Absolutely. A grandmaster will more or less instantly understand the core themes of any real position you put in front of them, and they usually can even guess

Absolutely. A grandmaster will more or less instantly understand the core themes of any real position you put in front of them, and they usually can even guess with very high accuracy how the position was reached in the first place. The better the player, the more accurately they will perceive the nuances in a wider array of positions. This process happens in much the same way as facial recognition. For most faces, we just “know” who the person is. We don’t consciously search a database of acquaintances, filtering by facial features, eye color, hairstyle, etc. We see and we recognize.