 In comparison with the Western tradition, it is notable that the Mohists privilege neither observation nor explanation—and by extension, neither experience nor reason—as a more fundamental source of knowledge. Both are given equal weight. Nor do they emphasize a distinction between the type or quality of knowledge derived from the two sources, such as that one is more certain than the  other.[14]  Moreover, they take observation and explanation to be on a par with a third source of knowledge, “hearsay,” or the reports of other people. They thus explicitly recognize the social aspects of knowledge, a topic that has recently attracted much interest in contemporary epistemology. 