Constructivism is a heterogeneous intellectual movement that spans across different fields of knowledge. Within constructivism there is a variety of discussions that deal with their own questions and particular references, and that appear clustered in the journals and publications of different scientific areas. Attempting to clarify this communication, the present paper explores scientific publications from Latin America that include the term “constructivism” among their descriptors, as listed on CLASE, PERIODICA and SCIELO databases. These publications have been segmented into 3 very general groups, according to the way in which constructivism is used: (1) those that seek to “apply” constructivism to the problems of their area; (2) those that take “constructivism” as their object of study or criticism; (3) those that adopt constructivism as a “framework” for notional or conceptual analysis. Some data about those publication groups is described and compared in an attempt to show how scientific communication about constructivism organizes in Latin America (publication area, subjects, keywords, main authors).
Context: Constructivistepistemology is not a doctrinal set of clear and consistent theses and assumptions but a movement full of tensions, with minimally integrated lines of discussions. Problem: This situation explains why it is so difficult to come up with a general definition of constructivistepistemology that could serve as a starting point to study its several research programs systematically and comparatively. Method: We compare the constructivist epistemologies of Jean Piaget, Ernst von Glasersfeld, Humberto Maturana, and Niklas Luhmann regarding tensions between knowledge/reality and individual/society. Results: Our comparison leads to a general definition of constructivistepistemology as a heterogeneous movement problematizing certain dualities - such as subject/object, knowledge/reality, or individual/society - that have been shown to be central for epistemological inquiry. We argue that such dualisms can be used as dimensions for critical analysis, comparison, and discussion among the different research programs, and that, at the same time, they would allow us to analyze the general strategies characterizing such programs. The comparative and critical analysis of the programs by way of the aforementioned tensions results in an organized presentation highlighting their convergences, divergences, and singularities.
The Tree of Knowledge, by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, is a landmark attempt to integrate biology, cognition, and epistemology into a single science, reversing the dualism of fact and value, and of observer and observed, that has haunted the West since the seventeenth century. The authors see perception as a reciprocal and interacting phenomenon, a “dance of congruity” that takes place between a living entity and its environment. This, they argue, implies a relativity of worldviews (there are no certainties), as well as the existence of a biology of cooperation going back millions of years. Recognition of a lack of absolutes, and of the nature of perception itself, they assert, make it possible for us today to change things for the better, as a deliberate and conscious act. What is overlooked in this discussion, however, are the origins and nature of conflict. By being pointedly apolitical, the authors wind up implying that one worldview is as good as the next. Cognitively speaking, the substitution of Buddhism for politics is a serious error, leaving, as it does, too many crucial questions unanswered. It is thus doubtful whether the biological argument being advanced here can stand up to serious scrutiny, and whether the dualism of modern science has indeed been overcome. Yet The Tree of Knowledge remains an important milestone in our current efforts to recognize that science is not value-free, and that fact and value are inevitably tied together. We are finally going to have to create a science that does not split the two apart, and that puts the human being back into the world as an involved participant, not as an alienated observer.
Context: Humberto Maturana has generated a coherent and extensive explicatory matrix that encompasses his research in neurophysiology, cognition, language, emotion, and love. Purpose: Can we formulate a map of Maturana’s work in a manner that is consistent with the systemic matrix it represents and that serves as an aid for understanding Maturana’s philosophy without reifying its representation? Method: Our arguments are based on experience gained from teaching and presentations. Results: We present a map that that represents Maturana’s main contributions as clusters of notions clustered according to how we see them to be related to each other as a projection of a matrix of ideas onto a two-dimensional space. We claim that there are many paths through these clusters of ideas. Though ideas relevant to individuals are obtained from various partial perspectives, a deep understanding of any element is dependent on an understanding of the whole matrix. Furthermore, we summarize the contributions to this special issue on Maturana.
