But as I played, I built a web of knowledge that could not always be described, even though it came from the medium of print. When I went to bed I still had not found a direct answer. But by then I knew enough about giraffes to think about the question in an informed way, and to figure out that they probably sleep standing up. My activity followed a pattern very reminiscent of a child at play. And the knowledge I gained was not the collection of propositions I read in the books, but the web of intuitive connections that formed as my mind bounced here and there in a non-linear fashion.
Babies begin to build their knowledge by exploration of everything they can see and touch.
When they become more mobile, their exploration is widened, but the mode is the same. Her acquisition of knowledge was shifting to a more mediated form, more dependent on the narrow bandwidth of verbal communication. The only way she could bring her inner speculations in contact with an outer reality was through the highly unreliable and usually not very interactive method of asking an adult. But by the time they move into school, mediated acquisition has become the dominant form. But thanks to an archaic school system, many children lose the taste for immediate exploration long before they acquire the mastery of book skills needed to find that extended immediacy.