ABSTRACT
From its etymology, an autodidact seems to be one who teaches her or himself. Indeed a Greek friend of mine, on learning of my interest, said ‘Why use a Greek word? Why not “self-taught”?’
But at once there is a problem. None of us could possibly be anywhere near to being completely self-taught. From the moment our mothers put a spoonful of food to our lips so that we could suck at the spoon’s edge, we were being taught, although it must be added that quite a few babies spit out the food and seize the spoon themselves! Is that autodidactism? Every time someone speaks, or points out a bird doing something strange on the lawn, or reconfigures the computer slowly enough for us to follow-if we want to, we are being taught. Perhaps we might say, in retrospect, that we were allowing ourselves to be taught. That puts autodidacts in a new light. Why do such people, and indeed it may be nearly all of us, sometimes react in such a difficult ‘ornery’ way to being taught? This is close to some of the central problems that this book will address in trying to describe the range of autodidacts. These do not occur because autodidacts don’t want to learn. They do.
