Is pattern recognition not part of understanding?

Looking through a couple of recent post I notice, beside that never ending gummy-shilling, that people separate pattern recognition and understanding/knowledge into different concepts. Which seems strange to me, isn't recognition of patterns and construction of a mental template for future prediction in similar situation one of the major parts of understanding something?

Instead it sound like people view it as mechanical memorization, like using klingon to elvish flash cards without any knowledge what they mean. And I doubt even opening theory studying is entirely focused on memorization and at no point the players connect why one move is better than the other.

So, is pattern recognition a necessary part of gaining understanding of chess or are they two separate concepts?

Sure, pattern recognition and knowledge are related. In fact I think one slowly turns into the other.

For example at some point I learned about "good" and "bad" bishops. It's a very logical idea... bad bishops are blocked by their own pawns, and are less mobile. Ok, makes sense. So then I spend the next, let's say 100 games, looking at each position, and identifying the good and bad bishops for both players. This takes a lot of conscious effort, and maybe a lot of my calculations (for tactics and strategy) involve trying to trade off my bad bishop or trade off my opponent's good bishop.

But over time this moves into purely pattern recognition. Sort of like when you watch a 5 year old read a word, they sound out every letter first, but an adult will read the whole word without looking at the individual letters. So a GM will look at a position, and understand which bisohps are good and bad without spending any conscious energy on it... which is how a GM can play 50 people at the same time and win all 50 games even though they're clearly using less mental energy than any individual opponent who spends 10 minutes calculating their next move on every turn.

Anyway, so IMO, this is one way to understand getting better at chess... you learn a new idea (or a few), and then you spend a lot of conscious energy on that idea in many games until eventually it's effortless. Then you learn some other new things, play a lot of games to make them automatic, etc.

@iCANThiccupANYMORE : Interesting analogy but I feel it kinda miss the point of PATTERN recognition. If we can't find a pattern, even an incomplete one, then it we are just randomly moving pieces. And how would the cat understand the difference between the owner types if it cannot distinguish between them?

@llama35 : I am a patient man, especially when it comes to wisdom of a llama. EDIT: didn't see your edit there. Well what you say is very similar to how I would think about pattern recognition. Maybe add a reverse learning path: you play many games where you lose queen or rook to the fork with guarded knight to f, analyze the situation, recognize the pattern and gain understanding about what your opponent is trying to do in advance.

@4
IMHO pattern recognition is tactics.
E.g. the Greek Gift sacrifice, back rank mate, Philidor's smothered mate etc.
IMHO understanding is strategy.
E.g. queen side pawn majority, minority attack, good / bad bishops etc.

And later it will recognize the behavior of certain humans is different from others. So there is either a pattern to learn or just memorize specific humans who feed the cat. The weak pattern is meow -> food % of times from humans.

@tygxc : sure, but I don't know if strategic knowledge alone would count as "understanding" chess. Also most of this things are patterns after all, some are just more chunked together: bad bishop is specific piece' current and potential movement + piece/pawn blockage of squares.