Cambridge, MA

7/7/95

Dear Reader,

I feel today as if I am opening the doors for the first time on a long hidden mysterious construction. I have had, for much of the past 30 years, two working lives, one as a teacher and educational software developer and the other as an artisan in a secret workshop. Even my closest friends rarely heard about the project and with the exception of my wife, very few had any inkling of what I was spending my other life doing.

I bring to you and to them what I hope is at long last complete and beautiful, a theory of knowledge. If this work is what I believe it to be, then you may find it helps you to understand and order the evolution of knowledge. If it is what I believe it to be, then you will find it may help you to develop new theories or to see better into the future of knowledge. If it is what I believe it to be, then we may all be better able to help our children to learn.

One result of this long hidden incubation is that I have never published on epistemology. The book length manuscript I wrote two years ago has not made it past the publishers in-box. It is very hard for an uncredentialed author to get attention, especially in deep academic disciplines. I have taken two steps to deal with this. The first is to write a short version, what you see here. The second is to publish it on the Internet.

I have also written this for you. I do not know how to speak to academic epistemologists, though I look forward to learning. I do know how to teach and I hope that I am presenting this theory in a way that each person who looks at it learns something of value. No, I have not simplified an obscure theory for mass consumption. I believe this theory, as it is presented here, to be a human construction in the fullest sense of that word, and I hope that I have presented it in such a way that each of you can understand its deepest implications.

I thank you, as I do all of those in my sources, for the time and effort afforded to my artifact. I look forward to your thoughts, and like you, cannot wait to see what the future of knowledge brings.

Sincerely,