Volume 2, Numbers 2–3 March 2007

ISSN 1782-348X
CONSTRUCTIVIST
FOUNDATIONS
An interdisciplinary journal
http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal

Festschrift for
Ernst von Glasersfeld
celebrating his 90th birthday
Editors: Ranulph Glanville & Alexander Riegler
 Advisory Board DESCRIPTION
William Clancey Constructivist Foundations (CF) is an independent academic peer-reviewed e-journal
NASA Ames Research Center, USA without commercial interests. Its aim is to promote scientific foundations and applications of
Ranulph Glanville constructivist sciences, to weed out pseudoscientific claims and to base constructivist
CybernEthics Research, UK sciences on sound scientific foundations, which do not equal the scientific method with
Ernst von Glasersfeld objectivist claims. The journal is concerned with the interdisciplinary study of all forms of
University of Massachusetts, USA constructivist sciences, especially radical constructivism, biology of cognition, cybersemiotics,
Vincent Kenny enactive cognitive science, epistemic structuring of experience, non-dualism, second order
Accademia Costruttivista di cybernetics, the theory of autopoietic systems, etc.
Terapia Sistemica, Italy
Klaus Krippendorff
University of Pennsylvania, USA
AIM AND SCOPE
Humberto Maturana The basic motivation behind the journal is to make peer-reviewed constructivist papers
Institute Matríztica, Chile available to the academic audience free of charge. The constructive character of the
Josef Mitterer journal refers to the fact that the journal publishes actual work in constructivist sciences
University of Klagenfurt, Austria rather than work that argues for the importance or need for constructivism. The journal is
Karl Müller open to (provocative) new ideas that fall within the scope of constructivist approaches and
Wisdom, Austria encourages critical academic submissions to help sharpen the position of constructivist
Bernhard Pörksen sciences. The common denominator of constructivist approaches can be summarized as
University of Hamburg, Germany follows.
Gebhard Rusch • Constructivist approaches question the Cartesian separation between objective world
University of Siegen, Germany and subjective experience;
Siegfried J. Schmidt • Consequently, they demand the inclusion of the observer in scientific explanations;
University of Münster, Germany • Representationalism is rejected; knowledge is a system-related cognitive process rather
Bernard Scott than a mapping of an objective world onto subjective cognitive structures;
Cranfield University, UK • According to constructivist approaches, it is futile to claim that knowledge approaches
Sverre Sjölander reality; reality is brought forth by the subject rather than passively received;
Linköping University, Sweden • Constructivist approaches entertain an agnostic relationship with reality, which is
considered beyond our cognitive horizon; any reference to it should be refrained from;
Stuart Umpleby
George Washington University, USA • Therefore, the focus of research moves from the world that consists of matter to the
world that consists of what matters;
Terry Winograd
Stanford University, USA
• Constructivist approaches focus on self-referential and organizationally closed systems;
such systems strive for control over their inputs rather than their outputs;
Editor-In-Chief • With regard to scientific explanations, constructivist approaches favor a process-
oriented approach rather than a substance-based perspective, e.g. living systems are
Alexander Riegler defined by processes whereby they constitute and maintain their own organization;
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
• Constructivist approaches emphasize the “individual as personal scientist” approach;
Editorial Board sociality is defined as accommodating within the framework of social interaction;
• Finally, constructivist approaches ask for an open and less dogmatic approach to
Pille Bunnell science in order to generate the flexibility that is needed to cope with today’s scientific
Royal Roads University, Canada frontier.
Olaf Diettrich
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT TO REVIEWERS OF VOLUME 2
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Univ. de Technologie de Compiègne, France reviewing of both board members and external reviewers. We thank the following
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Univ. of Cooperative Education, Germany
Foundations Volume 2: Paolo Ivan Bolognesi, Gary Boyd, Jane Burry, Giancarlo Corsi,
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 Constructivist Foundations
VOLUME 2, NUMBERS 2–3

Festschrift for
Ernst von Glasersfeld
celebrating his 90th birthday
Editors:
Ranulph Glanville and Alexander Riegler

Table of Contents
Editorial The Philosophy of Marie Larochelle & Jacques Désautels
Ranulph Glanville & Alexander Riegler Radical Constructivism Concerning Ernst von Glasersfeld’s
Editorial: Jack Lochhead Contribution to Intellectual Freedom:
Ninety Years of Constructing ................. 2 Ernst to Amherst, Massachusetts.......... 39 One Interpretation, One Example ....... 90

Overview Leslie P. Steffe Ana Pasztor

Ranulph Glanville Radical Constructivism has been Viable:
Radical Constructivism:
The Importance of Being Ernst ............. 5 On the Democratization of
A Scientific Research Program ............. 41
Math Education .................................... 98
Siegfried J. Schmidt Dewey I. Dykstra Jr.
God Has Created Reality, Andreas Quale
The Challenge of Understanding The Epistemic Relativism of
We Create Worlds of Experience: Radical Constructivism ........................ 50
A Speech in Honour of Ernst von Radical Constructivism:
Glasersfeld to Mark the Award of the Vincent Kenny Some Implications for Teaching the
Gregory Bateson Prize, Natural Sciences ................................. 107
Distinguishing Ernst von Glasersfeld’s
Heidelberg, 6 May 2005 .......................... 7 Radical Constructivism from Humberto Theo Hug
Maturana’s ‘Radical Realism’ ................ 58 Viability and Crusty Snow .................. 114
Early Work
Paul Braffort Bernard Scott
Radical Constructivism and
Ernst Glasersfeld’s The Co-Emergence of Parts and Wholes Its Implications for Society
First Scientific Paper ............................. 12 in Psychological Individuation ............ 65 Gebhard Rusch
Felice Accame Herbert F. J. Müller Understanding. The Mutual Regulation
Ernst von Glasersfeld and the of Cognition and Culture ................... 118
Epistemology Returns to Its Roots ...... 72
Italian Operative School ....................... 18 Laurence D. Richards
Vincent Kenny
Renzo Beltrame Connecting Radical Constructivism to
Anyone for Tennis? Social Transformation and Design .... 129
The Theoretical Environment
Conversations with Ernst on Being
around 1965 .......................................... 25 Markus F. Peschl
Sporting about Epistemology ............... 81
Duane M. Rumbaugh Triple-Loop Learning as Foundation
Ernst von Glasersfeld’s Contributions Radical Constructivism and Teaching for Profound Change, Individual
to the LANA Project ............................. 29 Reinhard Voß Cultivation, and Radical Innovation:
Construction Processes beyond
Marco Bettoni To Find a Daisy in December:
Scientific and Rational Knowledge..... 136
The Yerkish Language: Impressions of Ernst von Glasersfeld
From Operational Methodology to and an Interview with Him about Stuart Umpleby
Chimpanzee Communication .............. 32 Constructivism and Education............. 85 Ernst von Glasersfeld’s Limerick ........ 146

Acknowledgement: The festschrift was generously supported by the American Society of Cybernetics (ASC) and the
Wiener Institut für Sozialwissenschaftliche Dokumentation und Methodik (WISDOM, Austria).
Special thanks to Silvia Pizzocaro (Politechnico Milano, Italy) for her translation of Felice Accame’s contribution.
Copyright of photographs and paintings: Cover page: Werner Horvath, New Austrian Constructivism
Page 1: Jack Lochhead • Other photos: See individual papers for copyright notice
All cartoons throughout the festschrift were exclusively made by Mihaly Lenart.

Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3 1

http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
 anecdotal
EDITORIAL
Editorial: Ninety Years of Constructing
Ranulph Glanville A CybernEthics Research & University College London (UK) <ranulph@glanville.co.uk>
Alexander Riegler A Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) <ariegler@vub.ac.be>
n 8 March 2007 Ernst von Glasersfeld
O attains the age of 90. In celebration of
this, we take great pride in publishing this
festschrift as our way of saying thank you, and
of sending greetings and our affection to this
remarkable, honest and modest man.
A festschrift is a particular publi-
cation, and we have a particular
approach. We require that in
the all pieces we will pub-
lish, the work of von Gla-
sersfeld will take centre
stage. We also invite two
types of contribution:
the more normal aca-
demic paper, and more
anecdotal pieces which
carry a more personal mes-
sage. We are grateful to our
authors for helping us realise a festschrift that
attains these aims. We add our thanks, too, to
photographers, artists and poets who have
enriched the von Glasersfeld related material
we have been able to publish, which, we
believe, enhances the general quality.
Ernst von Glasersfeld has brought a
remarkable rigour, energy and single-mind-
edness to his pursuit of what he has called
Radical Constructivism (RC). This is a form
of constructivism that doesn’t compromise by
hedging, but goes straight to the crucial mat-
ter of the necessity for us to acknowledge our
presence in our experience, for the observer to
actually observe, for the mind to take part in
the creation of the reality it describes as
“sensed.” In this account, we always recognise
that we are present.
It is not out intention to gloss RC here, espe-
cially not in the introduction to a festschrift to
celebrate and honour the scholar who has done
most to clarify and elaborate it, so we will stop.
Given the more than 20 contributions to this
festschrift which cover virtually all aspects of
Ernst von Glasersfeld’s work, career, and per-
sonality, any detailed biography would also be
superfluous. Rather, we provide a “navigation-
aid” through these articles.
2 Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
Overview
In the opening essay, Ranulph Glanville writes
of meeting von Glasersfeld, and of how the
questions asked of him by von Glasersfeld
have continued to fire his work to this day.
Siegfried J. Schmidt, who played a
leading role in making construc-
tivist approaches popular in
the German-speaking coun-
tries in the 1980s, summa-
rizes von Glasersfeld’s work
and person, with a text based
on his speech marking the
award of the Gregory Bateson
Prize presented to von Glasers-
feld in Heidelberg on 6 May 2005.
Early Work
When von Glasersfeld started to publish sci-
entific articles in the early 1960s he probably
did not anticipate that almost half a century
later he would have raised the number of
entries in his bibliography to almost 300 (cf.
http://www.vonglasersfeld.com/). Some of
his first works seem to have completely disap-
peared or are no longer available. Paul Braf-
fort rediscovered Ernst’s first scientific piece:
a report on Operational Semantics: Analysis of
Meaning in Terms of Operations, which
appeared in 1961 as internal report of the
Brussels-based European Atomic Energy
Community (Euroatom). We are delight-
eghted to (re-)present this piece of Glasers-
feld-excavation!
This, and the three publications that fol-
low it here were the result of Ernst’s collabo-
ration in the Scuola Operativa Italiana,
headed by his mentor Sylvio Ceccato. Felice
Accame’s paper deals with the relationship
between the two scientists, whose primary
connection was their lively interest in repre-
sentation and linguistics. The paper of Renzo
Beltrame further explores the theoretical sta-
tus of the research at the Scuola Operativa
Italiana and provides a lucid account of Cec-
http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
radical constructivism
cato’s position at a time, when von Glasers-
feld started to head off for new challenges in
the USA. Scholars in the English-speaking
world have known through von Glasersfeld
himself of the connection with the Scuola
Operativa Italiana and the respect in which
Ernst holds Ceccato. But the lack of translated
material has made both this point of origin in
von Glasersfeld’s work and the significant
contribution of the Italians to early cybernet-
ics, inaccessible. We are grateful to our Italian
colleagues for their willingness to provide ini-
tial access.
One challenge lead to Ernst’s work on the
Language Analogue (LANA) project in the
early 1970s, which gave him the opportunity
to explore language use in non-human animal
– more specifically, in the chimpanzee Lana.
The essay by Duane Rumbaugh, the formal
project leader, highlights the important role
von Glasersfeld played. A central issue was
whether chimpanzees are capable of learning
the grammar of a language, and so von Gla-
sersfeld developed an artificial pictogram-
based language, Yerkish, which served as com-
munication vehicle between human and
chimpanzee. Marco Bettoni’s paper details this
language. This is another area of Ernst’s work
that is mentioned, but which few of us have
followed in detail. It is wonderful that we have
the opportunity to bring this work back to the
attention of interested scholars.
The Philosophy of
Radical Constructivism
The second challenge von Glasersfeld com-
menced working on in the 1970s was the
long-term development of a new “epistemol-
ogy” (a philosophical term he would later
become hesitant to use) based on his work in
Ceccato’s group, the operational and correla-
tional approach on which the Lana project
was built, and his interpretation of Jean
Piaget’s épistémologie génétique. He called this
“Radical Constructivism.”
 anecdotal
EDITORIAL
In his anecdote Jack Lochhead (who
brought Ernst from Georgia to Massachu-
setts) describes his personal memories of that
time. Together with Lochhead, Leslie Steffe
was one of the friends whose efforts were deci-
sive in enabling von Glasersfeld to continue
on this path. In his paper, Steffe first describes
Ernst’s collaboration on the Interdisciplinary
Research on Number (IRON) project which
focused on the question of how children con-
struct numbers and solve numerical prob-
lems, fuelling the further development of RC.
Steffe develops this, in the second part part of
his paper, with an idea of how RC can act as
the core of scientific research programs and
contribute to other radical constructivist
research programs whose central problem is
to explore the operations involved in con-
structive activity.
One of the tenets von Glasersfeld has never
tired of repeating is that “his” theory borrows
from many insights of scientists and philoso-
phers. In his contribution, Dewey Dykstra
explores yet another link, the parallels
between RC and Buddhist philosophy, which
are clearly visible when it comes to “disequil-
ibration” over mismatches between realist
expectations and experiences – a difficulty
Dykstra identifies as the perpetual problem of
understanding RC. While constructivist
approaches share many distinctive features
on the large scale, flavours differ in detail.
Vincent Kenny’s critical paper focuses on the
different forms of “radicality” to be found in
the writings of Ernst and in those of Hum-
berto Maturana. In tight-rope walking the
radical gap between them he tries to grasp
onto some of the very different metaphors
offered by both theorists, ranging from black
boxes to submarines. Kenny claims that the
difficulty to join the theorizing of both
authors lies in the fact that von Glasersfeld has
focused on the adaptations and learnings that
go on at the cognitive level whereas Mat-
urana’s work is principally in the biological
domain. In another critical contribution, Ber-
nard Scott argues that Ernst’s assumption
about the existence of a “subject” and “oth-
ers” is one that needs to be further explored
and elucidated. His paper extends his ideas
and proposes a co-emergent explanation of
human awareness and self-consciousness,
and with it the “experiential self.” Scott’s con-
structivist account of the “self as subject”
avoids the need for any metaphysical assump-
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
tions by integrating ideas from George Her-
bert Mead, Humberto Maturana and Gordon
Pask. Herbert Müller also paints a large pic-
ture. He discusses the place of RC and some
of its implications in the development of an
epistemology with the aim of differentiating it
from “traditional metaphysics.” While
Müller acknowledges the relevance of Ernst’s
work for a number of disciplines that suffer
from conceptual problems such as the mind-
brain relation, he urges us to evaluate its
implications in specific instances. Finally,
Vincent Kenny’s anecdotal piece rounds off
the section on the philosophy of RC. In his
interview he asks von Glasersfeld questions
such as “How much patience does it take to be
a constructivist?” and, by referring to the
non-conscious aspect of automatisms in
sports, he points at issues which still need to
be addressed more explicitly in RC.
Radical Constructivism
and Teaching
However that may be, RC has already
addressed and stimulated many aspects in
areas other than purely philosophical dis-
course, among which education is very prom-
inent. Reinhard Voß’s interview with von Gla-
sersfeld highlights why RC lends itself to
questions of teaching and education as it
opposes the widespread idea that teachers can
transmit knowledge through language. Marie
Larochelle and Jacques Désautels’s article indi-
cates how taking a radical constructivist per-
spective can liberate educators to create new
and valuable types of learning experiences.
RC stresses the importance of developing a
reflexive understanding of the world and
prompts teachers to scrutinize the processes
and distinctions by which students chart out
their “world” and to devise models of their
students’ future relationship to the universes
of knowledge intended for learning. Ana Paz-
tor’s paper clarifies the operational usefulness
of a constructivist framework or mindset to
the teacher of mathematics (an area in which
Ernst, himself, worked), and illustrates with
concrete examples from the author’s own
experience, the contributions Ernst made in
this field. She devises a “shared experiential
language” for teachers to embody in order to
transform their practice congruently accord-
ing to constructivist principles. Utilizing this
radical constructivism
language allows the shifting of responsibility
for success in mathematics from the students
back to those who guide them in co-con-
structing knowledge. Based on the discussion
of the epistemic positions of realism and rela-
tivism, Andreas Quale’s paper focuses on the
characterization of the teaching of science in
a RC framework. The author distinguishes
between cognitive and non-cognitive knowl-
edge that plays through the characterization
of the teaching of science as contrasted to the
teaching of religion. Since, he argues, teach-
ing should be carried out in the mode of
story-telling, Quale concludes that tradi-
tional ontology is not required for science-
teaching. Theo Hug concludes the section on
education with an anecdotal piece which
seemingly weightlessly discusses some of
Ernst’s ideas on the backdrop of a skiing tour
in the Austrian alps.
Radical Constructivism
and its Implications for
Society
The final section of the festschrift deals with
the implications of RC for society. It starts
with Gebhard Rusch’s contribution which
builds on the claim that constructivist
approaches bridge the gap between the cogni-
tive and social facets of understanding. Rusch
proposes we take understanding as consisting
of both at the same time: a special kind of
social regulation and a special kind of cogni-
tive regulation. The paper also contains a
review of the German tradition of hermeneu-
tics and an attempt to integrate it with socio-
logical considerations. Larry Richards’s paper
provides an account of the author’s under-
standing of Ernst’s theory and contributes a
part concrete, part speculative connection
between constructivist ways of knowing and
constraint-based approaches to policy for-
mulation and social transformation and
design. For the author it is evident that by
raising new questions and stimulating new
thinking RC contributes significantly to the
development of a conceptual base for applied
research on social activism. Finally, Markus
Peschl attempts to explain how wisdom is
acquired. He proposes and addresses a need
to extend the conception of knowledge con-
struction, as featured in RC, to include also a
3
 anecdotal
EDITORIAL
non-cognitive perception of the world on an
existential level. It describes and discusses a
particular learning strategy, “triple-loop
learning,” for this, and a model, “U-theory,”
to implement this strategy. Both provide a
valuable extension of the radical constructiv-
ist perspective that focuses on scientific and
rational knowledge.
The festschrift concludes with three von
Glasersfeld–related limericks presented by
Stuart Umpleby, and illustrated with cartoons
specially drawn by Mihaly Lenart (who also
drew the one in this editorial).
Larry Richards is right when he states in his
paper: “The work and thought of Ernst von
Glasersfeld opens a path toward a rich array of
concepts and ideas with the potential to
inform efforts in a wide variety of human
endeavors.” After 90 years of constructing
knowledge and wisdom, we can discern no
end, or even slowing down. Ernst von Gla-
4 Constructivist Foundations
sersfeld’s active mental and physical life has
not diminished. He writes, extending the
reach of radical constructivism, and keeping
it clean. When a few years ago, von Glasers-
feld’s house burnt down, and with it he lost
his extensive library and many first editions,
he set to and rebuilt the house, and is cur-
rently constructing furniture. He skis, with
style and competence that shames many of his
younger companions. Last autumn, he con-
cluded an email in which he discussed some
scientific aspects with one of us (A.R.), with
the words “At last we have some reasonable
weather and I’m busy chopping wood for the
winter.” So we cannot but agree with Jack
Lochhead who, at the end of his essay, writes,
“We continue our preparations for 2017.”
In 2005, the American Society for Cybernetics
awarded Ernst von Glasersfeld its highest
award, the Wiener Medal. The citation reads:
radical constructivism
“The Wiener medal of the American Society
for Cybernetics is awarded to Ernst von Gla-
sersfeld for an outstanding and profound
lifelong contribution to both cybernetics and
the ASC.
“Von Glasersfeld’s seminal work, developing
a contructivist approach to problems raised
by early cyberneticians, has enriched the
field and moved the conceptual base of
cybernetics into a more consistent vision –
expanding the nature of how we understand
cybernetics, how we enter into cybernetic
processes of constructing our worlds, and
how we approach the consequences of this
understanding.”
We hope the reader will feel a resonance with
this citation through the material in this
festschrift, and will join all the authors, edi-
tors and all the others who have participated
in this festschrift in wishing Ernst the happi-
est of birthdays, and many more to come.
 anecdotal
OPINION
The Importance of Being Ernst
Ranulph Glanville A CybernEthics Research & University College London (UK) <ranulph@glanville.co.uk>
I shall write about my first meeting with
Ernst von Glasersfeld, and how his com-
ments then on my doctoral study continue to
help me clarify what it is I am trying to talk
about; how he challenged me to pursue what
has turned out to be my life’s work so far; and
about how these seem to me now to fit in with
that constellation of ideas. For, as Samuel Beck-
ett says:
“There are many ways of saying in vain the
thing that I am trying in vain to say.”
I met Ernst von Glasersfeld through the
agency of Jack Lochhead. It was, as far as we can
both work out, the spring of 1978. At that time
I had newly graduated with my PhD in cyber-
netics from Brunel University. My supervisor
had been Gordon Pask and my external exam-
iner Heinz von Foerster.
Jack told me of the importance and value of
Ernst’s work, and invited me to present the
work in my PhD at a small seminar that
included both Jack and Ernst.
Before I go any further I should say some-
thing about my PhD. It consists of a strange
work which is contained in a strange docu-
ment, including, for instance, a summary of
the whole thesis in 16 Limericks. It was rejected
under its original title (“The Object of Objects,
the Point of Points – or, something about
Things”) because, the university said, it had no
library classification for “Things.” It was resub-
mitted, otherwise unchanged, under the title
“A Cybernetic Development of Theories of
Epistemology and Observation, with reference
to Space and Time, as seen in Architecture,” a
title that was accepted and which better
reflected the vocabulary of my research pro-
posal, though not the content of what actually
appeared, or my sentiment! It was examined in
early 1975.
The thesis concerns what I call “Objects”
(with a capital initial O). Writing from the
standpoint and understanding I have in 2006,
Objects are structures which we might assume
(design) to support the proposition (or posi-
tion) that each of us sees the world differently,1
yet, in spite of these differences, we behave as if
(believe) the worlds we see are the same. Put
Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
this way, it is clear that if we see the world dif-
ferently, it is neigh impossible for us to prove
the worlds we see to be the same, and this goes
for all elements of these worlds. We may, and
do, act on the basis that the worlds we see are
the same, but to act on that basis is not to know
it is so. All the elements (including these worlds
and the worlds of these worlds) are my so-
called Objects. In the thesis, I argued the struc-
ture and then explored it, showing how Objets
supported (among other things) not only dif-
ferent observations (while believing the
Objects observed by different observers were
the same), but also important matters such as
how they might support logical relationships
(so green and hill could be put together to
make green hill), and how such relationships
might admit communication.
I remarked in the previous paragraph that I
was writing from my standpoint and under-
standing in 2006. This is an important rider. At
the time (1974), I knew why I had invented
these Objects, and how to argue for them, but
I was not quite sure what their purpose was or
what they did. I did, of course, realise they sup-
ported difference in observations by different
observers (and at different times) since that
was my intention for them; but I did not
understand the nature of the structures, or
what they implied. To be honest, thirty years
later there are still aspects of Objects that I do
not understand.
One question, which I only partially under-
stood at the time, was this: were Objects some-
how real, existing in their own right in what I
would now call some Mind Independent Real-
ity – although I had no vocabulary for this at
the time? I did not know. Or, to be more pre-
cise, I thought they were not, yet I spoke of
them rather as if they were: I was caught in the
physicality and physical realism of the science I
had learnt, and the technological optimism of
my childhood. And the choice of the word
Object, made for good reason, unfortunately
also created problems: for it seems that in gen-
eral use we think, primarily, of an object as a
hard, physical entity, existing in an objective
frame; whereas I had used the term (and,
implicitly, its various grammatical forms) pre-
radical constructivism
cisely for all the various meanings it has in
English, including some that flatly contradict
others. Thus, an object is both that thing that
exists independently of me, having a so-called
objective existence, and an intention in doing
something. If I do not like this contradiction, I
can object to it, too. This, as it turned out, was
exactly the question Ernst would ask me.
But at the time I wrote my PhD I did not
know of Ernst’s work, and, indeed, it was early
days for his Radical Constructivism. Nor did I
really understand the position that would lead
to Heinz von Foerster’s essential aphorism in
which he catches the difficulty that Glasers-
feld’s Radical Constructivism somehow sets
out to resolve, by reconstructing it. Foerster’s
formulation is
“Only we can decide the undecidable”
by which he means that, where a question is in
principle undecidable through logical argu-
ment or such like, we are free to chose
between the alternative answers, according to
our personal taste, as we chose, and without
there being any way of determining “objec-
tively” which choice is correct. Indeed, the
notion of correct became replaced, in von
Glasersfeld’s account, by the word viable.
The key question particularly concerns how
we judge the status of reality – since we are
needed to observe whatever may exist, in order
to know it exists, and to talk about it: in Hum-
berto Maturana’s aphorism
“Everything said is said by an observer,”
to which von Foerster riposted
“Everything said is said to an observer,”
– it is impossible for us to decide whether
what we observe exists apart from our observ-
ing. To claim that there is an objective universe
that exists apart from our observation is not to
assert a fact, but to chose one possible answer,
one position, and use it as a basis for acting.
Similarly, to claim that there is no objective
universe is equally a choice we use as a basis for
action. These choices are not conclusions of
arguments in logic, and can never be resolved
by exclusive choices in an either/or manner.2
5
 anecdotal
OPINION
(The question has been deconstructed
throughout history, but almost always reas-
sembled, normally taking an axiomatic and
unarguable position rather than one logically
developed – precisely because the question it
poses is undecidable. The great exception may
be represented by the sceptic, Phyrro, who
argued that what was important was to keep
doubting.)
Glasersfeld’s proposal of what he calls Rad-
ical Constructivism may be seen as a renewed
approach to this undecidable question (just as
it may be seen as an approach to the so-called
problems of linguistic relativism). It is radical
in that original (root) sense that it returns to
the root (the Latin root is radox), and examines
the notion of construction anew. Glasersfeld
takes Piaget’s radical and revolutionary notion
of the child’s construction and conservation of
the object seriously (he talks of this as a driving
insight in the development of his thinking) and
he is not swayed by the more conventional, and
in my opinion compromised, type of construc-
tivism in which it is often assumed that there is
an independent, objective reality which we,
though our short-comings and limitations, are
unable to grasp clearly. A consequence of
Piaget’s argument is that it is uncertain that you
and I, when we talk of an object, are talking of
the same thing, or even that there is any such
given thing as the object or the real world – or
even you and I – out there in what we talk of
and treat as a real world. For what Piaget pos-
tulates is that we must work from the experi-
ence we live in, differentiating and thus distin-
guishing, forming patterns out of what become
distinct percepts; which, as we forge the pat-
terns, create the concepts we then attach to our
postulated objects which we use to house these
concepts (deriving from experience), realising
them by compressing experience.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ranulph Glanville studied architecture and
electronic composition followed by cyber-
netics (his PhD was examined by Heinz von
Foerster, his supervisor was Gordon Pask)
and then human learning (PhD examined by
Gerard de Zeeuw, supervisor Laurie Tho-
mas). He has published extensively in all
these fields. Glanville teaches and facilitates
the development of programmes and
research in Universities around the world.
6 Constructivist Foundations
A logic by which we can distinguish in the
continuum of experience is described in
George Spencer Brown’s seminal “Laws of
Form,” a cult book in the late 1960s, and is cap-
tured in the name of Herbert Müller’s Karl Jas-
pers Forum as the question of the possibility of
a “Mind Independent Reality” fuelling a hot
debate on the internet.
It was against such developing concepts and
understandings that second order cybernetics
came about in the early 1970s. This is a cyber-
netics that talks of the observer as in the system
being observed, rather than an observer of the
system. Amongst its proponents were Foerster,
Humberto Maturana (and his then colleague
Francisco Varela) and Gordon Pask, and it was
into this cauldron of currently forming under-
standings that I plugged my Theory of Objects,
perhaps forming the final basic building block
of second order cybernetics. The gap my
Objects were supposed to fill was precisely the
one Piaget points to: that we each experience
and thus form our percepts and concepts dif-
ferently, and yet we believe that we can talk
about the same thing. Foerster’s examiner’s
report on the PhD Thesis referred to my work
as the first formal system for Piaget’s concepts.
The question I now realise I was asking was
what sort of structure would we need to
develop that would allow this: and I came up
with my Objects.3 Objects tell us of the sort of
universe a universe that is built on difference
and construction is.
But, as I wrote above, at the same time Gla-
sersfeld was examining Piaget’s concepts, and
was doing so in a less instrumental way. Behind
his public thinking he was, I believe, asking
what Piaget’s account, and the accounts of
those with similar views, meant for how we
understand our being in the world, even that
we could believe we were in the world.
It was at this moment that our ideas were
brought into the presence of each other.
The question Glasersfeld asked me at the
seminar, “Are Objects somehow real, existing
in their own right?” stopped me in my tracks. I
had indeed talked of Objects as though they
existed independently, out there in some exis-
tential real world in a version of the language of
schoolboy physics (though I would have been
hard pressed either to say this, or to indicate
what sort of existential real world they inhab-
ited). Yet they were intended essentially as
mentalistic devices and manoeuvres that reside
in and address the world of observation (and
radical constructivism
experience), not as either physical entities or
adjuncts to such entities. I realised that I had
either to drop these Objects (which Ernst so
objected to but which I loved) or meditate on
the notion of reality that they proposed and
required, to resolve the conflict between the
deeper implications of the world they pro-
posed and the habits of language I had grown
up with. Over the years this is what I have done.
Heinz von Foerster asked me after he had
finished examining my PhD, what I proposed
doing with it. I had no idea: innocent that I was,
the question had never occurred to me. He sug-
gested I should not publish it as a big book, but
should take various parts and ideas and present
them, extending them as I saw fit. Ernst von
Glasersfeld defined for me where, and in refer-
ence to what, I had to do this. If I have suc-
ceeded in exploring and explaining anything
about the world as second order cybernetics
proposes it, then it is because in large part Ernst
challenged me to do so.
Thank you, Ernst, for the insight, the chal-
lenge – and the outcomes.
Notes
1. In constructivist terms, constructs the
world differently. The story I tell here is, in
a sense, the story of the shift in my under-
standing which in 1974 I expressed by “see”
and would now express by “construct.”
2. Some may argue that there is other evi-
dence, but we chose which it is and how to
value it. This includes such assertions as
“it’s inconceivable that” and “it can’t be
coincidence,” so often used to justify our
assumptions, which are assertions of a lack
of imagination and an insistence upon the
patterns we find reflecting an inaccessible
actuality.
3. The key (and radical) concept from which
the Theory of Objects grows is that, in a
universe of observation, everything must
be both observable and observed (this is a
condition of entry into the universe).
Therefore, for an Object (such as I) to en-
ter the universe it must observe itself. It is
the self observation that allows the Object
to assert – if only to itself – its existence (in
this universe).
Received: 8 September2006
Accepted: 5 February 2007
 historical radical constructivism
OPINION

