Public disinterest signals a field’s principles are not yet deep enough

Evidence

The work of the specialist, the historian, the naturalist, the archaeologist, is fundamental, then. Without their research the interpreter cannot start. But you sometimes note an impatience on the part of a specialist that the public does not show sufficient interest in his assemblage of information as such. He is likely to conclude that the average person is somewhat stupid. The opposite is true. It is a sign of native intelligence on the part of any person not to clutter his mind with indigestibles. “We find it to be a law,” said James Garth Wilkinson, a great English surgeon, “when a branch of knowledge has been cultivated for ages and still remains inaccessible to the world at large, that its principles are not high or broad enough, and that something radically deeper is demanded. If it does not interest universal man, that is sufficient to prove the point.” — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 211

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Inverts the common scholarly complaint - lay indifference indicts the knowledge form, not the layperson - a genuinely reorienting stance for anyone teaching outward-facing disciplines.
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source