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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Autodidacticism | 3/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodidacticism | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T10:02:00.088315+00:00 | kb-cron |
The first philosophical claim supporting an autodidactic program to the study of nature and God was in the philosophical novel Hayy ibn Yaqdhan (Alive son of the Vigilant), whose titular hero is considered the archetypal autodidact. The story is a medieval autodidactic utopia, a philosophical treatise in a literary form, which was written by the Andalusian philosopher Ibn Tufail in the 1160s in Marrakesh. It is a story about a feral boy, an autodidact prodigy who masters nature through instruments and reason, discovers laws of nature by practical exploration and experiments, and gains summum bonum through a mystical mediation and communion with God. The hero rises from his initial state of tabula rasa to a mystical or direct experience of God after passing through the necessary natural experiences. The focal point of the story is that human reason, unaided by society and its conventions or by religion, can achieve scientific knowledge, preparing the way to the mystical or highest form of human knowledge. Commonly translated as "The Self-Taught Philosopher" or "The Improvement of Human Reason", Ibn-Tufayl's story Hayy Ibn-Yaqzan inspired debates about autodidacticism in a range of historical fields from classical Islamic philosophy through Renaissance humanism and the European Enlightenment. In his book Reading Hayy Ibn-Yaqzan: a Cross-Cultural History of Autodidacticism, Avner Ben-Zaken showed how the text traveled from late medieval Andalusia to early modern Europe and demonstrated the intricate ways in which autodidacticism was contested in and adapted to diverse cultural settings. Autodidacticism apparently intertwined with struggles over Sufism in twelfth-century Marrakesh; controversies about the role of philosophy in pedagogy in fourteenth-century Barcelona; quarrels concerning astrology in Renaissance Florence in which Pico della Mirandola pleads for autodidacticism against the strong authority of intellectual establishment notions of predestination; and debates pertaining to experimentalism in seventeenth-century Oxford. Pleas for autodidacticism echoed not only within close philosophical discussions; they surfaced in struggles for control between individuals and establishments. In the story of Black American self-education, Heather Andrea Williams presents a historical account to examine Black American's relationship to literacy during slavery, the Civil War and the first decades of freedom. Many of the personal accounts tell of individuals who have had to teach themselves due to racial discrimination in education.
== Future role == The role of self-directed learning continues to be investigated in learning approaches, along with other important goals of education, such as content knowledge, epistemic practices and collaboration. As colleges and universities offer distance learning degree programs and secondary schools provide cyber school options for K–12 students, technology provides numerous resources that enable individuals to have a self-directed learning experience. Several studies show these programs function most effectively when the "teacher" or facilitator is a full owner of virtual space to encourage a broad range of experiences to come together in an online format. This allows self-directed learning to encompass both a chosen path of information inquiry, self-regulation methods and reflective discussion among experts as well as novices in a given area. Furthermore, massive open online courses (MOOCs) make autodidacticism easier and thus more common. A 2016 Stack Overflow poll reported that due to the rise of autodidacticism, 69.1% of software developers appear to be self-taught.
== Notable individuals ==
Some notable autodidacts can be broadly grouped in the following interdisciplinary areas:
Artists and authors Actors, musicians, and other artists Architects Engineers, inventors and software developers (Computer programmers) Scientists, historians, and educators
== See also ==
== References ==
== Further reading == Bach, James Marcus (11 October 2011). Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar: Self-Education and the Pursuit of Passion. Scribner. ISBN 978-1-4391-0908-3. Blaschke, L. M. (2012). "Heutagogy and lifelong learning: A review of heutagogical practice and self-determined learning". The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning. 13 (1): 56–71. doi:10.19173/irrodl.v13i1.1076. Brown, Resa Steindel (28 January 2007). The Call to Brilliance: A True Story to Inspire Parents and Educators. Fredric Pr. ISBN 978-0-9778369-0-1. Cameron, Brent (4 November 2005). SelfDesign: Nurturing Genius Through Natural Learning. Sentient Publications. ISBN 978-1-59181-044-5. Hailey, Kendall (1 January 1989). The Day I Became an Autodidact and the Advice, Adventures, and Acrimonies That Befell Me Thereafter. Delta. ISBN 978-0440550136. Hase, Stewart; Kenyon, Chris (January 2000). "From Andragogy to Heutagogy". Original UltiBASE Publication. Southern Cross University. Retrieved 10 April 2024. Hase, Stewart; Kenyon, Chris (2019) [July 2007]. "Heutagogy: A Child of Complexity Theory". Complicity. 4 (1): 111–118. doi:10.29173/cmplct8766. Retrieved 10 April 2024. Llewellyn, Grace (29 September 2021). The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education. Lowry House Publishers. ISBN 978-0962959196. McAuliffe, M.; Hargreaves, D.; Winter, A.; Chadwick, G. (11 November 2015) [2009]. "Does Pedagogy Still Rule?". Australasian Journal of Engineering Education. 15 (1): 13–18. doi:10.1080/22054952.2009.11464018. Retrieved 10 April 2024. "Open Syllabus: Mapping the college curriculum across 20.9 million syllabi". Open Syllabus. Retrieved 10 April 2024. Non-profit archive [...] provides top-down views of the curriculum across thousands of schools to support curricular innovation, lifelong learning, and student success. Rancière, Jacques (1 July 1991). The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0804719698. Reimer, Everett (1 January 1971). School is Dead: An Essay on Alternatives in Education. Penguin. ISBN 978-0140801699. Solomon, Joan (28 August 2003). The Passion to Learn: An Inquiry into Autodidactism. Routledge. ISBN 978-0415304184. Stark, Kio (10 April 2013). Don't Go Back to School: A Handbook for Learning Anything. Kio Stark. ISBN 978-0988949003.
== External links == Quotations related to Autodidacticism at Wikiquote