God Has Created Reality,

We Create Worlds of Experience
A Speech in Honour of Ernst von Glasersfeld to Mark the Award
of the Gregory Bateson Prize, Heidelberg, 6 May 2005
Siegfried J. Schmidt A Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster (Germany) <sjschmidt@gmx.net>

Force; from 1970 he was a psychologist and

Purpose:The paper provides an overview of Ernst von Glasersfeld’s life and theory, con- primate researcher at the University of Geor-
centrating on subjects such as the acquisition of knowledge, language and communication, gia, Athens, before ultimately becoming
ethical questions, and aspects of teaching and learning. Conclusions: Ernst von Glasers- Emeritus Professor at the University of Mas-
feld interests cover a wide range of disciplines.Therefore his work is genuinely rooted in sachusetts, Amherst. During these years, von
interdisciplinarity. Glasersfeld was also in constant demand on
Key words: Philosophy, linguistics, ethics, teaching. the worldwide lecture circuit. I believe that
this “atypical” path through life protected von
Glasersfeld from developing a number of neg-

My Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Ernst,
Throughout my long acquaintance with
Ernst von Glasersfeld and his work, I have
found his ideas and insights to be both intel-
lectually fascinating and of considerable
assistance in solving life’s more practical
problems. Fortunately, von Glasersfeld has
also come to my aid today, as I attempt to
explain his work a little, in order to demon-
strate why we are honouring him with this
important prize.
Ernst von Glasersfeld once remarked that
when we look back over our lives, or the lives
of others, we should substitute any demand
for objectivity with the perspective of the
observer, which should be as coherent as pos-
sible. His own relationship to works and
authors, he stressed, was never hermeneutic
in nature, but was instead determined by
whether they could be of help in solving his
own problems.
I would like to take these two pieces of
advice as the starting-point for a subject-spe-
cific look – in other words, my own – at the life
and work of Ernst von Glasersfeld.
Born an Austrian national in Munich in 1917,
Ernst von Glasersfeld did not enjoy a “stan-
dard” academic education, nor did his career
follow a straight course. His autobiographical
stories describe the many phases of his life: his
multilingual youth in Austria, the South Tyrol
and Switzerland, his time in Australia as a ski
instructor and racer, his life as a farmer in Ire- with a discipline’s preset topics and a simple
land during the Second World War and, after
1947, his career as a sports and culture
reporter, camping on the shores of Lake
Garda in the Val di sogno – the idyllic back-
drop for his initial encounter with Silvio Cec-
cato’s mother. Von Glasersfeld describes this
encounter in the following way. Working on
his typewriter in front of his tent whilst his
two-year-old daughter played naked on the
beach nearby, he noticed a boat being rowed
past on the bay, which soon returned the way
it had come. It was clear that the woman in the
boat was interested in the unusual situation
playing out on the beach. After a few days, she
spoke to von Glasersfeld,
asking what he was work- “One must build a
ing on. “It’s mostly about different reality with each
philosophy, that’s what
interests me,” von Glasers-
language. This is precisely languages
feld answered, to which the point which led me to
she replied: “Philosophy? constructivism”
My son’s a philosopher –
you must meet him.” Thus it was that von Gla-
sersfeld got to know Silvio Ceccato and
became his colleague at the Milan Centre of
Cybernetics in the Scuola Operativa Italiana.
From 1966 onwards von Glasersfeld also
worked as a linguist and concept-analyst on a
research project run by the American Air
ative characteristics which beset the majority
of “standard” academics – namely a fixation
acceptance of well-worn, discipline-specific
patterns of seeing and thinking. Liberated
from set patterns of thinking, von Glasersfeld
was able to turn his attention to those aspects
of his subject which truly interested him. He
could focus on what he actually wanted to
know, and on how he could express his ideas
in the clearest and most precise manner.
Growing up using three languages (he
learnt French at school), yet without an actual
mother-tongue, further helped liberate von
Glasersfeld from set patterns of thinking.
Lacking the intuitive connection to a mother-
tongue, one experiences the constructive role
of language. Von Glasers-
feld’s early experience of
the differences between
gave him a clear
sense “that one must build
a different reality with
each language. […] This
is precisely the point
which led me to constructivism.” (Glasersfeld
1999, p. 195). This experience also led von
Glasersfeld to the conclusion that meaning
does not lie in a text itself, but is actively con-
structed by the listeners in their own way.
By preparing the subject in this way, we
have already begun to stray onto the intellec-

Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3 7

http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
 historical
OPINION
Ernst von Glasersfeld together with the author, Siegfried J. Schmidt, in Heidelberg, Germany, 2005.
tual path that leads to the basic principles of
von Glasersfeld’s constructivism. These prin-
ciples are:
[ In constructivism, the subject plays the
central role of the constructor.
[ It is the active subject who constructs
sense, meaning and reality through his
thoughts and actions.
[ If reality is seen as the result of human
imagination – as an inductively con-
structed world of experience (Erfahrungs-
welt) – it follows that human knowledge
can no longer be expected or obliged to
represent a reality which exists objectively,
and that the active observer must accept
responsibility for his individual construc-
tion of reality. Such considerations make it
clear that one can, and should, develop a
theory of knowledge (Wissenstheorie)
without being constrained by the
demands of an epistemology (Erkenntnis-
theorie). Radical constructivism, under-
stood here as a theory of knowledge, pro-
vides a model of our ability to create
knowledge in the sense of ideas which
work. As Jean Piaget has shown, this
knowledge results solely from of our
actions and the operation of our minds.
[ “Cognition serves to organise a subject’s
world of experience, and not the subject’s
‘insight’ into an objective, ontological
reality.” (Glasersfeld 1996, p. 96)
8 Constructivist Foundations
[ The constructivist Ernst von Glasersfeld
does not claim, however, that objective
reality does not exist. Rather, he claims
that we can not know such a reality.
“I understand by ‘reality’ a network of
concepts, which have proven themselves to
be appropriate and useful – that is, ‘viable’
– in the perception of the subject. They
have proven this by repeatedly helping the
subject to overcome obstacles successfully,
and by aiding the conceptual ‘assimilation’
of their experiences.” (Glasersfeld 1997,
p. 47).
Together, these fundamental principles of
his constructivist thought implicitly connect
to similar principles within the wider philo-
sophical tradition. Ernst von Glasersfeld
repeatedly reminds us that constructivism
was not exclusively his own discovery. He
notes with modesty how he learnt from the
great thinkers – thinkers so diverse in range
that to speak of them in one breath could
panic a traditional philosopher. Von Glasers-
feld learnt from the pre-Socratic thinkers,
who argued with irrefutable logic that every-
thing we term knowledge is human, gener-
ated by our specific way of doing things and
thus limited by our human capabilities. He
learnt from the apophantic theology of the
Byzantines, from Johannes Scotus Eriugena,
from Hume and from Locke, from Berkeley
and from Vico. He learnt from Kant, the
radical constructivism
American Pragmatists, from Vaihinger’s phi-
losophy of “As if,” L. Wittgenstein and from G.
Kelly. He has ascribed the first outline of a
consciously constructivist theory to Giam-
battista Vico – a theory which states: man can
only know what he constructs himself: verum
ipsum factum. Whatever a man thinks and
knows can therefore never represent an onto-
logical reality, or as the Latin original from
1710 states: “Deus naturae artifex, homo arti-
ficiorum deus.” For mankind, the only things
that truly exist are those which mankind itself
has constructed through perception and con-
ceptual work, something illustrated in Bishop
Berkeley’s principle esse est percipi.
This short construction of a pre-history of
constructivism makes clear why operational-
ism (Operationalismus) and pragmatism
have become so important for the modern
development of constructivist thought, espe-
cially in the work of Percy Bridgman, Hugo
Dingler and above all Silvio Ceccato and his
colleagues Vittorio Somenzi, Enrico Albani,
Guiseppe Vaccarino and Ferruccio Rossi-
Landi. They all focus on the central question:
what must one do, cognitively and practically,
in order to achieve a certain result? How does
one operate conceptually, in order to achieve
a certain conception? “Indeed,” he has repeat-
edly stated, “radical constructivists never say:
‘This is how it is!’ They merely suggest: ‘This
may be how it functions.’” (Glasersfeld 2000,
p. 4)
The perspective of these questions – a per-
spective which moves away from an ontolog-
ical orientation on entities to an orientation
on processes, their constraints and their out-
comes (Prozessualität) – helps us to under-
stand the significance of Jean Piaget for Ernst
von Glasersfeld.
I shall never forget the context in which I
first came across this connection. In 1990,
Mauro Ceruti organised a conference on the
epistemological theory of Jean Piaget. The
conference was held in the old and beautifully
named palace Palazzo della Ragione in Ber-
gamo. The presence of Bärbel Inhelder at the
conference, a long-time colleague of Piaget
(who had died in 1980), had drawn a large
crowd of prominent thinkers from many dis-
ciplines and countries. At one of the confer-
ence meals, Ernst von Glasersfeld, Heinz von
Foerster and Paul Watzlawick – the core of
constructivist thought in Austria – were sit-
ting next to each other. It was a picture for the
 historical
OPINION
history books. But let us return to Piaget.
Piaget’s decisive principle for undertaking
research into cognition was: “intelligence
organises the world while it organises itself.”
Knowledge, according to Piaget, does not cre-
ate an objective reproduction of reality, but
rather supports a process of adaptation to the
constraints set by our environment. Knowl-
edge enables an organism to achieve equilib-
rium in its environment; that is to say, it sup- cating, we adapt to the constraints “[…]
ports survival – and every action that
preserves or restores this equilibrium is an
effective action. Seen in
this light, it is clear why “The world in which we live of language becomes
Ernst von Glasersfeld saw
Piaget’s theory as, at
and perceive ourselves is
heart, a cybernetic theory. the world which we create
Piaget broke with the and maintain within the
philosophic tradition constraints we have
which explored the
truth-value of knowl- hitherto experienced”
edge, and explored
instead the origins and the application of this
knowledge by studying how children con-
struct their reality. Von Glasersfeld saw
Piaget’s ideas as the logical extension to
Vico’s, Berkeley’s, Wittgenstein’s and Cec-
cato’s position that cognition cannot repro-
duce the real world. According to Piaget,
actions and conceptual operations are
adapted – or to use von Glasersfeld’s term, are
viable – when they match the purposes to
which we put them. The traditional concept
of truth is thus replaced in the field of experi- most difficult questions “If we were to believe we
ence with the concept of “viability” (Viabil-
ität). Von Glasersfeld delineates the genera-
tive power which Piaget ascribes to
humankind on three levels:
[ The segmentation level, where we estab-
lish stable objects, by concentrating on
similarities and disregarding differences
(Objektpermanenz);
[ The relational level, which enables the
subject to think with the aid of cognitive
schemata;
[ The reflexive level, where abstraction is
derived from the operations of the subject,
forming complex structures such as theo-
ries and systems.
This concept of knowledge as action as
well as effect further establishes the connec-
tion with cybernetics. Here, too, the primary
concerns are issues of regulation and self-reg-
ulation, of evolutionary constraints on think-
ing, interaction and communication – con-
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
straints illustrated by Gregory Bateson, after
whom today’s prize is named. Through his
concept of constraints, Bateson avoided
describing the effects of evolution in causal
terms. Ernst von Glasersfeld uses precisely
such concepts, not only when referring to
evolution, but also to the construction of
knowledge, language-acquisition and all
forms of communication. When communi-
which result from the way we perceive our fel-
low man’s use of language” (Glasersfeld 1997,
p.17). In this way, our use ited between them,” rather than on the state-
attuned to that of others: reality or a statement’s truth-value (Glasers-
that is, viable under the
prevailing circumstances.
We can understand each
other without succumb-
ing to the illusion that we it is necessary to work out all the conceptual
each had precisely the
same meaning in mind.
The question of experiential reality (Erfahr-
ungswirklichkeit), too, can be answered by the
constraints model: “The world in which we
live and perceive ourselves is the world which
we create and maintain within the constraints
we have hitherto experienced. – What could
be more cybernetic?” (ibid.)
As a former linguist and philosopher of
language myself, I was particularly interested
in Ernst von Glasersfeld’s views on language,
not least because the
for a constructivist lie in knew both good and evil,
this area. How can one
reconcile the cognitive
we would be dangerous
autonomy of the subject beings indeed.”
with the experience of
successful communication? How are we to
understand understanding?
Throughout the 1970s, Ernst von Glasers-
feld was engaged in an intensive debate with
leading linguists and philosophers of lan-
guage such as C. Cherry, C. Shannon, S.
Langer, C. Hockett or N. Chomsky (for
details see Schmidt 2000), in which he pro-
posed that communication was an instru-
mental, goal-oriented and thus deliberate
process. In cybernetic terms, this process is
determined by goals as “reference values”
(Referenzwerte), sensuality as “sensory func-
tion” (sensorische Funktion) and technology
as “effector function” (Effektorfunktion). Von
Glasersfeld’s model of communication
radical constructivism
reacted against the behaviourists’ elimination
of aims and objectives from language and
communication theory. Instead, he devel-
oped a cognitive language and communica-
tion theory, based on the premise that any
analysis of meaning must always be con-
nected to an analysis of concepts or mental
constructs. The implication of this is that a
semantic analysis should be conducted in the
form of a cognitive analysis which focuses on
“[…] the conceptual items a linguistic state-
ment invokes and the relations that are pos-
ment’s relationship with an non-linguistic
feld 1974, p. 130). For example, when consid-
ering the meaning of a verb, or when translat-
ing it – and as an experienced translator von
Glasersfeld knew what he was talking about –
situations in which the verb can be used and
applied. Concepts or mental representations
must always be seen dynamically, as “rela-
tively self-contained programs or production
routines that can be called up and run.” (Gla-
sersfeld 1987, p. 219) When the recipient of a
linguistic expression has to construct its
meaning from conceptual elements that he
already possesses – that is, elements derived
from previous abstractions of actions, inter-
actions and communications – then meaning
must be seen as “irrefutably subjective”: as
something which arises in
relation to the previous
experience of the recipient.
The presupposition of suc-
cessful communication is
thus that communication
partners possess compara-
ble experiences. These experiences comprise
all the conventional rules of language use,
which result from social interaction and
therefore help to co-orient communication
partners even though they cannot see inside
each other’s minds. As a consequence, the
concept of subject-dependent meaning must
be complemented by acknowledging the sig-
nificance of other people, of fellow humans.
Von Glasersfeld has stated emphatically that
the development of concepts in autonomous
cognitive systems can occur only through
social interaction and must also relate to via-
ble experiences in a shared field of experience
(for details see von Glasersfeld 1997, pp. 59–
60, 206; Glasersfeld 1995, pp. 138–143). Cog-
9
 historical
OPINION
nitive autonomy and social orientation are
therefore not mutually exclusive. Linguistic
expressions are semiotic embodiments of
social experiences – they result from our
social interaction and continuously work
back on our linguistic and non-linguistic
experience and concept formation. As con-
straints of social interaction they oblige us to
adapt the way we use language to common
usage.
In contrast to many philosophers of lan-
guage who frequently praise language as the
highest form of human achievement, von
Glasersfeld remains characteristically sober
and sceptical, noting that “if, today, we look at
what we have done with the help of that
splendid tool, one may begin to wonder
whether, at some future time, it will still seem
obvious that language has enhanced the sur-
vival of life on this planet” (Glasersfeld 1976,
p. 223). These are the thoughts and words of
someone who – as I mentioned above – thinks
in processes, and not in ontological identities.
Ernst von Glasersfeld’s radical construc-
tivism is often accused of lacking a sustain-
able ethical orientation, and of justifying – at
least implicitly – the idea that every ethical
construction, however aberrant, is simply
one construction amongst others. It has been
repeatedly shown that such assertions are
nothing more than a cynically reductive
approach to constructivist thought (for
details see Schmidt 1996). Still, it should be
noted that the forefathers of constructivism,
amongst them Ernst von Glasersfeld, had
good reason to be cautious when considering
ethical questions. Particularly illuminating in
this respect is von Glasersfeld’s second Siege-
ner Gespräch from 1984. Asked how he would
respond as a constructivist to moral prob-
lems, he answered: “If you are asking this con-
structivist what he thinks, well, I never stray
beyond Plato’s Phaedrus: either you know
what is good, or you don’t. […] As soon as
somebody says “You must know what is good,”
they’ve already formulated it incorrectly. You
must feel what is good. There is no theory to
save or spare you this decision.” (1987, p. 430)
Ernst von Glasersfeld believes that there
are good reasons for taking moral decisions,
and that specific moral decisions can be justi-
fied. In accordance with Heinz von Foerster
(Foerster & Bröcker 2002), he also believes,
however, that there is no absolute foundation
for evaluative judgements, and that there is
10
no rational philosophy from which an ethic
may be firmly derived. “If we were to believe
we knew both good and evil, we would be
dangerous beings indeed.” (Glasersfeld 1996,
pp. 335, 347)
Ernst von Glasersfeld has always empha-
sised that constructivists must take responsi-
bility for their own constructions, and that
this responsibility is a social responsibility.
This means that we must see our fellow
human beings not simply as
a means, but also as a pur- One of the basic tenets
pose. We must always of constructivism is that reasons why certain ways of
respect our fellow human
being’s cognitive auton- there is never only one
omy. In order to achieve a correct way
reliable construction of
reality, we clearly need other people. Only in
this way can we construct a better, intersub-
jectively valid reality. In other words, we need
other people not only for ethical, but also for
epistemological reasons.
In the year 2000, I had a particularly
inspiring encounter with Ernst von Glasers-
feld during the conference “Learning in the
Age of the Internet” held in Brixen, in the
South Tyrol. His lecture – so clear in tone and
brimming with his years of experience – was
the high point of the conference.
In his lecture, Ernst von Glasersfeld once
again explained the fundamental principles
of his concept of a constructivist education.
From the outset he made it absolutely clear
that he accepted the two basic pedagogical
goals of educationalists: that pupils should
learn to think independently and consis-
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Siegfried J. Schmidt has been professor of
linguistics, literary theory and theory of
media and communication at the universi-
ties of Bielefeld, Siegen and Münster. 2006
he became Emeritus Professor at the West-
fälische Wilhelms- Universität at Münster.
He has published more than 700 books and
articles in 19 languages in the fields of phi-
losophy, linguistics, empirical theory of liter- rather than a “correct,” way. “Correct” and
ature, media and communication theory.
He is a member of the Academia Europaea
and honorary president of the International
Society for the Empirical Study of Literature
and the Media.
radical constructivism
tently, and that those ways of thinking and
acting that are currently seen as the most
effective should be preserved for the next gen-
eration. (Glasersfeld 1996, p. 284) However,
when it comes to evaluating knowledge, a
cleft opens between von Glasersfeld and the
educationalists. Traditional concepts of
knowledge see it as value-free and objective,
whereas von Glasersfeld sees all knowledge as
instrumental. According to von Glasersfeld,
students should from the
outset be made aware of the
thinking and acting are
preferable. The primary
aim of education should
not be to pass an examina-
tion, but to be intellectually more competent
and successful. Since it is one of the basic
tenets of constructivism that there is never
only one correct way, a constructivist cannot
propose a single, authoritative, didactic
method. Nevertheless, he can explain to a stu-
dent why certain attitudes and techniques are
unproductive, by using the concepts of con-
structivism to reassess and re-conceptualise
basic notions of communication, learning,
knowledge, interaction and motivation. A
consequence of constructivist thought is thus
the idea that learning – in contrast to training
– is a product of self-organisation. Knowl-
edge is only acquired through active assimila-
tion to cognitive structures one already pos-
sesses, and is never acquired passively (for
details see von Glasersfeld 1995, chapter 10).
Teachers must always have the confidence
that their pupils can think independently.
Their art resides in “encouraging pupils to
formulate problems independently – prob-
lems which promote specific ways of think-
ing.” (Glasersfeld 1997, p. 209).
Ernst von Glasersfeld’s constructivism is
neither a super-theory nor a foundation-the-
ory. Indeed, he never even claims to have
developed a theory. His constructivism offers
us a way “to cope with the world of experi-
ence, which can never really be compre-
hended” and to solve problems in a viable,
“incorrect,” he says, are terms which always
relate to a concrete goal or to a problem which
needs to be solved. For a thinker of von Gla-
sersfeld’s calibre, such statements show a rare
sense of modesty – a modesty which results
from a humanitarianism which seeks neither
Constructivist Foundations
 historical radical constructivism
OPINION

