Sometimes we can understand something better if we look at its opposite, or simply look at it in contrast to something else of a similar or dissimilar nature. After all our understanding of what a lie is, is based heavily on our understanding of what truth it.
Many years ago when I worked for a woodland charity one of the team designed business parks and when faced with the searing, high, bland brick and metal walls of factories painted trees on the them to harmonise them better with the landscaping. To me of course it looked no more than a painted tree, large and season-less, but in a way she was showing me what a factory really was. Inorganic. The landscaping of bushes and trees showed what it was to be able to grow, and what it was to be inert.
And we can understand ourselves better by placing ourselves against the Universe. The smallness of the blue Earth as seen from Voyager 3.7 billion miles away, and so well described by Carl Sagan. Our conceit, our self-importance, our daily lives, are lost in space. It is not that we are small, or insignificant, it that the Universe is so significant.
Perhaps true knowledge is the understanding of the relationships we have with everything else. Because where we stand, will teach us how to stand.