Most of What We Know
Most of what we know is a result of social transmissions from our superiors in status and knowledge.
From Susan Gelman's article "Learning from Others: Children's Construction of Concepts" (emphasis mine).
Generally, concepts for which cultural input is vital include at least scientific concepts (germs, hearts, and oxygen; Harris et al. 2006); classification of the natural world (whales, eels, and other organisms that don't look at all like typical species members; Gelman 2003); social concepts (race, caste, ethnicity, and personality traits, for which one often cannot determine membership based wholly on appearances; Dunham et al. 2006, Hirschfeld 1996); and supernatural concepts (God, witchcraft; Boyer 2003). In reflecting on this list, one is likely to agree that "probably most of what we believe or know past the level of rather basic cognition is a result of social transmissions from our superiors in status and knowledge" (Maratsos 2007, p. 122).