to correct nor train others, but rather to help one’s thought processes can become more von Glasersfeld is also a tremendous host,
them develop independence. Underlying this creative and open once one accepts the Vor- who can not only prepare outstanding des-
is Ernst von Glasersfeld’s experience of the läufigkeit all unserer Endgültigkeiten – the pro- serts, but is also a highly practical person
finitude and fragility of visional nature of what all when it comes to technical matters. I still
human actions – its con- One’s thought processes too often seems, or is benefit today from a knee stool he designed,
tingentia, in Aristotle’s
sense. Von Glasersfeld
can become more creative made to seem, final. and which I had built according to his plans.
When, in 1982 and 1984, Ernst von Glasers-
gathered this experience as and open once one accepts To talk of Ernst von Gla- feld came to Germany to take part in the
a traveller between lan- the provisional nature of sersfeld is to talk of a per- Siegener Gespräche on constructivism, I had
guages, cultures and soci- what all too often seems, son with many moving the honour of hosting him and his wife at my
eties – a journey which and persuasive personal home in Münster. In those days, the German
taught him what to avoid,
or is made to seem, final characteristics. In all the motorways were still comparatively empty,
rather than which goals he time I have known him, he and during his visit I treated him to many fast
should set himself. He was able to liberate has always radiated a sense of calm, not only car journeys. He loves fast cars and driving at
himself from set patterns of thinking, allow- in private, but also in public – whether in high speeds – two things which, to his great
ing him to develop his ideas with clarity, open debates with his students at the Univer- regret, he has to forgo in the USA.
patience and persuasiveness, but without rad- sity of Georgia, or during more fractious
ical fanaticism. He wins over his reader and exchanges with the opponents of construc- We have much to thank Ernst von Glasers-
his audiences, liberating them from the illu- tivism at many a conference. Since my first feld for, both as a thinker and as a man. In
sory demand for truth, objective knowledge encounter with von Glasersfeld at a confer- this talk I have tried to highlight a few aspects
and eternal values. During my acquaintance ence in Madrid in 1977, he has repeatedly of his thought and character, in order to
with Ernst von Glasersfeld, I too have had the proven himself to be a brilliant speaker and thank him personally for his work and his
liberating experience of discovering how raconteur – time flies when he speaks. Ernst friendship.

References
Foerster, H. von & Bröcker, M. (2002) Teil der
Welt. Fraktale einer Ethik. Ein Drama in
drei Akten. Carl-Auer-Systeme Verlag:
Heidelberg.
Foerster, H. von & Glasersfeld, E. von (1999)
Wie wir uns erfinden: Eine Autobiogra-
phie des radikalen Konstruktivismus.
Carl-Auer-Systeme Verlag: Heidelberg.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1974) “Because” and the
concepts of causation. Semiotica 12 (2):
129–144.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1976) The development
of language as purposive behaviour. In: S.
R. Harnad, H. D. Steklis & J. Lancaster
(eds.) Annals of the New York Academy of
Sciences, 280, 212–226. Paper presented at
the Conference on Origins and Evolution
of Speech and Language. New York Acad-
emy of Science, Sept. 22–25, 1975.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1987) Preliminaries to
any theory of representation. In: Janvier,
C. (ed.) Problems of representation in the
teaching and learning of mathematics.
Erlbaum: Hillsdale NJ, pp. 221–225.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1995) Radical construc-
tivism. A way of knowing and learning.
The Falmer Press: London.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1996) Radikaler Kon-
struktivismus. Ideen, Ergebnisse, Prob-
leme. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt/M.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1997) Wege des Wissens.
Konstruktivistische Erkundungen durch
unser Denken. Heidelberg: Carl-Auer-
Systeme Verlag.
Glasersfeld, E. von (2000) Problems of con-
structivism. In: Steffe, L. P. & Thompson,
P. W. (eds.) Radical constructivism in
action. Building on the pioneering work of
Ernst von Glasersfeld. Routledge Falmer:
London, pp. 3–9.
Rusch, G. (ed.) (1999) Wissen und Wirklich-
keit. Beiträge zum Konstruktivismus.
Carl-Auer-Systeme Verlag: Heidelberg.
Schmidt, S. J. (1996) Was leistet ein Vertreter
einer historisch-kritischen Hermeneutik
für die Kritik am Radikalen Konstruktivis-
mus und an der Empirischen Literatur-
wissenschaft? Deutsche Vierteljahres-
schrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Gei-
stesgeschichte 70(2): 291–297.
Schmidt, S. J. (2000) Ernst von Glasersfeld’s
philosophy of language: Roots, concepts,
perspectives. In: Steffe, L. P. & Thompson,
P. W. (eds.) Radical constructivism in
action. Building on the pioneering work of
Ernst von Glasersfeld. Routledge Falmer:
London, pp. 23–33.
Schmidt, S. J. (2001) Was heißt “Lernen” aus
konstruktivistischer Sicht? In: Schmidt, S.
J. (ed.) Lernen im Zeitalter des Internets.
Grundlagen, Probleme, Perspektiven.
Pädagogischer Verlag: Bozen, pp. 33–44.
Siegener Gespräche über Radikalen Kon-
struktivismus. Ernst von Glasersfeld im
Gespräch mit NIKOL (1982, 1984). In:
Schmidt, S. J. (ed.) (1987) Der Diskurs des
Radikalen Konstruktivismus. Suhrkamp:
Frankfurt/M., pp. 401–440.
Translated by Benedict Schofield
Received: 31 July 2006
Accepted: 5 February 2007

2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3 11

 historical
CONCEPTS
Ernst Glasersfeld’s First Scientific Paper
Commented by Paul Braffort A ALAMO (France) <paul.braffort@noos.fr>
A historical note
The first published contribution by Ernst von
Glasersfeld in the fields of linguistics and
epistemology was his translation (from Ital-
ian to English) of Silvio Ceccato’s Il linguag-
gio con la Tabella di Ceccatieff, published in
1951 by Hermann & Cie in Paris. He then
joined Ceccato’s “Scuola Operativa Italiana”
and became deeply involved in their work
which found financial support from Eura-
tom, and the European Office of the U.S. Air
Force (Air Research and Development Com-
mand). So he contributed to the Scuola’s
Figure 1: Facsimile of the first page.
12
radical constructivism
Purpose:At Silvio Ceccato’s suggestion, I invited Ernst von Glasersfeld to the “Séminaire
Leibniz” which took place in Brussels, in February 1961. The paper he delivered then,
Operational Semantics: Analysis of Meaning in Terms of Operations, was included in a Euratom
internal report and is published here for the first time.
Conclusion:These early works clearly show von Glasersfeld’s methodological and philo-
sophical coherence as well as his faithfulness to Ceccato’s endeavour.
Key words: Linguistic, machine translation, Scuola Operativa Italiana.
research on Linguistic Analysis and Mechan- taking place. Silvio’s presentation was entitled
ical Translation. La machine qui pense et qui parle (Ceccato
I met Silvio Ceccato for the first time in 1958). We became friends and had fascinating
June 1956 in Namur (Belgium) where the discussions in Milan (with Enzo Morpurgo)
First Cybernetics International Congress was and Vulcano (after a session in Messina with
Giuseppe Vaccarino). Both were
members of the Scuola Operativa
Italiana.
When, in 1959, I was hired by
Euratom for doing research in
Automatic Documentation and
Automatic Translation (GRISA,
Groupe de Recherches sur l’Infor-
mation Scientifique Automatique),
I started an official cooperation
with Ceccato’s team and so met
Glasersfeld. We succeeded in gath-
ering a number of European
experts and publishing contribu-
tions from them.
At Ceccato’s suggestion, I
invited Ernst von Glasersfeld to the
“Séminaire Leibniz” which took
place in Brussels, in February 1961.
The paper he delivered then, Oper-
ational Semantics: Analysis of
Meaning in Terms of Operations,
was included in a Euratom internal
report. Figure 1 shows a facsimile of
its first page. Von Glasersfeld’s short
papers included in the Technical
Report submitted to the Air Force
are also mentioned here. He pub-
lished three other papers during
1962–1963 but which are not
readily available either. So I decided
to make his first paper reader-
friendly such that it can be pub-
lished here for the first time.
Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
 historical
CONCEPTS
Operational semantics:
Analysis of meaning in
Terms of Operations
(February 1961)
The Operational Approach to Mechanical
Translation is based on the following assump-
tions:
a. language is an expression of thought and
trains of thought;
b. thought is analyzable in terms of opera-
tions;
c. thought operations carried out by man
are, on the whole, the same regardless of
the particular language in which the think-
ing subject intends to express them.
An explicit statement of the theoretical
and empirical research that led to these
assumptions is contained in our Report on
the work carried out between January 1959
and June 1960. Points c) and b) are the main
subject of Silvio Ceccato’s contribution. In the
following they are taken for granted.
With regard to point c) certain reserva-
tions have to be made. We say the thought
operations of different language group are on
the whole the same, because even a cursory
examination of two or more languages shows
that the expressions they have evolved to indi-
cate certain situations are not equivalent and,
further, that the thought operations by means
of which a member of one language group
constructs a given situation are not always
identical with those used by members of
another language group (a current example is
the situation in which an Englishman says “I
like John” while an Italian says “John mi
piace”: the first formulates the fact as a result,
the second as though it were the result of an
activity of John).
In the following I shall not deal with this
kind of discrepancy which springs from a dif-
ference in the ways of correlating rather than
from a difference in the meaning of individual
words. Considering only the semantic rela-
tions, i.e., the relations between words and
their nominata, one finds that languages dif-
fer considerably; that is to say, although the
operational elements making up a train of
thought may remain the same whether the
thought be expressed in English or, say, in
German, the arrangement or grouping of
these elements in connection with the words
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
expressing them will hardly ever be the same
in both languages. Hence, any serious
research aiming at M.T. must necessarily
include thorough analysis of the semantic
relations evolved by the language concerned.
The semantic analysis carried out up to the
summer of 1960 has, on one hand, confirmed
us in the opinion that of all the different kinds
of words those expressing a developmental
situation are the most complex in respect of
the number of operational elements involved;
on the other hand, if this preliminary work
had not yet given us a definitive classification
of elements (definitive both with regard to
their number and to their final individua-
tion), it had at least supplied us with precise
ideas about how to carry out such analysis.
As a result of these considerations it was
decided, at the start of the project’s second
stage, to concentrate analytical work on the
most frequent expressions of developmental
situations, because a classification of opera-
tional elements obtained in this way will pre-
sumably require few additions or modifica-
tions when being applied, subsequently, to
other kind of expressions.
The direct expression of a developmental
situation is usually called “verb”; the same sit-
uation, with an addition of another mental
category can also be expressed by a noun
(nomen actionis or nomen agentis).
In order to analyse a verb, we take stock of
the operational elements necessary to make
up the developmental situation expressed by
it, and we try to push this analysis far enough
to be able to distinguish the nominatum of
the verb in question, by at least one opera-
tional element, from the nominata of all the
other verbs that have been examined.
Since any developmental situation
involves a temporalisation – i.e., the insertion
of several operational elements into a certain
temporal sequence (cf. the German term
“Zeitwort”) – our analysis proceeds by split-
ting the “meaning“ of the verb into at least two
moments. If, for instance, we consider verbs
like “to come,” “to go,” “to move,” etc, (i.e.,
verbs that indicate a developmental situation
involving a change of place) we find that all of
them refer – apart from other things – to a
common block of operations:
[ at a moment M1 a thing X is localized in a
place L1, and
[ at a moment M2 a thing considered the
same thing X is localized in a place L2.
radical constructivism
(Note: here and in the following, “to local-
ize” means that one attributes a particular
place to a thing.)
In our notation we represent this as follows:
M1 M2
X X
L1 L2
A simple structure such as this can derive
from more than one kind of developmental
situation. In fact, we find that two of the verbs
mentioned above – all of which contain this
structure – can also be applied to more than
one situation; for instance “John goes to the
bathroom” and “this pipe goes to the bath-
room” – where John is moving, and the pipe
is not.
At first sight it might seem that the reason
for this ambivalence is that by localizing John
in the bathroom one categorically excludes
his being localized anywhere else at the same
moment, whereas with the pipe this is not so.
This would amount to saying: the nomina-
tum of “pipe” includes the operational parti-
cle “extension,” while the nominatum of
“John” does not. The distinction would be
very comfortable, but unfortunately it does
not always hold. In fact, I can also find the ele-
ment of extension in the nominatum of
“John” whenever I want to (for instance, if I
know that his other name is Gulliver, I can, at
a pinch, refer to his extension by saying “he
goes from the front door to the bathroom”).
Actually, the ambivalence of the verb is
much less controllable and we cannot estab-
lish any a priori rules. We distinguish the sit-
uations to which it refers by what we call the
“Notional Sphere,” i.e., a network of specific
relations established between nominata in the
course of our living experience. It is on this
basis that we cope with ambiguous words and
also with expressions like “its shadow goes
across the field” – where we are inclined to see
motion when we know that “it” stands for a
plane, and extension when we know that “it”
stands for a tree. That is to say, in order to
decide the question of locomotion/extension
we use indications obtained, not from the
verb and often not even from the sentence,
but from a wider context.
If we now ask in what way the situation
indicated by the verbs “to come,” “to go,” and
“to move” differ from each other, we realize
that, besides the common block of opera-
tional elements, each of them contains further
13
 historical
CONCEPTS
operational elements that distinguish it from
the others.
In order to say that something “comes,” we
have to have an operational element that spec-
ifies the motion or extension of the common
block as motion or extension reaching a par-
ticular point, namely a point with which the
speaker identifies himself in some way (how
this “identification” is arrives at operationally
is another question which, in this context,
does not interest us). We can represent this
more complete situation by the formula:
M1 M2 M3
X X X X
L1 L2 LSp
In this kind of analysis it is important to
keep verbs apart from the prepositions which
may accompany them. If, for instance, we put
“to Paris” after “to come,” we not only add
something to the structure indicated by the
verb, but we also change it; the element LSp is
replaced by the definite location “Paris”
which no longer necessarily conveys the indi-
cation the X reaches a point with which the
speaker identifies himself.
The developmental situation expressed by
“to go” is, of course, the inverse of the one indi-
cated by “to come,” and we write its formula:
M1 M2 M3
X X X differentiata. We have already come across
LSp L2 L3
Here, too, we find that specification of L3,
for instance by the preposition “to,” may cancel
the indication LSp; and, further, when X is of a
certain kind – i.e., an engine – the “change of
place” need no longer be seen as locomotion or
extension, but may also indicate “partial
motion” or “functioning.”)
The developmental situation indicated by
“to move” differs in at least two respects from
the nominata “to come” and “to go.” Firstly,
unlike these, it cannot be categorized as “exten-
sion,” but exclusively as “motion”; secondly, the
verb gives no indication whether the thing X,
which in M1 and M2 is localized in different
places, will – grammatically speaking – find
expression as subject or as object.
With regard to the first point we can say
that, whereas the operational element added to
the basic block
M1 M2
X X
L1 L2
14
in the case of “to come” and “to go” did not
interfere with the possibility of applying
either the category of “motion” or that of
“extension,” in the case of “to move” there
must be an element which excludes this dual
possibility. In fact, if we see a thing in one
place and, at a subsequent moment, in
another place, this is not yet enough to say
“the thing moves”; in order to say “it moves”
we must see X in L1, then L1 without X and,
finally, X in L2. Hence, the explicit formula for
“to move” should be:
M1 M2 M3
– X
L1 L1 L2
(Note: in M2 of this structure there is a
location, i.e., the result of localising a thing,
but the thing is not present. This would be
contradictory, if the location were not simply
the maintained result of the localisation
effected for X in M1.
The second question – whether the X of
the formula is to find expression in language
as “subject” or “object” – is the age-old ques-
tion of transitivity or intransitivity. From the
operational point of view “subject,” “object,”
and “development” are mental categories,
that is to say, the results of a kind of operating
different from that which yields, for instance,
results of this purely mental kind of operating
in the case of “locomotion”/”extension”;
these, too, are mental categories. What inter-
ests us here, however, is not their intrinsic
structure or the way in which they are made,
but rather their application to a purely obser-
vational material and the expression of the
resulting combinations of language. Thus we
have found that the verbs “to come” and “to
go” do not semantize the categorization of
the situation as “locomotion” or “extension,”
but only the situation previous to the partic-
ular operational step of applying one of these
categories. The verbs, however, require a cer-
tain part of the material (i.e., the part we have
indicated by X) to be categorized as “subject”
regardless of the situation in which they may
occur. The verb “to move,” on the other hand,
leaves open the categorization of the corre-
sponding piece, that is to say, it depends on
the context whether X is to be categorized as
“subject” or as “object.” Hence the expression
“John moves” is equally applicable to the sit-
uation where John, changes his place and to
radical constructivism
the situation where John changes the place of
something else. The issue will be decided
exclusively on the basis of other words figur-
ing in the expression which may or may not
indicate another thing categorized as “object.”
That is to say, in “John goes” or “John comes”
X is necessarily regarded as the agent of the
activity; in “John moves” this is not so, for
“John” may indicate X, and in this case X and
the agent will be one and the same thing; but
if the expression contains the further indica-
tion of something categorized as “object”
(e.g., “John moves a pawn”) “John” merely
indicates the agent, while the object “pawn”
indicates the X of the development.
In this notation the agent is indicated by a,
and it is given the place in the structure for-
mula that best represents the role it plays in
the developmental situation expressed by the
particular verb.
In the case of verbs like “to come” and “to
go,” that is to say, verbs which conventionally
take no direct object, the agent obviously
coincides with that part of the development
which we indicate by X; hence we write:
M1 M2 M3
Xa Xa Xa
L1 L1 LSp for “to come,” and
M1 M2 M3
Xa Xa Xa
LSp L2 L3 for “to go.”
In the case of verbs that represent a devel-
opmental situation that does not contain a
part necessarily categorized as “subject,” that
is to say, a situation in which the agent can,
but need not, coincide with X, because X can
also be categorized as “object,” we have two
possible places for “a”: one in coincidence
with X, when the verb is used “intransitively”
(Xa); and another, previous to the moment of
the development concerning the object X, but
that plays no other part in the moments of the
development.
For “to move,” therefore, we write:
M1 M2 M3
a X – X
L1 L1 L2
and we add the notational rule that this
formula implicitly comprises the alternative:
M1 M2 M3
Xa – Xa
L1 L1 L2
Constructivist Foundations
 historical radical constructivism
CONCEPTS

