the following is the text of a letter i have sent to everyone who has helped me (so far) in my journey to publish a book establishing the theory of Disciplinary Intuitions.
a special shout-out to my publisher (and friend) Lawrence at Springer :-)
*****
dear friends,
i have written books before, but this has been my first attempt at editing a book :-)
i have loved every minute of it, almost entirely because of the opportunities to interact with each of you :-)
just like a doctoral thesis, this has been a multi-year journey.
unlike a doctoral thesis, there’s been a terrific social-support structure that we have established for each other :-)
later this month, i will submit the entire manuscript.
i therefore thought this was an appropriate time to pause, and look back to how we got here, and to thank each and every one of you.
Prof Hung might be surprised to know (on the other hand, i think nothing i do surprises him anymore) that my first record of my use of the term Disciplinary Intuitions dates as far back as 23 May 2011. in the spirit of the Chinese proverb to remember the source while drinking from the stream, i must credit Nathanael Ng and Steve Zuiker for first opening my mind to the notion of intuitions (without the 'disciplinarity') in the first place (as far back as January 2010). in those early years, the dialogue between the two was in terms of expert- / novice-intuition(s).
we formed our little Reading Group on 8 May 2012, during the lunch break of the OER Retreat :-)
we had our first meeting one week later, on the afternoon of the 14th.
our regular meetings began in earnest only later that year, because i underwent surgery and was obliged to rest at home; in retrospect, i thank God for the three months He gave us to do the literature scan.
we were awarded our publishing contract in November 2012 (exactly on my birthday, actually) and from August 2012 to September 2013, we met seventeen times - that works out to an average of a meeting every 24 days :-)
it took us these fourteen months for us to work through and achieve a satisfactory degree of intersubjectivity on the theoretical foundations of Disciplinary Intuitions.
(as an aside, we have come to understand Disciplinary Intuitions as innate computational modules of mind which are in the process of being exercised and developed as the learner interacts with his or her external environment. Given this definition, Disciplinary Intuitions has its roots in embodied cognition, social realism, and the computational theory of mind. An embodied perspective is critical to the Disciplinary Intuitions approach because of how we understand intuitions; we see the latter as innate modules of mind - which by themselves are rudimentary and are exercised and developed (only) if and when the individual utilises them as he or she interacts with his or her (physical (including ‘virtual’) and / or social) environment. In turn, the social realist perspective is equally critical to the Disciplinary Intuitions approach because it provides an epistemological (and sociological) ground from which to argue for a disciplinary structuring of 'reality' - the same disciplinarily thereof is mirrored in the typology of the innate modules of mind described in the computational theory of mind)
such is the nature of our endeavour - in establishing a new theory - that while we took fourteen months to get the first three to four chapters in place, the bulk of the book - the chapters focussing on specific disciplinary domains - were written in six months.
so, to Profs Howe, Chong, Sim, Baildon, and Cho, to my authorial team Michael, Michelle, Wanying, Suffian, Bin, and Anselm, to my critical friends Paul, Jimmy, Lookang, Jennifer, Shushing, Luisa and Ladan, to my fearless mentors JSB and Prof Hung, and to my patient and long-suffering team Mingde, Ahmed, Derek, Collin, and Richard,
thank you.
