[kulahan]

>Our understanding of any given phenomena is intrinsically linked to what we know about it

Duh? I don't understand what alternative could possibly exist. Do some people somewhere think that the less they know about something, the more they understand it, or that the very first look you take at anything in the world is all you'll ever need to know about it?

[mcraenich]

For me I think it was more about making the process of learning explicit, and the corollary that there is no such thing as 'complete knowledge'.

Where I think for a lot of people they learn about a thing, or a group of things, until they come to accept something as absolutely and definitely true - "what I know IS reality". Then the learning process just kind of stops there because they think they know, when really they just know slightly more.

I see it all the time, people with the illusion of knowledge when there is a ton more to the story.