Which is indicated by the same verb M1 M2 M1 M2 M3

whenever the linguistic expression of the to clap a X X–Z to hit af X Z X–Z
developmental situation does not explicitly L1 L2 L1 Ln L2
specify an object.
[ Establishing contact and producing noise; [ Establishing contact, relative force;
In the case of developmental situation
[ X and Z may be covered by a plural (e.g., [ X may remain implicit.
that necessarily contain an object, we indi-
“hands”);
cate this object by Y, while any other thing the M1 M2 M3
[ X and/or Z may remain implicit.
development may bring into relation with X to strike af X X–Z X–Z
or Y is indicated by Z (or other letters). M1 M2 L1 L2 Ln
As an illustration of how this method is to slap Xf pX pX–Z [ Establishing contact and state of motion in
applied I should like to take a group of com- L1 L2 contact, relative force;
paratively simple and very common verbs, all [ X and/or Z may remain implicit;
[ Establishing surface contact, relative force;
of which concern some kind of contact [ L2–Ln may be motion of X in contact with
[ pX (part of X) or Z may be soft;
between physical things: Z (surface of X moving along point of Z, or
[ pX remains implicit.
to clap to pat to strike X moving along surface of Z).
to slap to smack to stroke M1 M2 M3 M1 M2
to slam to knock to beat to slam af X X–Z X–Z to stroke Xi pX–Z pX–Z
to tap to hit to smash L1 L2 L3 L1 L2
As in most groups of related verbs, two, [ Establishing state in contact and produc- [ Motion in contact with Z;
three, or more of them may often apply to ing noise, relative force; [ Xi must be conative;
one and the same situation, but, on the other [ Z remains implicit. [ PX remains implicit;
hand, there are situations which can be [ L1–L2 = motion of pX and extension of Z.
M1 M2 M3
express only by one of the verbs. For instance,
to tap Xa pX pX–Z Y M1 M2 M3 M4
if one ship hits an iceberg and another strikes
L1 L2 L1 to beat af X X–Z X X–Z
on iceberg, they are – in practice – doing
[ Establishing and terminating point con- L1 L2 L1 L2
much the same thing; but hitting a match and
striking a match are two very different things; tact; [ Repeatedly establishing and terminating
and this is so, not because the discrepancy [ PX remains implicit; contact, relative force;
between their meanings makes no apprecia- [ Z may remain implicit; [ X may remain implicit.
ble difference in the one situation, whereas in [ (this does not include the 2nd meaning,
M1 M2 M3 M4
the other the difference is of practical impor- i.e., “to tap a barrel”).
to smash af X X–Z p1 p2
tance. M1 M2 M3 L1 L2 Ln Lm
In the formulas given below the following to pat Xi Y Y–Z Y
symbols are used: [ Establishing and terminating contact, rel-
L1 L2 L1
ative force, and change of relation whole/
M1, … Mn – moments of the development; [ Establishing and terminating surface con- part;
Xa, X, Y – the thing which executes or under- tact; [ Z remains implicit;
goes the development: [ X must be conative; [ P1 and p2 are parts of X or of Z;
Xa – if it always finds expression as subject of [ Y remains implicit; [ Ln and Lm are unspecified locations, one
the verb, [ Y or Z must be soft. of which must be different from L2.
X – if it finds expression either as subject or as M1 M2 M3
object of the verb, to smack Xa pX pX–Z pX If we have to translate sentences contain-
Y – if it always finds expression as object of the L1 L2 L/1 ing any one of these verbs into another lan-
verb; guage, we discover that each one “corre-
[ Establishing and terminating surface con-
a – the agent responsible for the development; sponds” to more than one verb in the output
tact and producing noise;
f – the agent employing relative force; language and that the choice will depend on
[ PX remains implicit.
i – the conative agent (i.e., acting with inten- the situation with which the sentence is con-
tion); M1 M2 M3 cerned. Taking only the most current uses and
Z – the thing with which X or Y are put in rela- to knock a X X–Z X leaving aside all figurative, metaphorical, or
tion; L1 L2 Ln idiomatic occurrences, we shall require
L1, L2, … Ln, Lm – different locations, roughly the following group in German:
i.e., result of localization; [ Establishing and terminating contact;
[ X and Z may remain implicit; klatschen tippen treffen
L/1, L/2 … – any location different from klappen antippen streichen
L1, L2, etc… [ X and Z must be hard.
schlagen stossen streichln

2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3 15

 historical radical constructivism
CONCEPTS

klopfen anstossen prügeln [ establishing and terminating point con- [ Repeated motion in contact, relative force;
hauen krachen zertrümmern tact; [ L1–L2 = motion of pX and extension of Z;
pochen prallen zerschlagen [ pX remains implicit. [ PX remains implicit; X must be conative.
Analysing them in the same manner as we
analysed the English verbs,a first examination M1 M2 M3 M1 M2 M3 M4
has led to the following results: antippen Xi pX pX–Z pX prügeln Xfi Y Y–Z Y Y–Z
L1 L2 Ln L1 L2 L1 L2
M1 M2
[ establishing and terminating point contact; [ Repeated establishment and terminating
klatschen a X X–Z
[ pX remains implicit. contact, relative force;
L1 L2
[ Y remains implicit; X must be conative.
[ Establishing surface contact and produc- M1 M2 M3
ing noise; stossen Xa pX–Z pX–Z Z M1 M2 M3
[ X and Z may remain implicit; Li L2 Ln zertrümmern Xf Y pY1 pY2
[ (this does not include the 2nd meaning, [ Motion in contact, terminating contact; L1 pY12 pY2
i.e., “to gossip”). [ pX remains implicit; [ Changing relation whole/part, relative
[ (the situation often also contains the force;
M1 M2 M3 M4
establishing of contact, but the verb, I [ PY1, pY2 = parts of Y remaining implicit;
klappen a X pX X pX
think, only implies this). [ Y must be explicit.
L1 L2 L1 L3
[ Change of direction by circular motioin M12 M2 M3 M1 M2 M3 M4
(partial) anstossen Xa Xa–Z Xa zerschlagen Xf Y Y–Z p1 p2
[ PX remain implicit. L1 L2 Ln L1 L2 Ln Lm
[ Establishing and terminating contact; [ Establishing contact, relative force, and
M1 M2 M3
[ Z remains implicit. changing relation whole/part;
schlagen af X X–Z X
[ L1–L2 = motion of Y;
L1 L2 Ln M1 M2
krachen + [ p1, p2 = parts of Y or of Z;
[ Establishing and terminating contact, rel- prep. Xf Xf–Z
[ Y or Z remain implicit.
ative force; L1 L2
[ X may remain implicit. [ Establishing contact, relative force, and
producing protracted noise;
M1 M2 M3 M4 These analyses should be considered an
[ X and Z must be explicit.
klopfen a X X–Z X X–Z illustration of method rather than final and
L1 L2 L1 L3 M1 M2 M3 definitive results. Above all I should like to
[ Repeatedly establishing and terminating prallen + an Xf Xf–Z X–Z stress once more that in each case the analysis
contact and producing noise; L1 L2 L/1 has been pushed just so far as to enable us to
[ X and Z may remain implicit. [ Establishing and terminating contact, rel- discriminate the nominatum of the particular
ative force; verb from those of the verbs under consider-
M1 M2 M3 M4 ation. Obviously some of the pieces that are
[ X and Z must be explicit.
hauen afi X pX X pX–Z used here as “elements of meaning” are far
L1 L2 L1 L3 M1 M2 M3 from being elementary, nor are all of them as
[ Establishing contact, relative force, circu- treffen a X Z X–Z clear and unequivocal as they should be (e.g.,
lar motion; L1 L2 L/1 the difference of attributing location to the
[ PX remain implicit; [ Establishing contact; one of two pieces in contact rather than the
[ X must be conative. [ L1–L/1 = motion of X; other). As our vocabulary increases, many of
M1 M2 M3 M4 [ Z may remain implicit. the formulas may have to be extended or cor-
pochen a X X–Z X X–Z rected in order to discriminate the develop-
M1 M2 mental situations represented by them from
L1 L2 L1 L2 streichen a X–Z X–z other similar ones, which, so far, have not
[ Repeatedly establishing and terminating L1 L2 been considered. In other words, the formulas
contact; [ Motion in contact; given here, although representing more or
[ X or Z is soft; [ L1—L2 motion of X and extension of Z; less accurately some characteristics of the
[ X and/or Z may remain implicit. [ Z may remain implicit. nominata of the respective verbs, are as yet
M1 M2 M3 certainly not exhaustive; they should how-
M1 M2 M3 M4
tippen Xi pX pX–Z pX ever, be sufficiently advanced to show that an
streicheln Xi pX–Z pX–Z pX–Z pX–Z
L1 L2 L1 exhaustive analysis of the meaning of words
L1 L2 L1 L2
can be achieved in this way.

