The question of 'understanding' is pertinent to human way of life irrespective of the object of understanding. Human action, whether acknowledged or automatic, individual or collective, is always carried out in accordance with the socio-cultural 'mass' accumulated in tradition, functioning as an inertial frame of reference and means of social transmission. As such, it provides the parameters relevant as regards action, serves as a sounding board against which acts both mental and physical ricochet, as well as defines what there is and is not present in thinking. David B. Zilberman (1938–1977) developed his modal methodology on the basis of different philosophical systems treated as artifacts and their defining role in differentiating types of thinking per tradition as per culture. Consequently, thinking being a social phenomenon delimited by/in tradition, the reach of modal methodology in understanding the different types extends from (individual) thinking in consciousness to manifest behaviour in the world, and their mutual relation with (collective) culture, revealing the foundations for partiality. Laying bare the levels of modal reality to show the interplay of norms, values, and ideas (of culture); temperament, character, and interest (of behaviour); and significance, signification, and meaning (in consciousness) along with their respective modalities – deontic, hypothetic, apodictic – Zilberman presents us with a trimodal scheme capable in describing any cultural system and applicable to analyzing the interaction of cultures. David B. Zilberman died on July 25, 1977 in a car-bicycle collision while returning home from his last seminar with his favourite students at Brandeis University.