Precision. [—] (1) A high degree of approximation, only attainable by the thorough application of the most refined methods of science.
(2) Its earlier meaning, still more or less used by logicians, is derived from a meaning given to praecisio by Scotus and other scholastics: the act of supposing (whether with consciousness of fiction or not) something about one element of a percept, upon which the thought dwells, without paying any regard to other elements. Precision implies more than mere discrimination, which relates merely to the essence of a term. Thus I can, by an act of discrimination, separate color from extension; but I cannot do so by precision, since I cannot suppose that in any possible universe color (not color-sensation, but color as a quality of an object) exists without extension. So with triangularity and trilaterality. On the other hand, precision implies much less than dissociation, which, indeed, is not a term of logic, but of psychology. It is doubtful whether a person who is not devoid of the sense of sight can separate space from color by dissociation, or, at any rate, not without great difficulty; but he can, and, indeed, does do so, by precision, if he thinks a vacuum is uncolored. So it is, likewise, with space and tridimensionality.