16 Constructivist Foundations
 historical
CONCEPTS
Besides, they show a type of difficulty in
translating (regardless of whether mechanised
or not) which, hitherto, has certainly been
underrated, if not altogether overlooked: the
lack of precise correspondence between words
of different languages that are often held to be
“synonymous.” This, of course, is not really a
momentous discovery. In every bilingual dic-
tionary one finds thousands of instances of this
kind and human translators are so thoroughly
used to them that they rarely register them con-
sciously.
The verb “to hit” – to take one from our
selection – occurring in the sentence “the car
hits the wall,” could be translated in German as
“prallen,” “stossen,” “krachen,” plus a suitable
preposition; in the sentence “Mary hits John” it
would be rendered by “schlagen” or “hauen”
without a preposition (unless there is some
previous indication to the effect that Mary is
flying through the air or involved with some
other kind of relatively fast locomotion); in the
sentence “he hits the target” the German verb
would have to be “treffen,” and there are other
uses of “to hit” which, in translation, would
A continuing effort in
research and
development
Research by Ceccato and his team was carried
out at the Centro di Cibernetica e di Attività
Linguistiche (Università di Milano). Financ-
ing came from two major contracts running
simultaneously: one with Euratom (my ini-
tiative), and one with the Air Research and
Development Command (contract AF 61
(052)-212). A comprehensive report of their
first achievements was issued on the 4th June
1960 (RADC-TR-60-18), cf. also Ceccato
(1961). It included, after a major contribution
by Ceccato, Ernst’s second paper: Some notes
on Inter-Language Correspondence (pp. 117–
129 of the report). This report also contained
a smaller, more technical contribution by
him: Notes concerning output matrices (pp.
170–174 of the report).
As is well known, after the initial years of
enthusiasm, sponsors became more and more
reluctant to contribute any further. I left
Euratom in 1963; IDAMI (Italian Institute of
Engineering Information) took over the con-
tract with the U.S. Air Force Office of Scien-
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
require some further German verbs. And the
verb “to hit” is by no means an exception in this
respect. Nearly all the verbs used in everyday
language require multiple output in another
language, because the output language hardly
ever contains an exact operational replica of
the original verb to be translated.
Hence, when we translate – i.e., when we
reconstruct the correlational net indicated by
a particular input text and then express that
correlational net in another language – the
actual meaning of the input verb is only one of
the factors that we use in the procedure. The
other factor is the complex of indications that
we glean from the context of the particular
occurrence and, in a wider sense, from all we
know as a result of previous experience and
learning with regard to the kind of situation
referred to by the input text. This complex of
indications is accumulated in what we call the
Notional Sphere.
It is important to realise that reference to the
Notional Sphere is instrumental not only in the
process of translation, but already in the much
more usual and elementary process of under-
ABOUT THE COMMENTOR
Born in Paris in 1923, Paul Braffort gradu-
ated at the Sorbonne in both Philosophy
and Mathematics. He worked with the
French Atomic Energy Commisssion, then
for Euratom and the European Space
Agency. Later he joined The University of
Paris 11 (Orsay), the University of Chicago
and the “Collège International de Philoso-
phie.” He is a member of the OuLiPo
(Ouvroir de Littérature potentielle)
founded by Raymond Queneau (a Cec-
cato’s friend) and François Le Lionnais (who
was one of the organisers of the Namur’s
International Congress of Cybernetics.
tific Research. In 1965 a final report was
issued. It included a paper by Ernst von Gla-
sersfeld and Paolo Terzi (1965) on automatic
sentence analysis. Finally Ernst joined the
Georgia Institute for Research, and later the
University of Massachusetts.
From Ernst’s first papers onwards, Cec-
cato’s influence is evident. And maybe Oper-
ational Semantics could be considered – even
today – as a good introduction to the Scuola
Operativa Italiana’s concepts and methods.
radical constructivism
standing a given text. If “to understand” does in
fact mean to reconstruct a situation, the ele-
ments of which are conveyed by the text, it is
clear that we have to refer to the Notional
Sphere in order to understand sentences such
as “John hits Mary,” “John hits the target,” and
“John hits the bottom of the lift shaft” because
it is only on the basis of some previous knowl-
edge about things like Mary, target, or lift shaft
that we can establish the exact part John plays in
the situation generically conveyed by “to hit.”
Since translating presupposes understand-
ing the text that is to be translated, there would
seem to be no possibility of bypassing the
problem. On the other hand, however, the
research on translation has helped a great deal
to show the real extent of the problem and sug-
gest ways and means towards its final solution.
We now know for certain that the quality of
translation will always be proportional to the
exactness of the semantic analyses and the
comprehensiveness of the network of associa-
tions contained in the Notional Sphere, and
that both factors can be indefinitely refined
and improved. [EUR/C-IS/2196/61 f]
Ceccato died in 1997, but in 1987 a follow-
up of the Scuola had been founded by Felice
Accame: La Società di Cultura Metodologico-
Operativa, publishing Quaderni di Methodo-
logia including Ernst’s Il costructivismo radi-
cale in 1998, and including with veterans
such as Vittorio Somenzi, Giuseppe Vaccar-
ino and Ernst von Glasersfeld: a lifelong
faithfulness!
References
Ceccato, S. (1958) The machine that speaks
and thinks. In: Actes du 1e Congrès Inter-
national de Cybernétique, June 1956.
Gauthier-Villars: Paris/Namur , p. 288.
Ceccato, S. (ed.) (1961) Linguistic analysis
and programming for mechanical transla-
tion. Gordon & Breach: New York.
Glasersfeld, E. von & Terzi P. (1965) Automatic
English sentence analysis. Final Report,
AFOSR Grant AF EOAR 64-54. IDAMI
Language Research Section: Milan.
Received: 13 September 2006
Accepted: 27 February 2007
17
 philosophical-linguistic
REVIEW
Ernst von Glasersfeld
and the Scuola Operativa Italiana
Felice Accame A Società di Cultura Metodologico-Operativa <odradekmilano@tele2.it>
Onvonat Glasersfeld
least a couple of occasions, Ernst
tells of the very first
time he and Ceccato serendipitously hap-
pened upon each other and the way their
relationship developed from that point
(Glasersfeld 1998b, pp. 15–17; Glasersfeld
1999, p. 15). “It was just by chance” (Glasers-
feld 1998b, p. 15), at that time, that Ernst
brought his family to Merano, in 1947,
where he had been as a child; they were pen-
nyless; and – to save money – they used to
spend the good season in Val di Sogno, along
the bank of Lake of Garda, camping in a tent;
Ernst spent the day typewriting articles and
translations for journals and it was by
chance that a curious lady “with a she-com-
panion” happened to pass there “on a nice
day”; she had noticed him during her boat
trips and she wondered what the hell he was
doing there. Under such circumstances the
word “philosophy” worked as the currency
of the linguistic and cultural market: the
lady’s son also dealt with “philosophy,” and
he was Silvio Ceccato. Wittgenstein (whose
Tractatus Ceccato had translated in a version
that remains unpublished) served as the first
topic of conversation between the two of
them. Ceccato invited Ernst to join some
discussions with his friends of that time
(Albani, Maretti, Morpurgo, Rossi-Landi;
but not Somenzi and not Vaccarino, whom
Ernst met later) and then asked him to trans-
late his Teocono and, from 1949, to edit the
translations for the new-born review of the
Scuola Operativa Italiana, “Methodos”1.
However, as Ernst had to maintain his fam-
ily, the relation with Ceccato persisted rather
sporadically till 1959, when, to meet the
requirements of a contract offered by the US
Air Force, Ernst was summoned to the Cen-
tre of Cybernetics and Linguistic Activities
of the University of Milan, to be part of the
group of researchers invited to apply opera-
tive theory to the mechanical translation
from one language to another.
18
proto radical constructivism
Purpose: Appreciating the relationship between Sylvio Ceccato and Ernst von Glasers-
feld, both as people and in their work. Approach: historical and personal accounts, arche-
ological approach to written evidence. Findings: Ceccato’s work is introduced to an
English speaking audience, and the roots of Glasersfeld’s work in Ceccato’s is explored.
Flaws in Ceccato’s approach are indicated, together with how Glasersfeld’s work over-
comes these, specially in language and automatic translation, and what became Radical
Constructivism. Conclusions: Glasersfeld willingly acknowledges Ceccato, who he still
refers to as the Master. But Ceccato’s work is little known, specially in the English speak-
ing world. The introduction, critique and delineation of extension and resolution of Cec-
cato’s ideas in Glasersfeld’s work is the intended value of the paper.
Key words: philosophy, language, correlational grammar, “Scuola Operativa Italiana,”
attention/mind, mental operation.
Thus, Ernst is a member of the group that, “sceptical side of cognitivism.” Ceccato of
in 1960, signed the first Report on the project course claimed he had no notion of what
(Ceccato 1961), although, as Ernst himself Varela could have said (although he was lying
says, “il Maestro” did not like his contribution here, as he was familiar with some of Varela’s
(Glasersfeld 1998a, p. 18). I remark this detail work4); however, he very well knew that the
as I have the impression that this could be “current use of the word truth concerns the
considered the first symptom of something way by means of which results (to be pre-
“going wrong.” When, later on in 1963, Cec- sented) are obtained – a “doing” and “redo-
cato ran short of funds, it was Ernst who ing,” that is, continuously (re-)attempting,
looked for and found a new source of funding. etc. If results coincide,” Ceccato went on , “one
And then he tried (his turn now) to repay his has become used, among the public, to talk
debt to Ceccato, inviting him to join the new about truth for words and reality for the
group: but Ceccato refused. things that are indicated . And experiments
In May 1993 Ernst was in Milan for one of will be repeated again just to see what hap-
his short trips. We organized a meeting with pens. Just fancy! The inveterate philosopher
some friends for an in depth discussion of cer- keeps on thinking that those words are for
tain aspects of his thinking. The debate that everybody (and particularly for himself) a
followed was recorded and edited in the way to get closer to the truth-reality not of
Working Papers of the Società di Cultura repetition and control, but of transcendence
Metodologico-Operativa2 No. 41 in 1993 . At a of the undue doubling of the perceived” (Cec-
certain moment, replying to an observation cato 1993).
of mine, Ernst said that “sometimes one has Ceccato was returning the accusation to
the impression, with Varela and with Ceccato, the origin, charging him with all the wicked-
that they know what is the truth.” Ernst ness that (history of philosophy at hand) had
should not have said that! A note from Cec- made it an accusation. It is clear that Ceccato’s
cato “addressed to Accame-Glasersfeld” came reaction was not justified – it is not by accus-
just the right time, with a title sounding as ing someone of knowing what the truth is that
severe as an excommunication: “Il lupo perde it can be demonstrated that one has not left
il pelo…”3. With his note Ceccato indicated the trap of the theoretical-cognitive cage; on
that just on the base of this single statement it the contrary, it is with just such an argument
would have been an evident relapse into the that it can be proved that it is the person react-
Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
 philosophical-linguistic
REVIEW
ing to the accusation who cannot escape the
trap, leaving the cage behind. Rather, it is even
more obvious that Ceccato’s reaction
expresses the way he lived, in the sense of
experienced, his relationship with Ernst (and
with me as well).
A few years later, however – in his C’era
una volta la filosofia5 , the last book by Cec-
cato, the relationship has turned even more
sour. Ceccato mentions an “English collabo-
rator” who “was offered a contract for the
mechanical translation” just at the moment
he was refused funds from the U.S. Govern-
ment for his research. On this occasion, not
only does Ceccato not mention that Ernst
had invited him to be part of the new group
of research (and Ceccato declined), but also
he tells the story as though he should have
excited envy as a consequence of his
extraordinary achievements; and he en-
riches the story with a faked, and very
pathetic refusal to move to America, where
he would have been offered a rainbow lead-
ing to the proverbial crock of gold (Ceccato
1997, pp. 68–70).
Ceccato first mentions Ernst, without nam-
ing him, in a letter to Vaccarino, dated 31
August, 1948. “I found “, he says (and we
know from Ernst that things did not go
exactly this way), “the suitable translator for
the review’s English essays. He is an Irish
man, who has been living in Merano for
years, interested in our researches (he knows
Wittgenstein very well); he can translate from
Italian, French and German to English.” Later
on, on October 4, name and surname are
revealed, Ernst is still “the most suitable
translator I know,” but he has become
“English” (Ceccato guesses wrong again as
Ernst was Czech, born from Austrian par-
ents), “who studied in Germany” (Ceccato’s
geographical competence leaves something
to be desired: Ernst studied in Switzerland,
and later, for a short time, in Vienna), who
“married a French woman” (ehermm! the
English Isabel), who “has been living in Italy
for four years” and “who is interested in phi-
losophy.” He lives in Merano (Bolzano), via
Dante 49: this information is noteworthy as –
according to Ceccato – it is Vaccarino, as the
financer of Methodos, who should contact
Ernst and make the necessary agreements.
Some current fees are indicated, so Vaccarino
can act accordingly.
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
Later, references to Ernst tend to disappear
in Ceccato’s letters. Here, above all, it is clear
that Ceccato debates the basic theoretical
problems of the operative methodology with
Vittorio Somenzi; Ceccato also informs Vac-
carino and – sometimes – even directly argues
with him, but never does he argue with Ernst.
For example, in a letter to Vaccarino dated
July 20, 1951, he mentions “the Glasersfelds”
and he says he “tried to arrange something”
with them to stay together. But the reason is
that at the time Ceccato is dreaming of Amer-
ica, and would like to improve his English
through long talks with “the Glasersfelds,” to
cut a fine figure with a “Rockfeller officer,” the
coming October.
A few days later, on August 5, Ceccato asks
Vaccarino to find a place where “the Glasers-
felds” – as campers looking for beautiful sce-
nary – “can pitch their tent.” Any further ref-
erences are to Ernst as translator.
The “Teocono o della via che porta alla ver-
ità”6 was first published in the opening num-
ber of Methodos, in 1949. As I observed, with
Oliva, this work “achieves a break with (…)
philosophical tradition,” generating a “model
of philosophical production, not only in its
historical form, but even in the possibilities it
offers for (self) preservation and (self) per-
petuation.” We may thus think of it as “the
essay of the definition of philosophy”
(Accame & Oliva 1971, p. 310).
Written as a set of rules, or “game,” it was pub-
lished several times and in different versions.
At the point where “the players” are defined,
we are warned that there may be a “solitary
teoconist”7: however, “in order to stir up com-
petition,” the single player “would have to
assume the others’ play as a part of his own” :
that would be a true game any way. Ceccato
says these games usually occur in “schools”
and “circles.”
Well then, if the original version omitted the
names – left to the reader’s assumed cultural
awareness – in a later version of 1988 (the last
one), in Il perfetto filosofo8 , Ceccato does
mention a few names: “Platonism, Aristo-
telism, Thomism9, Marxism,” “Prague Circle”
and “Vienna Circle,” “Instrumentalism, Exis-
tentialism, Behaviourism,” followed by “Con-
structivism” (Ceccato 1988, p. 85).10 By set-
ting constructivism on the same level as other
philosophical solutions, Ceccato definitively
proto radical constructivism
sentences it to the flames of the methodolog-
ical-operative hell. As to whether constructiv-
ism were to be more or less “radical,” Ceccato
was really indifferent.
In my afterword to the Italian edition of Come
ci si inventa [How to invent oneself] (Accame
2001), I remind the reader of further occa-
sions when Ceccato confirmed his opposition
to Ernst’s thinking – always assuming that
Ernst never removed himself from philoso-
phy. As I see it, Ceccato’s arguments are weak
and a pretext, like those of a teacher wanting
a forever acquiescent and subordinate pupil.
But Ernst’s easy use of electively sceptical phi-
losophers leads one to think that his pars
destruens is not destruens enough to shift to
the pars construens, without risking a fall.
Notwithstanding Ceccato’s assertions, which
Ernst never failed to pay attention to, Ernst
always spoke very highly of Ceccato. Ernst
describes himself as being “mesmerized” by
Ceccato, considering him a “Maestro” and –
with no perfidy I believe – “one of the main
innovators in philosophical thought” (Gla-
sersfeld 1999, p. 16 and p. 20). Nevertheless,
he very honestly points his polite finger to
what he recognizes as the sores in the corpus
of Ceccato’s theories. I shall indicate some of
these “sores,” in the following sequence.
I come to the first point by running over
some aspects of a contribution by Ernst to the
Quinto Intrattenimento Metodologico-
Operativo11, in Rimini, in 1997. “When I
worked with Ceccato in the ’50s and ’60s, I
had several occasions to attend his demon-
stration concerning the constitution of the
meaning of ‘something,’ or the Latin ‘id,’”
Ernst says. “He looked at us as a magician
would, with his right arm behind his back,
and he said ‘Pay attention’. Then he moved his
arm in front of him and he said: ‘Here!’ He was
holding a piece of chalk, or a key; he explained
it was not the specific object that was part of
the constitution of the category of “some-
thing,” but the conjunction of two moments
of attention. He seemed very limpid.”
So he seemed. “However” (Ernst goes on)
“some years later, when I tried to coordinate
the teachings of the Scuola Operativa to reach
a homogeneous way of thinking, I realized
that this mime act – as many others – showed
that the Maestro had no doubt that his behav-
iour could produce specific mental reactions
19
 philosophical-linguistic
REVIEW
© Felice Accame
From the left: Gianni Sassi, Felice Accame, Marco Sigiani, Gino Di Maggio, Ernst von Glasersfeld.
Fondazione Mudima, Milan, 1989.
among us observers. The problem, which may
be unreal but is a problem nevertheless, orig-
inated in the impression that, although the
understandings we produce are products of
our mental operations, they do not seem to be
arbitrary.” It is at this point that Ernst reminds
us of an expression that (even if used by Cec-
cato in the past) he had retained as “opaque
and a bit mysterious”: the “dependences”
(Glasersfeld 1997) (a problem that Ceccato
“had neither time nor perhaps willingness to
explain”; Glasersfeld 1998a, p. 10).
Ceccato was happy to ignore this matter
completely. In fact, the analytical indexes of
his books do not include it. On the contrary,
it is Beltrame (1969, pp. 120–122) who widely
explains the concept in his Osservazione e
descrizione meccaniche12, an essay opening
the second part of the Corso di linguistica
operativa13. Beltrame argues that – when
elaborating a model of mental activity, we are
not only faced with indicating which opera-
tions have been carried out, but also “the
dependences of their execution.”
For instance, he draws a figure on the page
and he points out that “with a very high prob-
ability,” should someone be asked about it, he
would answer it is a “square,” given that any
other definition such as “four-sided,” “rhom-
bus,” “quadrangle,” “parallelogram,” “shape”
and so on, would be equally legitimate. Bel-
20
trame explains that – no doubt – a habit to
“work” (in the sense of building percepts)
“along horizontal and vertical lines” influ-
ences the way of operating; mainly when “the
line of the shape suggests or sustains move-
ments of this kind.” Generalising – that is,
extending his arguments to the definition of
criteria for the “study of dependences” – he
remarks how useful it would be, first at all, to
make a distinction between “physical pro-
cesses which take place in the environment
and which promote by recourse to a physical
mode” the functioning of some organs and
“the previous functioning of one or more
organs, meant as an exciting or inhibiting fac-
tor for the functioning of one or more
organs.”
Ernst declared himself perfectly persuaded
that “the analysis on the basis of moments of
attention – invented by Ceccato and devel-
oped by Vaccarino – is the only acceptable
one.” However, Ernst was persuaded too that
– at this point – we must say “why some cate-
gories are constitued and used,” while “other
possible ones do not appear.” Indeed, Ernst
had already been given an answer, but he still
maintained a number of “perplexities.” To
talk about “dependences” implied for him “a
sort of reference to reality.” Once he had cor-
rected Ceccato’s theory with Piaget’s, Ernst
overcame his perplexities by arguing that “one
proto radical constructivism
must assume some correspondences of con-
figuration between a category and the things
that are built before that category is applied to
them.” Finally, to him “that correspondence
would be the first type of dependence that
determines what I would call the viability of
categorial applications” (Glasersfeld 1998a,
pp. 11–14).14 As I see it, all this was the sign of
a profound misunderstanding.
To my mind it is definitively legitimate to
extend scientific research to the conditions
under which results were obtained by adopt-
ing exactly the same criteria used to carry on
investigation about those results. The Scuola
Operativa Italiana never meant to elaborate a
new theory of knowledge: rather, it proposed
a series of issues to support the thesis that
many things may go better if one keeps on
enquiring which operations lead to a result;
the school also built a hypothesis to identify
these operations and a method to describe
and indicate them. Its programme did not go
beyond this, while nevertheless being aware
that the perceived, the categorized and the
semanticised is always the result of someone’s
operations (and not a per se result, indepen-
dent of anyone). Thus, the extension of the
analysis to the conditions is the result of a
choice that can be made or not made, but that
– in any case where a relation is present – will
always have reference to the awareness of the
actor. From this point of view, the “physical”
– as the “psychic” or the “mental” – is simply
the result of a specific way of operating: reality
in terms of “its viability,” when the result is
embedded in the history of the organ that
does the operating.
As a second sore I would mention the con-
flict between the genealogical hypotheses of
categories elaborated by Ceccato and by
Piaget. Piaget – Ernst says – “realized that all
conceptual structures – most of Ceccato’s
“pure categories” resulting from the applica-
tion of a state of attention to itself – were not
there since the beginning but appeared pro-
gressively with experience”; this led Piaget to
talk about “abstraction,” as well as distin-
guishing between “empirical abstractions at
sensory-motor level” and “reflective abstrac-
tions.” That is the point. Ernst believes that
the principle may be valid for both types of
abstractions, and for Ceccato’s categories as
well. So he comes back to the old example: the
“something” is obtained after the “pay atten-
tion” and “here!” only when the categorial
Constructivist Foundations
 philosophical-linguistic
REVIEW
structure is applied to what is presented. With
nothing at hand, well, there is no “some-
thing.” The reflective abstractions of Piaget
would be some “configuration structures of
mental operations emptied of sensory-motor
material”: this material – although it has dis-
appeared – was however necessary to their
constitution (Glasersfeld 1998a, pp. 13–14).
As I see it, the conflict is not worthy of our
attention, and may not exist at all. The exam-
ple discussed by Ernst cannot deny that
humans allow themselves the category of
“something” which is not identified with any-
thing specific. Moreover, Ceccato never
excluded the evolutive progression of the cat-
egorial set. Ceccato’s analysis addresses the
hinc et nunc of the actor performing the oper-
ations: according to him, when the actor
performs the analysis (about the
“something,” the “here,” the
“now,” the “beginning,” or
the “end”) the sensory-
motor, or the perceived,
is not interacting. The
difference between the
two points of view
could be resolved by
shifting from a syn-
chronic analysis to a
diachronic analysis.
The conflict dis-
© Felice Accame
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
appears when we take into account that Cec-
cato’s analysis strictly pertains to the results of
attentional combination, since it does not
take into any consideration the way those
results interact with the sensory-motor. In
contrast, when Ernst tried to set up an opera-
tive model to include both contexts (while
identifying the categorial steps leading to the
“number”) the problem of the heterogeneity
of constitutive elements was given only a
strictly formal solution (Glasersfeld 1981).
The third sore is nothing but a small
imperfection, belonging to others rather than
to Ceccato’s theory itself. It is a question of
names. Ceccato’s analysis concerns language
and the mental activity it designates. When
defining the mental elements used as a link
between one meaning and another, Ceccato
uses the term “correlators”: since they per-
form the same function at the level of lin-
guistic designation, it follows that the
same term is maintained here too.
Some mental correlators have corre-
sponding linguistic correlators – but
not all of them, at least not those
obtained by the same method (some
are obtained with a word, for
instance, but this may not apply to
others). Ernst says this provoked a
number of misunderstandings: and as
a consequence the correlational
grammar elaborated by
Ceccato was not prop-
erly recognized by the
interna-
tional scien-
proto radical constructivism
tific community (Glasersfeld 1999, p. 19).
That may be. But – as I tried to argue on other
occasions Accame (2002, 1994) – I think that
the reasons Ceccato’s theory and the whole
Scuola Operativa were not properly recog-
nized are different in nature; these reasons are
deeply rooted in the traditional thinking of
our culture as well as in the rationale of pow-
ers this culture contributes, in one way or
another.
And so, with the following fourth, and last
– so it seems at least – remark of mine, we
come back to a further sore.
Ceccato – of course – would remain “one
among the most relevant innovators of the
philosophical thinking” (and he would not be
that glad of such an appreciation): but to
understand his value some obstacles have to be
removed. The circularity of Ceccato’s defini-
tion of “mind” appears to Ernst as one of the
“hardest” obstacles.”We may agree to talk of an
attentional activity until attention is not
applied either to itself or to something else”
Ceccato says. “When attention is applied to
itself ” (as we already stated) “it generates an
activity called categorial; and when it applies
to the functioning of other organs it generates
the activity of presence.”15 But, “mind is the
complex of these activities, and it keeps a com-
plex/elements relation with them. That is a
category in itself ” (Ceccato 1966, p. 22). Thus,
mind (or “mind” in quotes as Ernst would pre-
fer, although, as I see it, there is no difference
between the two) “is constituted by the catego-
rial activity that is an element of mind itself ”:
a circularity that is accepted only with diffi-
culty (Glasersfeld (1999, p. 20). Perhaps I am
not demanding too much, for it is not difficult
for me to accept the fact that if an object to be
analysed is reduced into constitutive elements
(that in principle constitute all analysable
objects), no object may be excluded from the
analysis. It is a tautology. If I reduce everything
surrounding me to atoms – in its etymological
sense – I have no difficulties reducing myself to
atoms too (meaning myself as the actor per-
forming the analysis). Thus – careful! – we do
not exclude the case that the unit of analysis
may be investigated in different ways. The unit
results from a choice made by the analyser, it is
not an independent matter of fact. Thus, Cec-
cato’s “attention” – and the “mind” it consti-
tutes – may be the object of different analyses:
the one by the neurobiologist, for instance,
given some declared criteria by which possible
21
 philosophical-linguistic
REVIEW
reciprocal correspondences may be fixed. Put
another way, we could assume that the mind
may be considered a complex of activities –
and not that the mind is. In both cases we
would have nothing to do with that delightful
silliness contained in the statement “mind is
brain”16 (I say delightful since it gives evidence
of the vain materialistic concerns of “trendy”
philosophers).
Ceccato’s correlational grammar was elabo-
rated by Ceccato in the face of specific and
urgent needs. Accordingly, it was little and
poorly developed. In turn, this often
obscurred the model of mental activity and its
relation with the language which had gener-
ated the correlational grammar itself. That
this so is obvious from the rather unpolished
composition of the “table” of categories: in
the classification of the implicit mental corre-
lators; and in the fact that the “mental” was
limited to “what has been heard about,” as
well as being represented with linguistic des-
ignations and formalisations. Further, at the
time, there were research projects and con-
tracts waiting to be fulfilled. Like heaven, the-
ory could wait. But, when Ernst was faced
with the problem of automatic translation
again, for the second time, he succeeded in
applying relevant and meaningful changes to
the analytical framework. His experience with
Ceccato and with the Centre of Cybernetics
and Linguistic Activities of University of
Milan was over by that time, and he had
started a collaboration with Jehane Burns and
Pier Paolo Pisani at Idami, also in Milan.
Thanks to his Multistore (applied to the
English language) the operative economy
became a criterion of correlational grammar.
I will try to explain at least its starting point:
in correlational syntax a sequence of indexes
was assigned to each word; and any index rep-
resented a connecting potential and it fulfilled
a specific relation with another word or sen-
tence. The connection took place on the basis
of the complementarity of indices (a way of
ratifying compatibility) so as to avoid a priori
linguistic combinations that could be gram-
matically correct, but wrong when reaching
the semantic level, whenever a human inter-
vention was needed to “adjust” the automatic
result. Notwithstanding, the average number
22
of indices of correlation for each word was too
high, especially in relation to available
machines: in this case the ELEA 9003 of
Olivetti Electronics Division in Milan. At this
point it became necessary to insert the princi-
ple of re-classification (indexing whole corre-
lational structures) and the correlational
probability (Glasersfeld 1965). With these
innovations Ernst obtained outcomes rele-
vant in technical terms and meaningful in
terms of models: the amount of human work
on mechanical translation was significantly
reduced and, at the same time, the still simply
“ideal” or too static framework of the correla-
tional grammar was enriched by evolutive
dynamics17.
From the moment of its birth, the Scuola
Operativa Italiana was a strange and
unhealthy entity: with no premises, no
agenda, headed by a Trimurti18 with difficult
reciprocal relations, and with few disciples.
Some of the disciples soon took flight and a
few were rejected, a school that was denied,
even by its inventor, a school with no real and
genuinely well-formulated theory. Perhaps I
tried too hard, caring for the Scuola, eventu-
ally arriving at the conclusion that the main
theoretical responsibilities should have been
shared between Ceccato and Somenzi19, with
Vaccarino deserving an Academy Award for
patience – while the clever Rossi-Landi soon
took flight and did little but look after his own
interests (Accame 1987). Others – I name
Barosso and Beltrame – elaborated the basic
theoretical framework while either reaching a
sceptic-like disengagement (Barosso) or ren-
ovating its methodological perspectives (Bel-
trame). For some years I wasted my time and
energies trying to grant the Scuola Operativa
Italiana at least some sort of collective dimen-
sion and some rules of correct communica-
tion. Notwithstanding all the support from
Somenzi and Vaccarino – in the face of Cec-
cato’s faked indifference – I achieved little: an
association, the Società di Cultura Metodolog-
ica-Operativa; a new journal – Methodologia –
as the inheritance of Methodos; five symposia
and some public debates; in 1989 a newsletter,
which still survives. This effort of mine
started in 1985, with the preparation of the
few booklets of the Critica sociale delle
proto radical constructivism
Scienze20. Through this I got in touch again
with Ernst. I owed Ernst my very first meeting
with Ceccato, in 1964, but since he had left for
America, I had lost contact.
Ernst, however, missed nothing by going to
America. He had met Somenzi and Vaccarino
(Glasersfeld 1999, p. 17) – too late for the first
and too early for the latter, who elaborated his
own system of semantics only later, proposing
a form of thinking distinct from Ceccato’s.
The Scuola Operativa Italiana was falling to
bits all over the place, while Ceccato – unde-
ceived yet impatient for the hinc et nunc – a
few, damned and immediate tokens of
approval – contributed by letting the school
lose that modest influence and any scientific
credibility it may have acquired. Very few –
among those directly concerned – were able to
understand the countribution that the evolu-
tion of Ernst’s thinking indirectly gave to the
theoretical nucleus of the Scuola Operativa
Italiana. Ceccato (as we have seen) excommu-
nicated him; Vaccarino was much too buried
in his own system to recognise any alternative
or different research line; but Somenzi, not-
withstanding his suspicious doubts on “con-
structivism,” (and to be honest, also, to some
extent, Rossi-Landi) did not miss the huge rel-
evance of Ernst’s experimentation with the
chimpanzee Lana, so strongly opposed by the
obscurantist Chomsky and the surrounding
Chomskians. The chimpanzee was committed
to communicate to humans (via computer) by
means of a language that – a frequently forgot-
ten critical detail – was built by Ernst on the
basis of correlational grammar (Somenzi 1987
and afterword to Premack 1978).
I have to apologize to Ernst, who knew me
as a presumptuous kid. I owe him memories
of moments that – when happening – I
wished could last forever: a discussion on the
methodology of literary critics (Glasersfeld
1968; the themes were more or less those
ones), Isabel crushing a nut and offering it to
me, Sandra on the cover of Gli effimeri (S. von
Glasersfeld 1964)21, some dinners – with
Charlotte, with Bruna Zonta, with my wife
Anna – a painting by her enriching the cover
of the Italian edition of Come ci si inventa, the
walks along the beach at Rimini, in September
1997, at nightfall.
Constructivist Foundations
 philosophical-linguistic
REVIEW
Notes
1. And also for the translation of Il linguag-
gio con la tabella di Ceccatieff (The Lan-
guage with Ceccatieff’s Table) [translator],
the first book by Ceccato, published in
Italian and English by Hermann & Co. in
Paris in 1951.
2. The Society of Methodological-Operative
Culture [translator].
3. “The wolf looses its sheep’s clothing”
[translator].
4. We had talked together about Autopoiesi
e cognizione written by Varela and Hum-
berto Maturana.
5. Once upon a Time Philosophy [transla-
tor].
6. The Teocono or The Way to The Truth
[translator].
7. A teoconist is presumably a solitary play-
er of the game developed in Teocono
[translator].
8. The Perfect Philosopher [translator].
9. [Editors’ and translators’ comment:] Th-
omism is the philosophical school that
followed in the legacy of Thomas Aquinas
(1224/1225–1274). The word comes
from the name of its originator, scholastic
philosopher and theologist, whose sum-
mary work is the Summa Theologiae.
Aquinas worked to create a philosophical
system which integrated Christian doc-
trine with elements taken from the phi-
losophy of Aristotle. Aquinas is generally
agreed to have moved the focus of Scho-
lastic philosophy from Plato to Aristotle .
References
Accame, F. (1987) Percorsi metodologico-
operativi nell’opera di Rossi-Landi. Il Pro-
tagora XXVII: 11–12.
Accame, F. (1994) L’individuazione e la desig-
nazione dell’attività mentale. Espansione:
Rome.
Accame, F. (2001) Afterword. In Foerster, H.
von & Glasersfeld, E. von (2001) Come ci
si inventa. Odradek: Rome, pp. 179–186.
Accame, F. (2002) La funzione ideologica
delle teorie della conoscenza. Spirali:
Milan.
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
10. This version was enriched by embarass-
ing elements of occasional chronicle,
mainly inaccurate, and by a very cultivat-
ed sense of persecution. Even the version
title – Hide and seek – is not suitable for
the original. Who is not interested in the
narrative forms of someone frustrated
and unsuccessful (preferring to aim at
learning tools letting him free from phi-
losophy) would had better forget this ver-
sion.
11. Fifth Methodological-operative meeting
[translator].
12. Mechanical Observation and Description
[translator].
13. Course of operative linguistics [translator].
14. Where Ernst says “configuration,” he
complains about the missing Italian word
for “pattern.”
15. The original Italian is attività presenzia-
trice [translator].
16. On the presumed problem of circularity
in Ceccatos’s theory see Panetta (1999),
pp. 142–145.
17. The development of the Multistore pro-
gram made a detailed analysis of the cor-
relators necessary, which in fact was to be
Ernst’s interest in the following years. See
Glasersfeld (1998), p. 10.
18. [Editors’ and translators’ comment:] In
some schools of Hinduism, the Trimurti
(or the Hindu trinity) is a concept that
holds that God has three aspects, which
are only different forms of the same one
God. The three aspects of God are Brah-
ma (the Source/Creator),Vishnu (the
Accame, F. & Oliva, C. (1971) Prefazione
all’Antologia di Methodos. Pensiero e Lin-
guaggio in operazioni 2(7–8): 280–289.
Beltrame, R. (1969) Osservazione e descriz-
ione meccaniche. In: Ceccato, S. (ed.)
Corso di linguistica operativa. Longanesi:
Milan, pp. 115–139.
Ceccato, S. (ed.) (1961) Mechanical Transla-
tion: The correlational approach. Gordon
and Breach: New York. Italian original
published in 1960.
Ceccato, S. (1966) Un tecnico fra i filosofi, II
vol. Marsilio: Padova.
Ceccato, S. (1988) Il perfetto filosofo. Laterza:
proto radical constructivism
Preserver/Indwelling-life) and Shiva (the
Transformer-Destroyer/Creator).
19. Someone may find this observation
strange. But I am convinced about that:
the role of Vittorio Somenzi was promi-
nent in the early phases of the Scuola Op-
erativa Italiana. His voluntary exil was
provoked by unresolvable theoretical
frictions with Ceccato – frictions that of
course also invested the ethical sphere.
But Somenzi never lost any hope to see
his methodological-operative principles
recognized and developed. On the base of
unedited sources I sustained this thesis in
an essay I delivered to Claudio Del Bello
in summer 2005, in order to assist the
publication of a book by Somenzi, Come
non detto, which he gave us some time be-
fore his death.
20. Social Critics of Sciences [translator].
21. The book is dedicated “to Ernst and to Is-
abel.” I can remember it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Felice Accame was born in 1945 in Varese.
He is teaching communication theory at the
Technical Center of Coverciano. Accame is
president of the Society of Methodological-
Operative Culture. Since 1985 together
with Carlo Oliva he moderates the trans-
mission “Hunting to the daily ideology” of
the Popular Radio of Milan.
Rome, Bari.
Ceccato, S. (1993) Reumatismi delle spugne a
priori e porpore a posteriori. Methodolo-
gia Working Papers 42.
Ceccato, S. (1997) C’era una volta la filosofia.
Spirali: Milan.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1965) Multistore: Un pro-
cedimento per l’analisi correlazionale
dell’inglese. Automazione e automatismi
9(2): 5–28.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1968) Alla ricerca di dati
precisi. Nuovo 75(2): 36–40.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1981) An attentional
model for the conceptual construction of
23
 philosophical-linguistic
REVIEW
units and number, in Journal for Research
in Mathematics Education 12(2): 83–94.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1997) Lotta con una vec-
chia perplessità. Relazione al Quinto
Intrattenimento Metodologico-Opera-
tivo, Rimini.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1998a) Cronaca di cons-
apevolezza operativa personale. Quaderni
di Methodologia 5: 9–16.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1998b) Il costruttivismo
radicale. Società Stampa Sportiva: Rome.
24
English original: Glasersfeld, E. von
(1995) Radical constructivism. Falmer
Press: London.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1999) Omaggio al Mae-
stro. Quaderni di Methodologia 7: 15–21.
Glasersfeld, S. von (1964) Gli effimeri. Lerici:
Milan.
Panetta, M. (1999) Il rapporto tra pensiero e
linguaggio nella filosofia analitica e nella
tecnica operativa di Ceccato. Quaderni di
Methodologia 7: 121–145.
proto radical constructivism
Premack, A. J. (1978) Perché gli scimpanzé
possono leggere. Armando: Rome.
Somenzi, V. (1987) Le obiezioni a Von
Glasersfeld. Alfabeta 102.
Translated by Silvia Pizzocaro
and Ranulph Glanville
Received: 27 August 2006
Accepted: 5 February 2007
Updated: 23 April 2007
Constructivist Foundations
 Cognitive-psychological & historical radical constructivism
REVIEW

