This is the act of finding contrasts. A low-resolution view finds fewer contrasts than a high-resolution view. When no contrasts are found, the view is unresolved.
The example of resolving power in optics is a convenient starting point to arrive at the generalization expressed by {resolution} but, as with other starting points, only one of a very large number of possible starting points. The viewer using a lens of insufficient resolving power will be unable to distinguish two points. They will seem to be one. If the lens is replaced with one of greater resolving power, then {separation} can be achieved.
Botany provides many examples. Most people cannot detect any contrasts of botanical species (not species in the special sense used in this glossary) when they look at a buttercup. Botanists do detect contrasts of botanical species, such as 'creeping buttercup' and 'meadow buttercup.' A high-resolution view of a single botanical species may need specialist knowledge. For example, there are about 2 000 varieties or micro-species of blackberry (bramble).
Resolution of colour hues can be very much extended by practice: people who can already detect many shades of green in a garden can learn to appreciate many more, increasingly minute contrasts.
Using the concept of genus and species (in the sense used in this glossary, not in the biological sense), the species are the broad categories, in which further contrasts can be found by resolution.
Courage can be resolved into /physical courage and /moral courage. Most of the German generals during the Second World War could be described as physically courageous but morally cowardly.
'Number' can be resolved. Quoting from the hierachical classification given in Collins Dictionary of Mathematics: 'every number is a complex number: a complex number is the sum of a real number and an imaginary number, the latter itself equal to the product of a real number with i (the square root of -1); a real number in either a rational number or an irrational number; a rational number may be either an integer or a fraction, while an irrational number may be either an algebraic number (as are all rational numbers) or a transcendental number.' This example makes clear the close linkage between {resolution} and {diversification}.
Confusing the different meanings of 'is' amounts to a failure of {resolution}. Frege distinguishes these uses of 'is:'
(a) identity,
eg 'Eric Blair is George Orwell'
(b) existence
(c) predication, as in 'Socrates is wise.'
(d) class inclusion, as in 'a horse is a mammal.'