The social stock of knowledge differentiates reality by degrees of familiarity... my knowledge of my own occupation and its world is very rich and sp… - Peter L. Berger

Two societies confronting each other with conflicting universes will both develop conceptual machineries designed to maintain their respective universes. From the point of view of intrinsic plausibility the two forms of conceptualization may seem to the outside observer to offer little choice.

Like [John] Wesley, the sociologist will have to confess that his parish is the world.

Specific procedures of universe-maintenance become necessary when the symbolic universe has become a problem. As long as this is not the case, the symbolic universe is self-maintaining, that is, self-legitimating by the sheer facticity of its objective existence in the society in question.