The Theoretical Environment

around 1965
Renzo Beltrame A National Research Council of Italy <renzo.beltrame@isti.cnr.it>

observe’ (realism). Observation thus

Purpose: Ernst von Glasersfeld has actively contributed to the development of the ideas introduced is precisely the symbolizatum
of the Scuola Operativa Italiana (SOI) from 1947.The paper outlines the theoretical status of ‘knowing’.”
of the SOI research around 1965, which also marks the conclusion of an important phase We can find many rewordings by Ceccato
of this development. The aim is to contribute to better understanding of the continuity of this criticism, frequently in Italian and
of Glasersfeld’s research. Key words: Cognition, Italian Operational School, Ceccato. mainly with reference to perception (Ceccato
1962, 1965, 1967a, b). He also wrote a brief,
historical sketch in a satirical tone, which had

T heclusion
years around 1965 marked the con-
of an important phase in the
development of the ideas of the Scuola Oper-
ativa Italiana (SOI).1 Glasersfeld had actively
participated in this fascinating development
starting from 1947 (Glasersfeld 1999). More-
over, during the first half of the sixties he was
involved full-time in a Mechanical Transla-
tion project at the Centro di Cibernetica e di
Attività Linguistiche of the University of
Milan; this project was an important test of
the new ideas.
Around 1965, Ceccato had completed his
critical revision of the historical theories of
knowledge, and he had also proposed a few
elementary operations to describe mental
activity with a completely constructive con-
structivist approach. The use of these new
tools led all of us in Ceccato’s team to measure
the deep and subtle dependence of mental
activity on context, and this awareness would
strongly contribute to differentiating the
research lines of the SOI components.
Glasersfeld fully accepted this depen-
dence: as his idea of viability would show, as
well as his experiments on learning with the
linguistic chimpanzees. I worked at the Cen-
tro di Cibernetica during those years, and I
think it is interesting to recall the attainments
that we considered stable at that time, and the
awareness that we had on the open problems.
I shall refer to Ceccato’s papers, which are the
source of the theoretical framework of the
whole team.
Ceccato concluded the revision of the his-
torical theories of knowledge with a radical
criticism of the notion of knowing. The main
point of this criticism was the erroneous way
of defining knowing in terms of a relationship
between two entities rather than as a constitu-
tive activity that starts from scratch. Since the
two elements of a relation must be mentally
constructed before putting them into rela-
tionship, knowledge would be introduced as a
definiens into its definition.
Let me quote an early formulation of this
criticism (Ceccato 1951, p. 21):
“[O]bserver, observatum, observation are
born together; the observer and the obser-
vatum, or one of the two, are not born
before and observation afterwards. But
this operational awareness has been lack-
ing, and at least three thousand years of
philosophical and scientific work were ori-
ented by this lack. One began by maintain-
ing that observer and observatum subsist
before and independently from observa-
tion, each as such in itself. One executes,
that is to say, the operation of: 4K) Dou-
bling the observer into ‘observer as such in
itself, but awaiting to observe’ and
‘observer who observes,’ and the observa-
tum into ‘observatum as such in itself, but
awaiting to be observed’ and ‘observed
observatum.’ This way of operating is
called ‘passivism.’ And then: 5K) One adds
observation, more or less as activity of the
observer on the observata, activity that
transforms the observata from ‘observata
awaiting to be observed’ into ‘observed
observata’ (idealism), or as activity of the
observata on the observers, activity that
transforms the observers from ‘observers
awaiting to observe’ into ‘observers who
an English version as well (Ceccato 1949).
The knowing activity was thought of as a
flow of elementary mental operations, which
constitutes a known thing when a sequence of
these operations is thought as a result. An
example of the transition from the criticism
to this constructive approach, can be found in
the following passage (Ceccato 1963, pp. 10–
11):
“[T]hings […] were at first […] distorted
by a speculative tradition […] which
taught that the brain should be considered
not in terms of organs and their functions,
but as the passive mirror of the events
around it. These events were to be found
inside the brain as duplicates of things out-
side it. […] A determining factor [in the
discovering of the error] was the observa-
tion that, of a thing which remains the
same in its form and material, we often
speak in different and even contradictory
ways. We may speak of a cup, for instance,
as a part (in relation to the tea service) and
yet as a whole” (in relation to its handle,
rim, and so on). We may regard a finger-
nail as the beginning of the finger, or as its
end. […] We concluded […] that at least
some of the things which we designate by
words are quite independent of the bodies
in our environment, and cannot thus rep-
resent a duplication; instead, they arise
from operations which we ourselves per-
form.”
Among the elementary operations, a
selective function of attention was intro-
duced in a way that can be traced back to W.
James’ The Principles of Psychology (James

Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3 25

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 Cognitive-psychological & historical
REVIEW
1890). Here I offer a short quotation (Cec-
cato 1964a, p. 8):
“The application of the attention, besides
bringing to mind the functioning of the
other organs, isolates a ‘tantum’ of it. […]
In that they are results of this paying of
attention, leaving aside the question ‘what
is the functioning organ and the ‘tantum’
of functioning,’ let us give these results the
name ‘praesentiata’.”
Clearly, a physiological counterpart of the
“praesentiata” is described. However, it was
not stressed, here and in other places, that
such a description had the methodological
character of a definition.
About fragmentation, we find (Ceccato
1967a, p. 200):2
“As to the functioning of the organs which
the attention makes present and breaks
into fragments, a list of these elements as
well would be indispensable in order to see
with what stones the building of the mind
has been constructed. […] This list already
exists more or less, even if it is rather
imprecise and oscillating, when one gath-
ers together, in dictionaries for example,
the names both of colors, flavors, […] and
those of the types of lines and surfaces into
which various figures can be broken down,
and which correspond to our movements.
[…] In order to ensure that the picture is
complete, another path has been chosen,
that of seeking to pair up these elements
with physical situations according to the
stimulus-response relationship, […]
therefore introducing the order of the
numeric series; whereas forms are treated
by analytic geometry.”
The things that were called attentional
structures, or mental categories, are probably
the most original idea in the mental activity
scheme. Let me quote a short, formal presen-
tation of these mental constructs from Cec-
cato (1967a, p. 199):
“[W]e give the various attentional struc-
tures, which we will call Y, a formal system-
atization according to the widely used
notation of the Warsaw School: (1) Y is an
S (where S represents a state of attention).
(2) Y is a D1SS (where D1 represents the
binary operator of which the S’s are the
arguments: operation D1 consisting in
maintaining a first state of attention when
a second is added). (3) Y is a D2S D1SS or
a D2D1SS S (where D2 represents the
26
binary operator of which the arguments
are a single S or a combination of S’s: oper-
ation D2 consisting of memorizing and
taking up one S or a combination of S’s).”
However, we need a further rule, such as:
(4) Y is a D3 YaYb (where D3 represents the
binary operator of which the arguments Ya
and Yb are type (3) Ys) that is mentioned in
the comment on rule (3).
Such kinds of structures were proposed to
describe both simple mental constructs (e.g.,
“singular,” “plural,” “some,” “other,” “begin,”
“end,” etc.), and more complex structures
that had strong methodological relevance
(e.g., the causal schemes, the times, modes,
and aspects of verbs, etc.), although the latter
were described with a coarser granularity.
Mixed constructs were nevertheless pro-
posed, in which mental categories were asso-
ciated with constructs that involve praesenti-
ata. Among them, let me quote a proposal for
the mental activity by which we think of phys-
ical things and their mutual interactions
(Ceccato 1967a, p. 201):
“[L]et us add the temporal and spatial
localization of the represented thing or of
the perceived thing. We obtain the possi-
bility of pairing with these, respectively,
another represented or perceived thing in
temporal or spatial relationship, provided
that the representative or perceptive oper-
ating be repeated […] We have thus oper-
ated enough to reach the psychical and the
physical; the first in that objectifying has
been performed at least twice, temporally
localizing the results and putting them
into relationship with each other; the sec-
ond because the results put in relationship
with each other have been localized spa-
tially. One should not expect to find those
results of objectifying operation always
taken as two distinct things, in as much as
it is possible to link them respectively with
duration and with extension, that is to
consider them as the same thing. […] In
any case, when more than one physical or
psychical construction is put into play, the
relationships which they have between
them will no longer be our mental history,
but theirs.”
This idea had a great methodological rele-
vance, because it outlined that physical things
were thought of as being subject and objects
of their mutual interactions. Since these inter-
actions are independent from the mental
radical constructivism
activity of the person who predicts or
observes them, the scheme of the mental
activity organically included a constraint that
arises from our common experience. Such an
early inclusion was determinant in preventing
the SOI approach from becoming a new type
of mentalism.
The previous mental constructs were
thought to imply the sensory memory: that is,
they never span above 1–2 seconds. A further
elementary activity was introduced to
describe a mental activity that spans over
longer intervals of time: for instance, linguis-
tic activity (Ceccato 1964a, pp. 13–15):
“A second more comprehensive modulus
is the substitutive one, characterized by
making two units of the first degree [the
additive previous one] follow one another
through a unit, it too of the first degree,
which constitutes the relationship
between them. This happens in that (a) the
unit used as the first term of the relation-
ship, is maintained once it is completed,
(b) in regard to this maintained unit, the
mental category of relationship comes
about, and (c) this too, once completed, is
maintained upon the addition of the sec-
ond term of the relationship. […]
“In order to avoid confusion between this
kind of relationship, of cuts and sutures of
an attentional sort, and the relationships
due to physical nature, we propose to
speak of correlators for the relationships,
of correlata for the terms of the relation-
ship, of correlational structure for the
results of correlating […]
“The comprehensiveness of this modulus
of construction is given by the fact that an
entire structure can act as an element in a
new structure, giving rise to more or less
extended correlational nets. […] correla-
tional nets […] rarely go above 6–7 sec-
onds.”
The following graphic representation was
generally used for the correlation:
correlator
1st correlatum 2nd correlatum
Nested correlations were used to represent
correlational nets.
Another elementary operation was intro-
duced to extend the spanning of the correla-
tional nets beyond 6–7 seconds. However, it
Constructivist Foundations
 Cognitive-psychological & historical
REVIEW
was described as function (Ceccato 1967a p.
206):
“The correlational procedure could not
however be prolonged beyond six or
seven seconds, without the first elements
being inevitably lost. Our memory, as a
holding of presence, would not allow it.
That which permits us to continue the
correlational net is another of the func-
tions of the memory […], the summariz-
ing one, with which it is possible to take
up in condensed form the thought which
has already been performed; a function
which in language for the most part is
designated with pronouns: ‘Mario and
Luigi went happily on their brand-new
bicycles. They …’”
Although correlation and correlational
net were introduced with a general valence,
they were mainly used with reference to lan-
guage and they had a central role in the
Mechanical Translation project (Ceccato
1964b). In a linguistic context, conjunctions,
prepositions (Glasersfeld 1965), and the syn-
tactic categories nearly always designate cor-
relators; pronouns usually involve a summa-
rizing activity; and punctuation and articles
(Glasersfeld 1963) frequently acquire this last
function as well. In this theoretical frame-
work, the linguistic activity took the follow-
ing meaning (Ceccato 1967a, p. 214):
“Designating, that is, expressing and
understanding, means connecting the
functioning of the hearing and voice
organs with the functioning of the of the
organs of thought and its contents.”
Here, “thought” has the technical mean-
ing of correlational net. We have to read the
sentence as saying that we speak of designat-
ing when a connection occurs between the
two orders of functioning; otherwise, we
would contradict the principle that a physical
process involves only physical things.
A problem clearly arose. The research on
Mechanical Translation showed that, in
modeling what we considered a suitable
understanding of the current sentence, the
main difficulty was to describe and use the
knowledge that we had acquired from the
previous sentences (Ceccato 1964a, 1967b,
p. 19):
“Whoever follows a speech, or reads a text,
carries into each successive sentence that
which he had learned in the preceding
one. […] as the discourse progresses, the
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
context of each word broadens and makes
any doubt difficult.”
Alternative ways of understanding a sen-
tence are most always possible. Different pre-
vious knowledge, and the pressure of time
constraints, make each alternative more or
less probable.
We met the same problem in studying
visual perception (Ceccato 1965, pp. 20–21):
“We know […] that by showing a certain
thing we will not necessarily obtain the
same response from everyone, […] We
encounter this relative liberty on the plane
of the most elementary perception. […]
The liberty of the response is even greater
when observation and description regard
an event.”
The physical situation that acts as stimulus
does not determine the perceptual result: here
too, alternatives are always possible beyond
the classical alternating figures of psychology.
The pressure of time constraints, and the pre-
vious mental activity still make each alterna-
tive more or less probable.
We were fully aware that neither a physio-
logical approach to a theory of human behav-
ior, nor an anthropological one, offered a reli-
able solution to the problem. The following
way of describing memory functions offers a
sample of that awareness (Ceccato 1967a, p.
202):
“Let us […] consider the various functions
which memory performs. It can keep
present that which has just barely been
done (that is, memory as the continuation
of presence, such as eidetic images); it can
make present again that which has been
absent (that is, memory as retrieval).
Then, it operates on the past not only pas-
sively, but also selectively and through
association (that is, memory as elabora-
tion, as creation), but above all, it operates
on the past by condensing it, by sum-
marizing it. Furthermore, it makes a pro-
pulsive force of it; it makes it act on the
operating under way. Finally, memory can
make present not only that which has
already been made present by the atten-
tion, but also, although to a lesser degree,
the operating of organs which has passed
unnoticed. In this way, memory and atten-
tion complement each other, and the
attention has before it a field that is broad-
ened from the simple present to include
our whole life.”
radical constructivism
The general problem of describing a men-
tal activity that has the suitable dependence
on the context is still open; and the sentence
“Furthermore, it makes a propulsive force of
it; it makes it act on the operating under way”
simply makes claims for a dynamics of mental
activity.
The question “When does a person speak
or write a given phrase?” received an intial
response: “When the person has made the
related set of mental operations,” which
began to be felt as a mere rewording of the
original question, although it implied a radi-
cally new approach. The question began to be
substituted by “When will a person perform a
given set of mental operations?,” which
requires changing from a descriptive
approach to mental activity to a predictive
one. Two factors, however, hindered the free
use of the predictive approach.
The first factor was a side effect of the stud-
ies on Mechanical Translation. In MT, we start
from a written text and we deal with the activ-
ity of understanding it. The constitutive activ-
ity of the various designata is assumed to be
carried out, and low or no interest arises in
predicting the occurrence of the mental activ-
ity.
The people in the SOI were sufficiently
mindful of avoiding the Platonism that is
implicit in freezing a number of mental con-
structs by fixing a description of their consti-
tutive activity. They used the descriptive
approach in education, or in increasing our
consciousness about mental constructs that
have a strong methodological impact, and the
development of a dynamics of mental activity
was rather slow.
The second factor was related to a charac-
teristic of the organ-function relationship.
This relation was proposed as link between
the mental activity and its realization in the
biological architecture. However, we soon
became aware of the need to rehash deeply the
notion of organism that we could extrapolate
from our machines. Let me quote an early
example of this awareness (Ceccato 1962,
pp. 40–41):3
“…sotto l’aspetto modellistico valga un
avvertimento. La distinzione in organi e
funzioni (come di solito è intesa e, certa-
mente, come viene applicata quando ci si
riferisce alle macchine) porta ad attribuire
ogni cambiamento al funzionamento degli
organi, mentre questi rimarrebbero uguali.
27
 Cognitive-psychological & historical
REVIEW
[…] Ma nell’uomo non è da supporre che
le cose stiano in questi termini. […]
Nell’uomo […] gli organi svolgono sì fun-
zioni cicliche; ma essi sono soggetti anche
ad una funzione monotonica, che forse è
tutt’uno con ciò che chiamiamo memoria,
e che è certo una caratteristica del materiale
operante proprio dei viventi.”
We might model learning, and more gen-
erally individual differences, through a mono-
tonic function of the organs, which would also
account for different personal histories. How-
ever, a monotonic function introduces a vari-
able way of functioning with the related phys-
ical changes in the organs, and this makes the
Notes
1. We do not have a standard English trans-
lation of SOI. “Italian Operational
School” seems sufficiently clear to me.
Bibliographies of Ceccato and of other
persons who contributed to the SOI can be
found at: http://www.methodologia.it/
biblio.htm
2. Here and in the following, I quote a paper
of 1967, which has a clear conciseness.
3. I quote this Italian text because it appeared
very early, and I offer here an English re-
wording: “Our usual distinction between
organs and functions (certainly when we
apply it to our machines) assigns the
changes to the way of functioning of the
organs, and leaves the organs un-
changed… However we cannot assume
that this scheme holds for humans. In hu-
mans… the organs perform cyclic func-
tions, but they also have a monotonic
function, which we can probably identify
with memory, and that is certainly a char-
acteristic of the biological material.”
28
organ-function scheme useless. A one-to-one
correspondence between the elementary
mental activities and physical processes is a
better solution, and the dynamics of the men-
tal activity follow from the dynamics of the
physical architecture that realizes it.
Unfortunately, biology inherited an exten-
sive use of the organ-function scheme; a deep
transformation of the experimental tech-
niques is necessary to pass from this scheme
to the interactor-interaction scheme, which is
not affected by the previous difficulties. Biol-
ogy thus did not give the help that we had
planned to develop a dynamics of mental
activity.
References
Ceccato, S. (1949) Il teocono. Methodos 1(1):
34–54.
Ceccato, S. (1951) Il linguaggio con la tabella
di Ceccatieff. Actualités Scientifiques et
Industrielles. Hermann & Cie: Paris.
Ceccato, S. (1962) La macchina che osserva e
descrive. La Ricerca Scientifica 32: 37–58.
Ceccato, S. (ed.) (1963) Mechanical transla-
tion: The correlation solution. Technical
report at Centro di Cibernetica e di Attiv-
ità Linguistiche Università degli Studi di
Milano.
Ceccato, S. (1964a) Correlational analysis and
mechanical translation. Technical report at
Centro di Cibernetica e di Attività Linguis-
tiche Università degli Studi di Milano.
Ceccato, S. (1964b) Automatic translation of
languages. Information Storage and
Retrieval 2: 105–158.
Ceccato, S. (1965) A model of the mind. In:
Caianiello, E. (ed.) Cybernetics of neural
processes. CNR: Rome, pp. 21–79.
Ceccato, S. (1967a) Concepts for a New Sys-
radical constructivism
Through his research on learning and on
the criteria for the relevance of mental con-
structs, Glasersfeld thus continued his partic-
ipation in the pioneering phase of the SOI,
facing one of the main problems that this first
phase left open.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Renzo Beltrame is Senior Research Associ-
ate at the Pisa Research Area of the
National Research Council of Italy. He has
been at the National Research Council of
Italy since 1962. From 1960 to 1976 he was
in Ceccato’s team.
tematics. Information Storage and
Retrieval 3: 193–214.
Ceccato, S. (1967b) Correlational analysis and
mechanical translation. In: Both, A. (ed.)
Progress in machine translation. North
Holland: Amsterdam, pp. 77–136.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1963) The functions of the
articles in English. Technical report at Cen-
tro di Cibernetica e di Attività Linguistiche
Università degli Studi di Milano.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1965) An approach to the
semantics of prepositions. In: Josselson, H.
(ed.) Proceedings of Las Vegas conference
on computer-related semantic analysis
XIII. Wayne State University: Detroit MI,
pp. 1–24.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1999) Omaggio al mae-
stro. Quaderni di Methodologia 7: 15–21.
James, W. (1950) The principles of psychol-
ogy. Dover: New York. Originally pub-
lished in 1890.
Received: 20 June 2006
Accepted: 24 January 2007
Constructivist Foundations
 historical
OPINION
Ernst von Glasersfeld’s Contributions
to the LANA Project
Duane M. Rumbaugh and Charles Bell A Great Ape Trust of Iowa (USA) <drumbaug@aol.com>
E rnst von Glasersfeld’s contributions to
the LANA Project (the Language Ana-
logue Project) were very important to its
seven years of success, 1971–1977, during
which the effort was led by the senior author
of this paper, supported by NICHD 06016
and 38051. Indeed, his contributions have
helped perpetuate research into the language
skills of apes and sea mammals to this day.
Ernst was a member of the original team of
1970 that formulated the proposal to the
National Institutes of Health for four years’
funding to develop a computer-monitored
keyboard-situation appropriate to research
on the language skills of which the great apes
might be capable. Those skills had a 50-year
history of interest even at the time the NIH
proposal was prepared. A recent survey of
apes’ skills from their historic roots is the
focus of a recent book by Hillix and Rum-
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Duane M. Rumbaugh was born in Maynard,
IA, 1929, and received his Ph.D. from the
University of Colorado in general-experi-
mental psychology in 1955. He then taught
at San Diego State College for 15 years,
where he also research primates' learning
abilities at the San Diego Zoo. In 1969, he
became Chief of Behavior at the Yerkes Pri-
mate Center of Emory University, Atlanta,
GA, where, with a close colleague and engi-
neer, Harold Warner, the LANA chimpanzee
language project was conceived and devel-
oped. He directed the project, with NICHD
support, initially awarded in 1971. After a
long career with Georgia State University,
also in Atlanta, Rumbaugh retired in 2000.
He now is Lead Scientist Emeritus of the
Great Ape Trust of Iowa.
Charles Bell has his degree in electronics
engineering. He very ably built and main-
tained the computer-monitored keyboard.
Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
baugh (2004). Ernst’s sterling contributions
are documented in his two chapters (von Gla-
sersfeld 1977a, b) in a book published in 1977
with the title Language Learning by a Chim-
panzee. The LANA Project (Rumbaugh 1977).
The proposal captured the interest of the
NIH and resulted in an award of funds to sup-
port the research. The National Institute of
Child Health (NICHD) funded the award in
1971, a reflection of their keen interest in the
parameters of language acquisition. In the
proposal we anticipated that, to the degree the
computer-monitored system and methods of
inquiry led to the definition of language skills
in a young ape, we might have the potential
for better understanding of and resolving bar-
riers to language acquisition by children and
adults challenged by the constraints of mental
retardation and other causes of brain damage.
Ernst’s several contributions included the
writing of an interpretive correlational gram-
mar that would evaluate the structural cor-
rectness of statements formulated by a subject
using the system, monitored by a PDP8 com-
puter with only about 8 kilobytes of memory.
It was programmed by Ernst and his col-
league, Pier Pisani.
Both Ernst and Pier were with of the Uni-
versity of Georgia. Other team members were
Josephine V. Brown (developmental psychol-
ogist), Susan Essock (experimental psycholo-
gist) and Duane M. Rumbaugh (general-
experimental and project director), all with
Georgia State University; the late Harold
Warner (biomedical engineer), the late Tim-
othy V. Gill (behavioral research technician),
and Charles Bell (electronics technician), all
three with the then-named Yerkes Regional
Primate Research Center of Emory Univer-
sity. Their individual roles and collective suc-
cess with our first ape subject, the chimpanzee
(Pan troglodytes), Lana, are recounted in the
above referenced book on the project.
Collectively, we agreed that our ape should
learn a number of stock sentences. They were
radical constructivism
called that because they were to be taught in
specific detail for use by Lana to obtain a vari-
ety of incentives and states – foods and drinks
(e.g., chow, banana, candies, cabbage, bread,
orange, etc.), states of entertainment and
curiosity (e.g., a movie, music, making a win-
dow open), and social company. The lexicon
would consist of geometric symbols serving
as words. Each word would be embossed on a
Lucite key for the subject’s use on the key-
board to be monitored by a computer.
It was Ernst who suggested that the geo-
metric symbols that we designed to function
as words might be called lexigrams. The
group readily accepted that term for them and
it lives to this dayin language research projects
at the Language Research Center of Georgia
State University and the Great Ape Trust of
Iowa.
Although Ernst’s grammar for the system
was relatively fixed in its structure, in that a
number of stock sentences entailed only the
substitution of one word (e.g., Please
machine give piece of (insert cabbage, chow,
apple, and so on here; Please machine make
(insert music, slide, or movie here; and so on),
it afforded flexible use of words between cat-
egories as well. In brief, it had some degree of
flexibility.
Ernst recommended that we call the
grammar Yerkish in honor of Robert M.
Yerkes, the early primatologist of Yale Uni-
versity who founded the laboratory that
eventually carried his name. (The early his-
tory of the laboratory was at Yale University
and then in Orange Park, Florida. In the
1960s it was moved to Atlanta, Georgia,
where Emory University served as its spon-
sor.) His recommendation was accepted.
The grant that supported the LANA Project
was awarded to the Yerkes Regional Primate
Research Center (now known as the Yerkes
National Primate Research Center) in
Atlanta, Georgia. The project was conducted
at the Yerkes Center.
29
 historical
OPINION
Figure 1:The chimpanzee Lana in the experimental chamber.
For Ernst, language required a lexicon, dis-
placement (e.g., symbolic function), and
grammar. Ernst held that the lexigrams
needed to be artificial and not iconic represen-
tations of things and events in Lana’s experi-
ence. As stated above, he led the development
of the computer program for automatic parser
of the language that was capable of evaluating
the lexicon and the grammar. Color back-
grounds were used to designate semantic
classes – for example, any violet lexigram cor-
responded to an autonomous actor, and any
red lexigram represented something edible.
Nine different shapes were presented in vari-
ous combinations to make discriminable lexi-
grams. The lexigrams actually used by Lana at
any given time were reproduced as facsimiles
in a row projected immediately above Lana’s
console of keys so that she could see what she
had said.
Ernst’s language system allowed for 46 log-
ical classes of word-lexigrams. Examples of the
classes of lexigrams included familiar pri-
30
mates, unfamiliar primates, nonprimates,
inanimate actors, absolute fixtures (cage,
piano, room), relative fixtures (window,
door), transferable (balls, etc.), parts of the
body, edible units locational prepositions (in,
on, etc.), additive conjunctions, ingestion of
solids, ingestion of liquids, relational motor
acts (groom, tickle), locomotion, and so on.
The language constructed was described by
Ernst as a “correlational” grammar, which was
implemented earlier in the “multistore parser”
for English. It was not generative or transfor-
mational in the Chomskian sense. His correla-
tional grammar mapped the conceptual sys-
tem of Yerkish onto the linguistic system.
Ernst described the parser as indicating the
relationships into which a given lexical item
might legally enter. There were some 30 “cor-
relators” that connected types of items – for
example, one connected autonomous actors
performing a stationary activity as in “Lana
drink.” Another example was for a movable
actor changing places, as in “Tim move.” Yet
radical constructivism
© Duane Rumbaugh
another example was as in predication, as
“Banana black.”
Yerkish had only an active voice, and three
moods: interrogative, indicative, and impera-
tive. The parser responded to strings that were
correct in Yerkish, and rejected others.
According to Ernst’s analyses, Lana had a
“strong tendency toward grammaticality” (
Glasersfeld, 1977b, p. 128–129). She was, of
course, rewarded for grammatical strings but
not for non-grammatical strings. He con-
cluded that the grammaticality of Lana’s
“utterances” was enabled by the design of the
language which reflected the conceptual
structures common to humans and chimps.
Lana expressed her representations of situa-
tions through the choice and ordering of her
lexigrams. He also concluded that Lana
learned “rules” of grammar that “are relatively
close to the rules that govern conceptual rep-
resentation… ”
In 1975 the project was extended to work
with mentally retarded children and young
Constructivist Foundations
 historical
OPINION
Figure 2: Lana in action. Bottom left: Excerpt of the lexicon.
adults (Parkel, While, & Warner, 1977). We
were ecstatic to see that they learned upwards
of 80–90 lexigrams and used them to commu-
nicate with their parents and friends as they
could not do otherwise.
Thus, Ernst von Glasersfeld’s creative con-
tributions in the early years of the LANA
Project, coupled with those of all the other
team members, helped open the door and
keep it open for future research. Apes were
capable of, at least, the basic skills for human
language, and their accomplishments were
uniquely put to human need. – We thank him.
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
References
Hillix, W. A. & Rumbaugh, D. M. (2004) Ani-
mal bodies, human minds. The language
skills of ape, dolphin, and parrot. Kluwer:
New York.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1977a) The Yerkish lan-
guage and its automatic parser. In: Rum-
baugh, D. M. (ed.) Language learning by a
chimpanzee. The LANA Project. Aca-
demic Press: New York, pp. 91–130.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1977b) Linguistic Com-
munication: Theory and definition. In:
radical constructivism
© Duane Rumbaugh
Rumbaugh, D. M. (ed.) Language Learn-
ing by a Chimpanzee. The LANA project.
Academic Press: New York, pp. 55–72.
Parkel, D. A., White, R. Z. & Warner, H. (1977)
Implications of the Yerkes technology for
mentally retarded human subjects. In:
Rumbaugh, D. M. (ed.) Language learning
by a chimpanzee. The LANA project. Aca-
demic Press: New York, pp. 274–283.
Received: 15 February 2006
Accepted: 5 February 2007
31
 historical; cognitive-psychological radical constructivism
EMPIRICAL

The Yerkish Language.

From Operational Methodology to
Chimpanzee Communication
Marco Bettoni A Swiss Distance University of Applied Sciences (Switzerland) <marco.bettoni@weknow.ch>

Origins of Yerkish –
Purpose:Yerkish is an artificial language created in 1971 for the specific purpose of explor-
ing the linguistic potential of nonhuman primates. The aim of this paper is to remind the The LANA project
research community of some important issues and concepts related to Yerkish that seem One day in the fall of 1970 Ray Carpenter, one
to have been forgotten or appear to be distorted. These are, particularly, its success, its of the fathers of primatology in the United
promising aspects for future research and last but not least that it was Ernst von Glaser- States, came to the almost regular Saturday
sfeld who invented Yerkish: he coined the term “lexigrams,” created the first 120 of them golf meeting with von Glaserfeld bringing
and designed the grammar that regulated their combination. Design: The first part of with him an intriguing idea: The Yerkes
this paper begins with a short outline of the context in which the Yerkish language origi- National Primate Research Center in
nated: the original LANA project. It continues by presenting the language itself in more Atlanta1 (Georgia), the first and foremost
detail: first, its design, focusing on its “lexigrams” and its “correlational” grammar (the institute of primate research in the USA, was
connective functions or “correlators” and the combinations of lexigrams, or “correla- planning to investigate the possibility of
tions”), and then its use by the chimpanzee Lana in formulating sentences.The second part communication between humans and great
gives a brief introduction to the foundation of Yerkish in Silvio Ceccato’s Operational apes via a computer by means of a visual lan-
Methodology, particularly his idea of the correlational structure of thought and concludes guage. The great apes (gorillas, orangutans,
with the main insights that can be derived from the Yerkish experiment seen in the light chimpanzees) would probably never learn a
of Operational Methodology. Findings: Lana’s success in language learning and the success spoken language, Carpenter said, but they
of Yerkish during the past decades are probably due to the characteristics of Yerkish, par- were quick and clever with their fingers and
ticularly its foundation in operational methodology.The operation of correlation could be Alan and Beatrice Gardner had successfully
what constitutes thinking in a chimpanzee and an attentional system could be what deliv- taught ASL (the American Sign Language
ers the mental content that correlation assembles into triads and networks. used by deaf people) to a chimpanzee called
Research implications: Since no other assessment or explanation of Lana’s performances Washoe.2
has considered these foundational issues (findings), a new research project or program Despite impressive results in teaching sign
should validate the above-mentioned hypotheses, particularly the correlational structure language to the great apes, in those years as
of chimpanzee thinking. well as during the following two decades, lin-
Keywords:Yerkish, artificial language, correlational grammar, operational methodology, guists and psychologists – who wanted to
Silvio Ceccato, machine translation, chimpanzee communication. believe with Chomsky that language was a
human prerogative – doubted that “an ape
can truly create a sentence” (Terrace et al.
an ape also useful for understanding some of 1979, p. 891) and claimed that “they show no
Introduction the abilities involved in human language and unequivocal evidence of mastering the conver-
Could an ape participate in a chat session vice-versa? How can these questions be sational semantics or syntactic organization of
over the Internet? At first sight the question answered in a scientific manner? language” (Terrace et al. 1979, p. 901). They
may seem silly, but I claim that it could – at Today science seems to have overcome the also said that sign language did not have a
least in part – be taken seriously and in this old behaviourist stimulus–response bond and proper syntax and therefore was not really a
paper I will try to show why. To begin with, finds itself in a somewhat better position to try language. Moreover they suggested that the
let us step back a little and have a look at to answer this and related questions. But about Gardners were like parents with a baby: they
some questions that the scientific commu- 40 years ago, when Ernst von Glasersfeld cre- saw and heard demonstrations of linguistic
nity would probably accept as more “sound.” ated “Yerkish” – an artificial language for use capabilities that no one else could see or hear.
Is language no longer the exclusive domain by apes in computer-mediated communica- The Yerkes Center plan was to build a
of man? Can an ape create a sentence? Are tion (CMC) with machines and humans – the communication system with a simplified lan-
explanations of language learning and use by situation was much more uncomfortable. guage, a keyboard, and a small computer to

