My websites have a number of themes running through them which are evolving as the websites grow. At the outset, one of the key motivations was to find a way for somebody with 'learning differences' to collect and present academic work. It was, therefore, a way of providing an outlet for the invention and generation of ideas when other outlets seemed too restrictive.
Out of this emerges a respect for all those who, for whatever reason, experience barriers in the way of the knowledge they seek. One such barrier is the enclosure and restriction of certain forms of knowledge to academia. The true work of an academic is to invent and generate ideas and – importantly – make those ideas accessible to all who care to understand.
In Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia, one of the characters states that knowledge that isn't self-knowledge is worthless. Although I don't entirely agree, I can see the wider point being made: Why worry about something unless it has direct relevance to oneself? One might counter by saying that to know something esoteric is to find self-knowledge in the realization of how far one's ability to comprehend is being extended. Be that as it may, the focus of my research is on illness, disease and health and on biological life and death. There is nothing esoteric about these; one is, in a fairly direct way, focusing on a form of self-knowledge.
Furthermore, understanding illness, disease and health and biological life and death is a form of self-knowledge that is relevant to each one of us individually. As such, it is essential that it be publicly accessible in the twin senses of being intellectually understandable and physically obtainable. Readers are welcome to copy and disseminate material found on my websites as freely as they wish. The only provisos are that these materials are not used for commercial purposes and not altered in any way.
Some years ago I read an obituary of the primatologist and anatomist John Napier (1917-1987). He made a particular contribution to the study of the primate hand. It was he who classified the different types of grip that the hand can perform. In the obituary, it was noted that many textbooks were using Napier's system of classifying grips but no longer crediting him with devising it. This, it was stated, was for the simple reason that Napier's classification had now become so widely accepted as to have become a fundamental tenet of the subject. Perhaps this should be the true aim of the academic: to have their ideas widely accepted because of the inherent force of those ideas.