“No; go ahead if you want.”
“All right, answer me a question,” he said. “Can Snookums read English?”
“Certainly. And Russian, and German, French, Chinese, and most of the other major languages of Earth.”
“He could read a book, then?”
“Yes. But not unless it was given to him and he was specifically told to use its contents as data.”
“Good,” said Mike. “Now, suppose Snookums was given complete data on a certain field of knowledge. Suppose further that this field is internally completely logical, completely coherent, completely self-consistent. Suppose it could even be reduced to a series of axioms and theorems in symbolic logic.”
“All right,” she said. “So?”
“Now, further suppose that this system, this field of knowledge is, right now, in constant use by millions of human beings, even though most of them are unaware of the implications of the entire field. Could Snookums work with such a body of knowledge?”
“What if there was absolutely no way for Snookums to experiment with this knowledge? What if he simply did not have the equipment necessary?”