Thank you for such a thoughtful and well-structured post. I agree with your nuanced take on the assertion that KR is a recent phenomenon. Your examples of hieroglyphs and early modern Netherlands scholars exploring universal character systems highlight how societies have long sought to represent knowledge systematically. This historical perspective reinforces that while computational KR is relatively new, its philosophical and symbolic roots are ancient.
I also appreciate how you explained the importance of reasoning in KR, especially your point about reasoning enabling systems to infer new information and solve problems. I found your observation about the utility of KR without reasoning a good contrast. As you mentioned, systems like medical knowledge databases or taxonomies serve essential roles in organising and retrieving information, even in the absence of active reasoning. Still, as you rightly concluded, reasoning adds significant value, allowing KR to go beyond static storage to support intelligent systems.
Your discussion balances both historical and modern perspectives, making it an engaging read.