For Jenny, no search for motives or explanations can matter, not because she necessarily understands what she did, but because understanding it will change neither her guilt nor the loss of her daughters.
Getting the figures right is important, says one of the critics, Antoine Louchart, a paleo-ornithologist at the University of Lyon in France, because understanding the dodo's proper body size helps scientists understand how birds evolve on islands.
This is important to evaluate because understanding the relationship between artificial intelligence trends, national preparedness and geopolitics are fundamental to understand the future of humanity.
His education could be helpful there, he said, because "understanding faith and hope is important".
Because understanding exactly who your users are means you can work out what they want and advertise to them more successfully.
Methods of determining whether a number is prime have captivated mathematicians since ancient times because understanding prime numbers is the key to solving many important mathematical problems.
Dr. Armelagos said research into the origins of syphilis would continue, because "understanding its evolution is important not just for biology, but for understanding social and political history".
But sometimes it's necessary, because understanding how and why we put other people into certain categories — approachable, accessible, intimidating or threatening, for example — helps us understand ourselves.
And we want not to understand for two reasons: first, because understanding sounds a little too much like forgiveness or even some sort of sympathy or endorsement (which, emphatically, it is not); and second, because understanding evil as something human locates it dangerously close to me as a fellow human being.
They believe this is because understanding sarcasm requires understanding contradictory statements, for example "don't work too hard" said to someone who is clearly resting.
Real estate agents here generally agree that floor plans are more useful than virtual tours, because understanding the way rooms flow within an apartment's limited space is often more important than getting a panorama of any single room.
