alt Hacker NewsG.I Gurdjieff, in Meetings With Remarkable People references the present civilization, where a "The Conversation of the Two Sparrows" concerns the European's scope of wisdom in mathematical knowledge, whereas the Asiatic understands contemporary knowledge "not by knowing but by being."
'In this anecdote it is said that once upon a time on the cornice of a high horse sat two sparrows, one old, the other young.'
'They were discussing an event which had become the "burning question of the day" among the sparrows, and which had resulted from the mullah's housekeeper having just previously thrown out of a window, on to a place where the sparrows gathered to play, something looking like left-over porridge, but which turned out to be chopped cork; and several of the young and yet inexperienced sparrow sat, almost burst.'
'While talking about the old sparrow, suddenly ruffling himself up, began with a pained grimace to search under his wing for the fleas tormenting him, and which in general breed on underfed sparrows; and having caught one, he said with a deep sigh:
'"Times have changed very much -- there is no longer a living to be had for our fraternity.
'"In the old days we used to sit, just as now, somewhere upon a roof, quietly dozing, when suddenly down in the street there would be heard a noise, a rattling and a rumbling, and soon after an odour would be diffused, at which everything inside us would begin to rejoice; because we felt fully certain that when we flew down and searched the places where all that happened, we would find satisfaction for our essential needs.
'"But nowadays there is plenty and to spare of noise and rattlings, and all sorts of rumblings, and again and again an odour is also diffused, but an odour which it is almost impossible to endure; and when sometimes, by force of old habit, we fly down during a moment's lull to seek something substantial for ourselves, then seach as we may with tense attention, we find nothing at all except some nauseous drops of burned oil."
Okay, so I don't really understand what you're saying, but let me take a stab at it.
Somebody named GI Gurdjieff wrote a book "Meetings with Remarkable Men" in 1923, and in that book there was a kind of story in the introduction. That story attempted to distnguish between two different ways of life: a Western, "knowing" way and an Eastern "being" way.
The story basically involves a young sparrow eating cork which he thought was leftover thrown-out porridge and gets sick. Then an old sparrow says that in the old days, whenever a horse pooped you could always be sure to get undigested oats from it, but now when a car lets anything out, there is nothing to be had.
I guess the symbolism is that Gurdjieff was saying that the modern culture is deceptive in the sense that the "new" cork is not the same as the "old" porridge. So modern (Western) culture is poison, old (Eastern) culture provides sustenance.
And the connection to the posted article is that the "cork" is like the textbook definitions that Feynman described, while the "porridge" is like "true understanding/incorporation" of knowledge.
Is that what you were getting at?