A book that proposes to outline a systematic approach to psychotherapy cannot omit describing the psychological theory such an approach belongs to. George A. Kelly had the same opinion, in that he put an analysis of the differences between the philosophical assumptions of “accumulative fragmentalism” and “constructive alternativism” before the exposition of his theory of personality and his psychotherapeutic proposal. Choosing the title for the book “Constructivist Psychotherapy: A Narrative Hermeneutic Approach” represents the attempt to mark a significant differentiation from the more orthodox expositions of Kelly’s personal construct psychotherapy on which we heavily base our approach, and at the same time to specify as much as possible our metatheoretical and theoretical references. Relevance: The book has an extensive exposition of the different constructivist views on knowledge with their links with genetic epistemology, autopoietic theory, phenomenology, hermeneutics, social constructionism, radical constructivism.
The problem of induction is closely connected with the idea of an ontological reality as the regularities we perceive can be generalised to the laws of an independent nature only by means of inductive methods. A constructivistevolutionaryepistemology (CEE) is proposed which considers all regularities perceived and the laws of nature derived from them as invariants of mental operators, similar to quantum mechanics which defines the properties of subjects as invariants of measuring operators. Then the laws of physics are specific to human beings. This will apply even for the law of the conservation of energy if it is derived from the homogeneity of time and therefore will depend on the phylogenetically evolved mental mechanisms defining the metric of time perception. Also mathematical regularities and the laws of logic are not universal. Rather they have to be seen as invariants of certain human mental operators. If these mathematical and perceptual operators are phylogenetic homologa, we have the possibility of explaining why mathematical methods are so successful in extrapolating experimental data or, as Davies put it, why the universe is algorithmically compressible. The possible relationship is discussed between the continuity of all physical motion as perceived by men and a special constructivist approach of counting processes. As the laws found in higher physics are invariants of the experimental facilities applied they can neither be derived from nor are they determined by the given functional structure of the brain. The CEE, therefore, does not suggest teleological ideas. The view is taken that the evolution of science is as open and endless as organic evolution is.
What is being discribed as differences between organic and cultural evolution (for example that one is Darwinian, the other, Lamarckian in character) depends on the implicit agreements made on what are analogue issues in culture and life. A special consequence of the definitions used is that opposite causal mechanisms are attributed. The development of empirical scientific theories is seen as an internal adaptation to external data. Organic evolution, however, is seen as an external selection of internal modifications. Seeing science as a special cognitive tool in the sense of evolutionaryepistemology (EE) which then has to evolve according to the same principles as evolution of organic tools does, would require some notional realignments in order to level the established organismic/cultural dichotomy. Central to the approach used here is the notion of reality and adaptation. The EE declares that human categories of perception and thinking (space, time, object, causality etc.) result from evolutionary adaptation to the independent structures of an ontological reality (Campbell: “natural-selection-epistemology”). Here a “Constructivistevolutionaryepistemology” (CEE) is proposed which goes one step further and considers also the category of reality itself to be a special mental concept acquired phylogenetically to immunize proven ideas under the label of “reality.” According to the CEE, the evaluation criteria for strategies and theories are the consistency with the previously and phylogenetically acquired organic and mental structures, rather than the adaptation to external data. A similar view can also be held in organic evolution where the various metabolic processes and higher strategies modify the external data according to their previously established own requirements rather than changing those requirements in adaptation to external data. Thus cognitive and scientific as well as organic evolution is an enterprise of conquest rather than of discovery and reality will lose its role as a universal legislator and evaluator. The CEE implements this thought, by considering all regularities perceived and the laws of nature derived from them as invariants of mental or sensory operators. The extension of human sense organs by means of physical measurement operators leads to the completion of classical physics if the experimental and the inborn cognitive operators commute. Otherwise non-classical (i.e. “non-human”) approaches are required such as quantum mechanics, which are based on the invariants brought about experimentally. As the set of possible experimental facilities (and therefore of new invariants) is not closed it follows that evolution of science will not end in a definitive “theory of everything” but in basically endless co-evolution between experiments and their theoretical interpretations. The same applies to organic evolution which can be considered as coevolution between genomic structures and their interpretation by the epigenetic system which itself is subject to genomic modifications. This may lead to non-stable recursive processes described here as nonlinear genetics. Some general evolutionary strategies and principles are discussed with a view to being applicable in organic evolution as well as in cultural and social evolution. Special consideration is given to the view that the need to master the physical world (mainly being done by scientific efforts) may be superseded in the long run by the need to master our social environment.
