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Knowledge Can Illuminate Without Becoming a Filter
Knowledge changes perception. That is one of its greatest uses and one of its risks. Expertise can reveal a structure a novice misses. It can also make a new situation look settled before we have really seen it.
We know this kind of problem, this kind of person, how this always turns out. The old category moves between us and what is here now.
We can use knowledge differently. Prior learning remains available to identify patterns, risks, and possibilities. The situation is also allowed to correct what we thought we knew.
Good expertise does not require forgetting. It requires enough attention to discover when what we know is not yet the whole of what is here.