In this commentary, the author presents his thoughts on two papers appearing in this special issue. The first, "The Importance of Language in Students' Reasoning about Heat in Thermodynamic Processes," by David T. Brookes and Eugenia Etkina (See: EJ1060728), and the second, "Varying Use of Conceptual Metaphors Across Levels of Expertise in Thermodynamics," by Fredrik Jeppsson, Jesper Haglund, and Tamer G. Amin (See: EJ1060729). Sherin states that he found both of these papers to be very congenial, in the sense that their overall thrust is in line with his own core beliefs about how science is learned, and how it should be taught. These core beliefs shared are: (1) science learning must build on everyday resources that students possess prior to formal science instruction; and (2) successful science learning requires the coordination of these everyday resources and new resources acquired during formal instruction. The authors of both papers are very clear that they share these core beliefs with a range of prior work that includes, in particular, the work of diSessa (1993), and (Sherin, 2001), which they graciously cite.