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A quick google search defines intelligence as "the ability to acquire and apply knowledge" and thinking as "the process of considering or reasoning about something"

What is the relationship between intelligence and thinking?

Is thinking the thing you do to acquire and apply knowledge and if so how does intelligence fit into it?

PS - The background to this question is in regards to a uni course I am doing. I am trying to get to bottom of what thinking and intelligence is. A simple concrete example to put it into context would be brilliant. I have been sign posted to philosophy from someone on the English language and usage forum. I hope this is an appropriate question for this forum.

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    Possible duplicate of Tomatoes, Wisdom and Intelligence?
    – Alexander S King
    Commented Dec 12, 2015 at 14:34
  • Tomatoes etc is an excellent question. It seems to be about the difference between wisdom and intelligence. I don't know if it totally answers my question. It may, and it certainly shines a whole heap of useful light on it. Thanks for pointing me in its direction.
    – Jonny
    Commented Dec 12, 2015 at 15:04
  • @Jonny I consider wisdom the ability to reflect one's own experience of life. Apparently, that's different from intelligence but employs thinking.
    – Jo Wehler
    Commented Dec 13, 2015 at 6:25
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    This is a great question, unfortunately it is very broad. Can you narrow down? Are you asking with regards to a particular school-of-thought? If you're looking for an overview, would check out plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis or iep.utm.edu/knowledg for overviews.
    – James Kingsbery
    Commented Dec 15, 2015 at 22:32

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You quote two definitions, one about intelligence, the other about thinking.

A first difference of the definitions: Intelligence is a mental ability, while to think is a mental action.

A broad definition of thinking equalizes thinking with conscious mental information processing. A narrow definition along the philosophical tradition decomposes thinking into three components: Dealing with terms, propositions and syllogisms. Terms are notions, propositions are sentences which are true or false, and syllogisms are rules how to derive a conclusion from premisses.

Intelligence as an ability is often used in situations which are new and unknown to the person. Here intelligence shows up when the person is able to quickly orientate herself. The new situation may be a real situation. But it can also a brainteaser, see the task of an intelligence test. Solving the task may require thinking but also other mental abilities like spatial sense.

Because your question is homework I will not go into further details and provide examples. Therefore I also leave to you the definition of knowledge. I think - besides consulting philosophical dictionaries, e.g. http://plato.stanford.edu/ - you will find more information in the literature on cognitive psychology.

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