If I pointed to any one of those dates, a novice learner who has memorized the facts could tell me a single thing about it: 1865, End of the American Civil War. But now imagine that I pointed to this date and asked an American historian to tell me about it. He would have a huge network of other information he could provide to me about that date, and he could also connect that date to other relevant dates on the timeline. That date links in his mind to dozens or hundreds of other facts. And that, according to one basic understanding of human knowing, is what constitutes knowledge: the web of
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