing.

We should also give ourself more time and space for free association. My own intuitive faculty is sharpest when walking, showering, travelling, or otherwise daydreaming, and when I am well rested.

Clearly, the more we know, the more we can intuit, and there is no such thing as wasted knowledge.

Finally, it would help if we could simply acknowledge the place and power of intuition. We have micro-intuitions all the time, about what to eat, what to wear, what road to take, whom to talk to, what to say, how to respond, and so on. I call them micro-intuitions because they rely on a great number of subtle variables, and escape, or largely escape, conscious processing. But what about the macro-intuitions?

Never in the history of humanity has the intuitive or mystic faculty been more neglected or devalued than in our rational-scientific age.

Neel Burton is author of the newly published How to Think Like Plato and Speak Like Cicero.