How We Know Together: The Power of Testimony, Community, and Context

Why Most of What You Know Comes from Others (and Why That’s a Good Thing)

Think about everything you know: the names of distant countries, the history of your city, the discoveries of science. Chances are, you didn’t learn most of it firsthand—you learned it from others. Jennifer Nagel’s book explains why testimony (what others tell us) is the backbone of human knowledge. Without it, we’d each be stranded on our own island, cut off from the richness of the world.

Nagel shows that trusting others is not blind faith. We weigh expertise, check for consistency, and look for evidence. In courtrooms, the standard for knowledge is strict; in everyday life, it’s more relaxed. This is contextualism in action: our standards for knowing shift with the stakes and the setting.

Groups can even know things no single person does. An orchestra plays a symphony, a research team solves a problem, a community preserves history. Knowledge is distributed, collaborative, and ever-changing. But this social web is also vulnerable to misinformation and bias. Nagel urges us to balance trust with critical thinking, to seek diverse perspectives, and to be aware of context.

In the digital age, these lessons matter more than ever. Navigating the flood of information requires both openness and skepticism. By understanding the social life of knowledge, we become wiser, more resilient, and better equipped to thrive in a connected world.

When we learn together, we know more—and we become more. 1 2 3