Abstract: Under the aspect of constructivism evolution generates the varying boundary conditions to which evolution itself then is subject. This applies for organic as well as for cognitive evolution. The currently valid conditions for cognitive evolution we describe as laws of nature brought about by an independent reality. Within the constructivistevolutionaryepistemology CEE), however. the regularities we perceive and which we condense to the laws of nature are seen as the invariants of phylogenetically formed cognitive operators. The extension of the inborn operators by means of experimental operators (i.e. by measurement facilities) will lead to the consolidation of the classical world picture if both _are _commutable. Otherwise there will be invariants which cannot be described in classical terms and, which therefore, will require non-classical theories. Likewise mathematical and logical structures can be seen as invariants of cognitive operators. It is shown that the propositions of Gödel would deal with what can be considered as the analogy of non-classical phenomena in physics. To renounce reality as an element of physical metatheory requires some rearrangements of those notions which explicitly refer to reality such as acting and perceiving, learning and adapting, and, partially, language. It turns out that the distinction between acting and perceiving is not unambiguous as it is in the “theory of reality.” Similarly we can see learning as a process of adaptation to the given environment as well as an independent development into something for which an appropriate environment or application still has to be found. It will be shown that both “adaptive” and “initiative” evolution occur in organic as well as in cultural evolution. Within CEE, language is seen as a “generative” theory rather than as a tool to portray independently existing facts. Its competence is based on the fact that it is generated by mechanisms closely related to those generating our physical perceptions. A similar genetically grounded relationship between mental operators enables mathematics to compress empirical data into a generating theory, and then, based on this theory, to extrapolate them (problem of induction). The linguistic equivalent of algorithmic data compression and the subsequent extrapolation is the recognition of a text’s meaning, and the subsequent drawing of conclusions from it, or semantic extrapolation as proposed to say. Accordingly, communication can be defined. Some parallels are discussed between verbal, cultural and genetic communication.
The constructivistevolutionaryepistemology (CEE) has taken up the demand of modern physics that theoretical terms have to be operationalizable (i.e. the description of nature should comprise only quantities, variables or notions which are defined by means of measurement facilities or other physical processes) and extended it by the idea that operationalisation is something general which must be the constituting basis also for observational terms. This is realised by considering the regularities we perceive and which we condense to the laws of nature as the invariants of phylogenetically formed mental cognitive operators. Experimental operators (i.e. measurement facilities) can be seen as extensions of these inborn operators. This will lead to the consolidation of the classical world picture if the mental and the experimental operators involved are commutable. Otherwise there will be invariants which cannot be described in classical terms and, therefore, will require non-classical approaches such as the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics enunciated by Heisenberg. As the development of experimental facilities will never be completed and, therefore, will continue to bring about novel invariants, evolution of science cannot converge towards what many physicists envisage as the “theory of everything” describing definitively the structure of reality (Feynman, 1965; Hawking, 1979). So, both organic and scientific evolution are entirely open and non-deterministic. When seeing also mathematical objects and structures as invariants of mental operators we must expect similar phenomena. Indeed: Just as experimental operators, though constructed entirely according to the rules of classical physics, may lead to results which cannot be described in classical terms, there are also mathematical calculuses which, though based entirely on well tested axioms, can lead to statements which cannot be proven within the context of these axioms as shown by Gödel.