I have said that a city or society is a repository of information, knowledge, technology, it is held corporately. When you are educated you learn the language and nuance to access that knowledge. That education is a kind of pattern recognition training, so that when you look through the knowledge repository you can see how things fit together. In other words you recognize the patterns that make information useful and applicable.Some person's makeup allow them to be very broad and others allow them to be very focused. There is specific training and general training. What ever level your makeup, circumstance, opportunities afford you, that is the level of access you have. There is another dimension. Though you may only find certain info immediately useful, the mind is always looking to recognize patterns in all the information it peruses. This is why an auto mechanic can have an epiphany about cancer research. Is he a doctor no, but read some articles, watched some PBS specials, lived with a cancer patient, heard cancer survivor talk, doctor chat. His mind put the patterns together.Sometimes societies engage in title taking. It is a way to raise ones status by endorsing the patterns and realizations as seen by a focus group. Say doctors or lawyers. We call this accepted knowledge. What is accepted as fact or law becomes the standard for that society. If you are well versed in understanding the standard you receive a paper which says so, thus afforded a rank of professional privilege or authority. This is OK especially when looking for integrity and reputable people to handle your affairs or represent you.Then you also get a stasis in knowledge like when the whole focus community endorses something according to their understanding. That is the truth, the fact, the nature of what it is, there is no more to know!! The problem is the pattern recognition brain merges two patterns previously kept separate by their respective focus communities. Someone recognizes a new pattern, it causes an uproar in the separate focus groups. It changes the considerations of the two previously separate focus communities. Great resistance, outrage, I'll bet my credentials that is not true, my reputation is at stake, I can't endorse what I didn't learn. It's not new knowledge, it's new patterns. And seeing new patterns in old knowledge especially is powerful and life changing.
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