"Of course you don't understand," he roared, swilling a Diet Coke. "Trust me, you'll read this book again when you're forty, after your first divorce, and you'll say, 'Oh, I see!'"
Yet there's a theory behind the assignment of 'Middlemarch' to sophomores: it's that knowledge acquired too early gets stored away. Patterns of thinking established now will be retraced later; ideas encountered first in art will prime us for the rest of life.
Knowledge must often molder in our mental warehouses for decades until we figure out what to do with it. This is different from just-in-time manufacturing implemented by Toyota, which prioritizes efficiency in material delivery.
Leslie Valiant sees this as a strength. He calls our ability to learn over the long term 'educability,' suggesting that the capacity to understand comes not only through immediate application but also through prolonged reflection.
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