Introduction

Then it needed at least two more chapters at the end to pursue and round off the investigation, however incomplete. One was to collect and draw attention to any common features which were emerging under the very different circumstances of the fifteen central chapters. These were drawn out from the process of reading and rereading the contributions of my colleagues, who had little or no communication with each other. Then what was thought to be a final chapter was written from the different perspective of some important and controversial contemporary social theories. Like most finalities this one also lost its place and was shunted backwards when the publisher and reviewers suggested that yet another chapter was needed. This became an epilogue where I started the process of finding out how insights into the nature of autodidactism might be used within the many worlds of education. It could only be very incomplete at this stage.