ABSTRACT
It is seemingly self-evident to say that it is a fundamental human response to seek to examine and understand the experiences to which we are exposed. We will use these experiences as a source of our own learning and means by which other more formal learning in schools and colleges can be integrated. From that never-completed process of knowledge accumulation and understanding, we attempt to derive some wisdom and purpose. It is in this way that we will attempt to make our lives meaningful, despite the inevitability of death that otherwise might make them seem absurd. As much as we seek objectivity and ‘extraordinary disinvolvement’ (referred to by Daniel Scott in this issue) that intensifies our empathy with others and, at the same time, sharpens our skilled observation of their behaviour, you and I are human instruments. We may share, for example, a body of social science literature but we use and interpret it through our own personal prism of experience and identity.
