To retrieve and use knowledge, one needs reason. Philip Phenix similarly wrote that rote memorization is relatively inefficient if the symbols learned are not significant to the learner. For Phenix, significance depends less on reason than on meaning. Michael Polanyi agreed, saying that all human thought comes into existence by grasping the meaning and mastering the use of language. To grasp meaning one has to interiorize external things, or pour oneself into them.
Meaning arises either by integrating clues in our own body or by integrating clues outside.
We cannot learn to rise a bicycle by memorizing the laws of physics that govern its balance. The laws have to be made meaningful by getting on the bike and trying the different actions that keep it upright and heading in the direction we want it to go. The language of physics is less necessary to bike riding than is an understanding of balance, which is learned physically and socially at the same time. Helen Keller in 1908 spoke of how meaningless her world was without language, She did not know that she was. She lived in a world that was a no-world.