32 Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3

http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
 historical; cognitive-psychological
EMPIRICAL
explore computer-mediated communication
between humans and apes. The computer
would record everything the ape typed on the
keyboard and there would be no subjective
bias as to what the ape had or had not typed.
This plan seemed a great idea to von Glasers-
feld and when Carpenter asked him if he
would like to design the special language and
the computer system for handling it, he
immediately accepted. In his turn, von Gla-
sersfeld recommended that his long-term
research partner Pier Paolo Pisani3, a compu-
ter specialist, also join the effort.
After a number of conferences among the
members of the project team, in early winter
1970 a proposal was submitted to the
National Institute of Health requesting funds
for a 4-year period. In spring 1971 the grant
was awarded (NIH grants HD-060164and
RR-00165). The team immediately began
designing and building the system and a few
weeks later everyone was introduced to the
subject of the research, a young female chim-
panzee called Lana (born October 7, 1970).5
In the first phase of the project a Plexiglas
cubicle the size of a small room was built on
to an existing wall that had a window to the
outside of the Yerkes Center. One of the Plexi-
glas walls was dedicated to the keyboard, a
square array unit of initially 5x5 keys, with
space for other units to be added as Lana got
more proficient. By sequentially pressing the
keys of the keyboard, code signals standing for
words were sent to the computer, which con-
tained the vocabulary and the grammar of
Yerkish, the automatic parser for checking the
correctness of sentences, and the rules for
activating a dispenser in response to requests
that Lana was to formulate in Yerkish word
symbols (Glasersfeld 1995, p. 11). The com-
puter itself and the terminal with a keyboard
for the researchers were placed just outside
the room: from here the experimenters could
interact with Lana by typing sentences that
were displayed above her keyboard and they
could also see how she was behaving during
the computer-mediated communication ses-
sion.6
Next to Lana’s keyboard was the row of
food and drink dispensers, activated through
the computer; they would provide all sorts of
food and drink (like apple, bread, chow,
banana, milk, juice etc.) and it was hoped that
Lana would learn to feed herself by means of
request sentences typed on the keyboard.
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
radical constructivism
Beside providing food and drink, the com-
puter could respond to correctly formulated
requests by playing taped music or sounds,
projecting movies and slides as well as open-
ing and shutting the above-mentioned win-
dow. Above the keyboard was a sturdy hori-
zontal bar that Lana had to hang on to in order
to switch on the system (Fig. 1).
The Yerkish language
Language as a communicatory system has
three indispensable characteristics (Glasers-
feld 1977a, p. 66): a) it has a set, or lexicon, of
artificial signs; b) it has a set of rules, or gram-
mar, that governs the creation of sentences as
sequences of lexical entries; c) its signs are
used as symbols (Glasersfeld 1974).
The lexicon of Yerkish was developed by
von Glasersfeld starting from a list of things
that would presumably interest a young
chimpanzee (and the experimenters) and
could be available in the project. The words of
this preliminary vocabulary were about 150,
but in the beginning only 25 were put on the
first panel of keys. Each key had an abstract
design representing not a letter but the “word- Figure 1: Lana at the lexigram board.
design” for a single concept. Ernst von Gla- Photo Ernst von Glasersfeld.
sersfeld coined for these word-designs the
name “lexigrams” and created them by means
of non-representational design elements to characteristics like being able to eat, drink,
emphasize their symbol-character (Fig. 2) groom, tickle, give things or make things hap-
and to prevent critical linguists from saying pen were collected in the lexigram class
that Lana recognized them just because they “autonomous actor” and divided into four
were familiar pictures. Whenever Lana sub-groups: “familiar primates” (lexigram
pressed keys the respective lexigrams were Lana and lexigrams for the first names of
projected on to a row of small windows above technicians and experimenters, like Tim or
the keyboard, one after the other from left to Shelley), “unfamiliar primates” (lexigram vis-
right. This helped Lana to see how far along itor), “nonprimates” (lexigram roach) and
she was in typing the sentence – seven was the “inanimate actor” (lexigram machine). Sev-
maximum length of a sentence. Moreover eral lexigrams were assigned to classes desig-
projecting the lexigrams in this row was used nating relational concepts like the class “par-
to flash messages from the human trainers to titive proposition” (lexigram of ), the class
Lana and to make conversations possible. “semantic indicator” (lexigram name-of ) and
After compiling the lexicon of Yerkish, the the class “attributive marker” (lexigram
lexical items were divided into classes. Since which-is).
Yerkish was designed on the basis of a “corre- Like the lexicon, the grammar of Yerkish
lational” approach to language (Glasersfeld was also “correlational”: in fact von Glasers-
1970), the lexigram-classes were defined in feld derived it from the correlational gram-
terms of the functional characteristics of con- mar implemented from 1960 to 1970 in his
cepts and not, as in a traditional lexicon, in projects for the machine translation of
terms of morphology and the roles they English sentences (Hutchins 2000). As a con-
would play in sentences (noun, verb, adjec- sequence the Yerkish grammar was an inter-
tive, etc.). For instance, items with functional pretive device and consisted of the rules of a
33
 historical; cognitive-psychological
EMPIRICAL
machine name-of candy
Lana eat tickle
Figure 2: Lexigrams table developed by von Glasersfeld in 1971.
primitive syntax that governed which lexi-
gram sequences (i.e., sentences) were to be
considered correct (i.e., any input that it
could interpret) and which mistaken (any
input that it could not). There were three
classes of sentences: statements, requests, and ignate the correlators by the letter “C” and the
questions. Requests were differentiated from
the others by first pressing a key called
“please”; questions had to begin with a ques-
tion mark. To know when to check the cor-
rectness of Lana’s typing, the computer
needed a signal to indicate the end of a sen-
tence, like a period.
The correlational approach to language is
based on the assumption that sentences
express in language sequences of mental oper-
ations (attentional operations) performed at
the cognitive level (Ceccato 1964, p. 14). The
most important among the mental operations
are obviously those that establish connections 4. Please machine make movie
among conceptual operands and thus build
up complex structures. These relational con-
cepts, that Ceccato called correlators (Ceccato 5. Please machine give piece of banana
et al. 1961, p. 36), are connective functions
used at the mental level in the process of cor-
34
radical constructivism
relating. In natural lan-
guages correlators are triad
indicated in a variety of
ways, either implicitly or correlator
explicitely. A correlator
is always a binary func-
tion in that it links two
mental operands – LH correlatum RH correlatum
expressed in language by
either single words or
word combinations – Figure 3: A correlator as a binary function.
and thus forms a new
unit (a triad) called a
“correlation” (Fig. 3).
Implicit correlators are
indicated in phrases or 6. Please Tim give milk to Lana
sentences merely by the (C_00 Please (C_05 Tim (C_21 (C_17
juxtaposition of the two give milk) (C_22 to Lana))))
lexical items they link, 7. Tim give apple which-is red to Lana
out-of and “explicit” correla- (C_05 Tim (C_21 (C_17 give (C_31 apple
tors are indicated by (C_10 which-is red))) (C_22 to Lana)))
specific words (such as 8. Please Tim move out-of room
propositions, conjunc- (C_00 Please (C_07 Tim (C_21 move
tions, etc.). In the fol- (C_22 out-of room))))
lowing we will use “cor- 9. Please Shelley move behind room
into relator” both for the (C_00 Please (C_07 Shelley (C_21 move
relational concepts and (C_22 behind room))))
for the linguistic devices Compare the sentences of example 1 and
that express them. 2. They require two different correlators
In 1974 the Yerkish C_01 and C_02 because the performed activ-
grammar used by Lana operated with some ity they link with the actor performing them
30 correlators. Five of these are, for example, are different: correlator C_01 (example 1)
correlators that connect an operand of the connects an autonomous animate actor with
class “actor” with an operand of the class a stationary activity whereas correlator C_02
“activity.” In the following examples we des- (example 2) connects an autonomous ani-
mate actor with a transferring activity.
number used to identify them in the LANA Sentences 3 and 4, although very similar,
project; a correlation is then written as list of require two different correlators C_05 and
correlators and operands using Polish nota- C_06 because the intended effect they link
tion (prefix notation with operators left of with the agent causing it are different: corre-
their operands). Examples of sentences and lator C_05 (example 3) connects a causative
their correlations in Yerkish: agent with a change of position whereas cor-
1. Lana drink relator C_06 (example 4) connects a caus-
(C_01 Lana drink) ative agent with a change of state.
2. Tim carry Lana
(C_02 Tim (C_14 carry Lana))
3. Please machine give M&M Use of Yerkish by Lana
(C_00 Please (C_05 machine (C_017 give
M&M)))
(chimpanzee)
Lana’s training began with a panel of three or
(C_00 Please (C_06 machine (C_18 make four keys for learning a set of preliminaries,
movie))) such as that it was the sequence of lexigrams
in the row of windows above the keyboard
(C_00 Please (C_05 machine (C_17 give that counted, not their position in the panel,
(C_026 (C_25 piece of) banana)))) or that it was always necessary to press the
Constructivist Foundations
 historical; cognitive-psychological
EMPIRICAL
period key at the end of a sentence. She first
learned to press a single key in order to
obtain a piece of food or an M&M candy.
Lana progressed rapidly in her training and
within the first 2 weeks of training she
learned to concatenate keys to form a stock
sentence like “Please machine give M&M”
(example 3) or “Please machine make
movie” (example 4).
When she got the first 25-lexigrams panel,
she quickly learned to watch the row of win-
dows above the keyboard to check what she
had typed. It took her no time to find out that
when she made a typing error she could erase
what she had typed by pressing the period key
(which made the computer cancel the input
because it contained an error). Lana learned
not only to use several stock sentences appro-
priately, but also to build novel sentences that
were syntactically correct.
Unfortunately the director of the project
was convinced that understanding in com-
munication with Lana could be proved sta-
tistically: as a consequence, in order to col-
lect statistical evidence of her “skills,” Lana
was subjected to repetitive tests like a rat in a
maze. It was clear from simply watching her
behaviour, that, like a human child, she lost
interest after the nth repetition and pressed
keys without looking. Her statistics therefore
tended to be worse than those of rats. On the
other hand, she did things that no rat could
ever do. When Tim, the graduate student
who worked with her in these experiments,
repeated the same question for the nth time,
she typed in the response: “Please Tim move
out of room” (see example 8). This was above
all remarkable because Lana had encoun-
tered expressions such as “out of,” “in front
of,” and “behind” only in the context of
boxes and wooden blocks on a table and the
notion that her room was a kind of box you
could “move out of ” was entirely her own.
On another occasion, when Shelley
appeared outside the Plexiglas cubicle, Lana,
rushed to the keyboard and typed: “Please
Shelley move behind room” (see example 9).
Shelley, who had no idea what it could mean,
did not take any action so that Lana, who was
expecting a specific intervention, threw up
both her arms in an unmistakable human-
like gesture of despair and once more typed
the same phrase. Eventually Shelley looked
at the array of dispensers and noticed that
the one for slices of banana had got stuck.
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
She went out of the cubicle and to the other
side of the transparent wall – which from
Lana’s point of view could quite reasonably
be conceptualized as “behind room.” Lana
watched her clear the dispenser and immedi-
ately typed: “Please machine give piece of
banana” (see example 5). On this and many
other similar occasions, Lana, by means of
original, spontaneous, and appropriate
utterances, made it quite clear that she was
indeed capable of forming concepts and able
to use the lexigrams in language. Lana dem-
onstrated that she was able to participate in
a manner of living that we call language, i.e.,
that she could experience a recursive coordi-
nation of behavioural coordinations, a pro-
cess which allowed her to have a recursive
influence on what she was experiencing.
In September 1974 Lana’s lexigram board
consisted of 3 panels of 25 keys each
(Glasersfeld 1977b, p. 128). The total of 1577
grammatical 6-lexigram strings produced by
Lana in this month can be assigned to 125
sentence types. Four types are requests for
food and account for 1288 tokens. Of the
remaining 289 tokens, 228 represent 76 types
that were spontaneously formulated by Lana
– none of them were produced as a result of
training. In some cases their occurrence was
even a rather imaginative transference of a
meaning acquired in a very specific context
to a substantially different context.
These and similar facts persuaded von
Glasersfeld that Lana was well able to com-
municate by means of symbols and also
clearly indicated that understanding com-
munication with Lana could not be tested
statistically but shown only by the appropri-
ateness of individual utterances. Unfortu-
nately they did not convince the conven-
tional experimental psychologists involved
in the LANA project of the necessity to devise
more appropriate research methods.
Later experiments in other projects (Sav-
age-Rumbaugh et al. 1980) suggested that
Lana had difficulties in expanding her lin-
guistic domain7 beyond the limits of the
domain of interactions through a computer
in which she had participated. On the other
hand Kanzi, a bonobo, though he had never
been taught, learned Yerkish very well and
even some English by simply listening and
participating in the laboratory environment
during his mother Matata’s training sessions
(Savage-Rumbaugh & Lewin 1994).
radical constructivism
Silvio Ceccato and the
correlational structure
of thought
The correlational approach to language that
von Glasersfeld applied in developing Yerkish
was based on investigations of mental activi-
ties that Silvio Ceccato had begun in 1939
(Ceccato 1964/1966). Together with a group
of scholars living in Italy he proposed from
the beginning to study thought and its con-
tents in terms of operations (Ceccato 1951,
1953). Because of this “operational approach”
or “operational methodology,” Ceccato's
group was called the "Italian Operational
School.” His research activity was devoted to
understanding the basic structure and
dynamics of thought production, to the
development of an operational solution to the
problem of semantics (connection of thought
and language) and to applications of opera-
tional methodology in machine translation
experiments.
The basic assumption of operational
methodology is that the essential function (or
activity) for the constitution of any mental
content is the function of attention. In fact, it
is easy to notice that without attention we do
not have mental content, i.e., no mental life.
Our clothes are in contact with our body: do
we feel them? Not if we do not pay attention
to them. We are typing on the computer key-
board: are we aware of our finger touching a
key? Not if we do not pay attention to it. Sim-
ilarly we do not notice the noise of traffic out-
side or understand what someone in the
group is saying if we do not pay attention. In
other words, the dynamism of physical inter-
action between our organism and our sur-
roundings proceeds on its own account with-
out constituting any mental content unless we
direct our attention to the functioning of the
different organs of hearing, touch, etc.
Attention, however, is not limited to this
function of making present the functioning of
other organs; in fact, attention is not applied
continuously but for discrete intervals of
time, ranging from a tenth of a second to a
second and a half: after this time, attention
detaches itself and after a short pause can be
applied again. In this way, as it is applied and
detached repeatedly, it fragments into dis-
crete pieces (so-called “praesentiata” or
recepts) the functioning of other organs and
35
 historical; cognitive-psychological
EMPIRICAL
builds an oscillation similar to alpha waves in
the brain or to the rhythmic contractions of
the heart. This conception of a pulsating
attention and of discrete microunits of mental
activity has been recently confirmed by neu-
rophysiological experiments suggesting that
“the seemingly continuous stream of con-
sciousness consists of separable building
blocks” (Lehmann et al. 1998, 2000).
A third function of attention could be
called the “generating” function. Why?
Because it allows attention not only to be
applied to other organs but to be applied to
nothing (a state of simple vigilance, an empty
attention) or to its own functioning instead,
thus generating discrete attentional frag-
ments that are not pieces of hearing, touch,
vision or other sensorial activity but purely
attentional microunits (attentional states).
We would however never build a seem-
ingly continuous stream of consciousness, if
there were not:
1. “Categorization” as the function which
enables the mind to produce concepts by
combining attentional states into more
complex combinations (macrounits).
2. “Perception” as the function which
enables the mind to produce percepts by
applying some results of categorization to
recepts.
3. “Correlation” as the function which
enables the mind to assemble concepts and
percepts into thoughts.
The operation of categorization received
this name because it produces mental con-
structs that Ceccato, in honor of Kant has
called “mental categories.” Thus mental cate-
gories comprise those mental constructs
which are made only by combinations of dis-
crete attentional fragments and do not con-
tain anything originating from observation.
Examples of mental categories are the more or
less complex combinations (concepts) of
attentional microunits designated by words
like “thing,” “object,” “beginning,” “end,”
“part,” “whole,” “element,” “group,” “set,”
“point,” “line,” “and,” “or,” “singular,” “plural,”
“space,” “time,” “number,” “1,” “2,” “3,” etc.
Each category is differentiated from the oth-
ers by the number of discrete attentional
states (fragments) which it comprises and by
the way in which they are combined.
The operation of correlating is what con-
stitutes thinking. It assembles the attentional
units in a binary tree. The basic structure of
36
thought, according to Silvio Ceccato is always
a triad, called a “correlation,” composed of
two correlates assembled together by a corre-
lator (Ceccato 1961, 1967). This triad has a
characteristic dynamism, an order of opera-
tional precedence in that the first correlate, or
first mental construct is the first in time to be
constituted (or activated) and is then held
present (active) during the constitution of the
correlator, which in its turn is held present
during the constitution of the second corre-
late, or second mental construct. The corre-
lates can be concepts, percepts or entire
thoughts but the correlator is always a purely
attentional microunit, a mental category.
Correlation constitutes the dynamism of
thought, of which the triad is the smallest
unit. The larger units of thought are obtained
by using a correlation as a term in another
correlation, which in its turn can become a
part of a third correlation, and so on, until a
greater or smaller correlational network is
assembled. Pronouns and other words with
recall functions then make it possible for
complete correlational networks to be reused
as elements in other correlations.
Language and thought
A fundamental function of language consists
in ensuring that thoughts can be reified. One
way of reifying thoughts is by designating
them, i.e., by establishing a viable correspon-
dence between the polyphonic structure of
thought and a linear sequence of perceivable
items.
Given a background of an operational
methodology, with its attentional model of
mental contents and its correlational model
of thinking, we are now in a position to
explain language in a completely different
way: an operational way!
Traditional grammars explain, for
instance, vocabulary items (the lexicon) by
assigning them as elements to classes such as
“noun,” verb,” “adjective,” etc. by virtue of
some feature that is identified as common to
all the members of a class. Since many mem-
bers do not display all the required character-
istics of their class, grammars usually proceed
by subdividing a class according to the specific
or “exceptional” features of certain items. One
might call this the botanist’s, zoologist’s or
retailer’s approach: as with trees, flowers,
radical constructivism
birds, reptiles, dishwashers or chairs this kind
of explanation is useful with the word items of
a natural language only for the purpose of
describing a catalogue.
However, for users and developers of a lan-
guage – for instance children acquiring it
from their interactions or machine transla-
tion researchers using it in experiments – the
main purpose is not description but the inter-
pretation and production of sentences, i.e., of
combinations of items. For this reason the
usefulness of the explanation depends on its
ability to accurately specify in operational
(functional) terms the items involved. This
characterisation in functional terms is exactly
what the correlational approach provides by
means of a minute and rigorous discrimina-
tion of a word-item’s eligibility as correlatum
or correlator within a correlation (Glasersfeld
& Pisani 1968, pp. 1–2).
To reify a simple correlation into a linguis-
tic form, each single element must be desig-
nated by means of at least two indications:
one to say what it is (referential function) and
the other to say what function it performs in
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marco C. Bettoni was born in Legnano
(Italy) in 1952. Since September 2005 he is
Director of Research & Consulting at the
Swiss Distance University of Applied Sci-
ences (www.ffhs.ch) where his main
research topics are knowledge coopera-
tion, knowledge networking, distance coop-
eration, distance- and e-learning and
communities of practice.
After receiving his master degree in
mechanical engineering in 1977 (ETH
Zürich) he has worked until 1991 for indus-
trial (Rieter, Siemens), banking (UBS) and
academic (ETH) organizations in the
domains of machine design, engineering
education, IT management, IT development
and knowledge engineering (Artificial Intel-
ligence).
Between 1991 and 2004 he was Professor
for Knowledge Technologies at the Basel
University of Applied Sciences (FHBB). In
June 2003 ETH Zürich (www.ethz.ch)
appointed him as “guest researcher” for
investigating the role of knowledge-ori-
ented cooperation in Knowledge Manage-
ment.
Constructivist Foundations
 historical; cognitive-psychological
EMPIRICAL
the correlation (correlational function),
whether that of correlator or that of first (left
hand) or second (right hand) correlatum. In
order to supply these indications, languages
can offer basically two means: on the one
hand they use a particular, phonic or graphic
material (spoken or written words), and on
the other hand they use the order of succes-
sion into which this material is put (word
sequence). Only by providing these six indi-
cations can we identify two expressions such
as “green bottle” and “bottle green” as two dif-
ferent correlations or units of thought.
Mostly a correlation will be designated by
employing two or three words (or whole sen-
tences in a correlational net), which is to say,
the required indications are distributed
among two or three words, but usually the
correlations that occur more frequently are
indicated by only two words, one for the first
and one for the second correlatum, whereas
the correlator remains tacit. How can we
understand a correlation of this kind in which
there is no explicit word for the correlator? In
some cases the correlator is indicated by
changes in the form of the designation of one
of the correlates but in all other cases the indi-
cation of the appropriate correlator has to be
deduced from a wide-spread knowledge, a
common cultural heritage behind any lan-
guage, for which Ceccato has coined the terms
“Notional Sphere” (Ceccato 1961 et al., p. 62)
and “Constellation” (Ceccato 1961 et al.,
p. 63), which were precursors of methods of
knowledge representation such as frames and
scripts in early Artificial Intelligence research
(Sowa 1984, p. 128). Knowing how certain
things are related allows the designation to be
made more efficiently by reducing the num-
ber of explicit indications, thus making com-
munication more rapid, flexible and adjust-
Notes
1. Yerkes National Primate Research Center,
http://www.yerkes.emory.edu/
2. Alan and Beatrice Gardner about Washoe:
see Gardner, R.A. & Gardner, B.T. (1969)
and (1971)
3. Piero Pisani, a computer scientist who had
worked with von Glaserfeld in his auto-
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
able (Ceccato & Zonta 1980, p. 78). For
example, consider the expressions “to eat an
apple” and “to eat an hour” (for instance in:
“You may also need to eat an hour before train-
ing…”): without a general culture which
allows us to distinguish between food items
and time intervals the correlation expressed
in the previous sentences could not be cor-
rectly produced or interpreted.
As a consequence of this tight connection
to knowledge and experience, language can-
not merely be considered as a strictly organ-
ised and classified system of words and
phrases: it must also be approached as an
extremely intuitive arrangement of things,
intuitive in its production and intuitive in its
interpretation (Glasersfeld 1965, XIII–1).
This is not to say that language does not
include logical functions and logical implica-
tions, but it embraces very much more: for
instance, interpretations that are “correct”
merely because they are much more probable
than others, given our experience of the world
we live in and our knowledge of how certain
things are related (notional sphere).
Conclusion
Since the great apes are the closest relatives to
human beings, experiments in teaching them
a language can shed some light on the human
mind. Although Lana could not speak, she
learned to communicate in the Yerkish lan-
guage. Lana was the first ape to work with a
computer keyboard, the first to show that
chimpanzees could form syntactically correct
sentences, could recognize written symbols,
could read and could complete incomplete
sentences appropriately. On many occasions
within the context of the LANA project, by
matic translations projects, first in Italy
and later in USA.
4. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/
query.fcgi?CMD=Display&DB=pubmed
5. The Georgia State University Language
Research Center, http://www2.gsu.edu/
~wwwlrc/chimps.htm
6. “The Amazing Apes,” a TV program pro-
duced in 1977 by Bill Burrud, which in-
radical constructivism
means of appropriate Yerkish sentences she
made it quite clear that she was not only capa-
ble of forming concepts and of using lexi-
grams but also able to participate in a manner
of living that we call language, i.e., that she
could experience a recursive coordination of
behavioural coordinations, through which
she could recursively influence what she was
experiencing.
The key question in her language acquisi-
tion is how Lana learned the appropriate syn-
tactic forms and word order for expressing
complex relations in Yerkish as well as a kind
of common sense background knowledge.
How did she correctly concatenate the lexi-
grams? How did she learn to do that? Was it
merely due to good training practice on the
part of the primatologists? Our hypothesis is
that the success of Lana is primarily due to the
fact that she learned the grammar rules of
Yerkish. How? By matching her conceptual
abilities with the correlational structure of
Yerkish. As a consequence we see the success
of Yerkish during the past decades (originally
with Lana since 1973 and later with other
apes, such as Kanzi) as a demonstration of the
viability of the operational methodology that
is its foundation. We hence propose that
Lana’s conceptual system be considered as a
correlational system in which the operation of
correlation is what constitutes the chimpan-
zee’s thinking and an attentional system deliv-
ers the mental contents that correlation
assembles into triads and networks. Since no
other assessment or explanation of Lana’s
performances has considered these funda-
mental issues, we strongly suggest that a new
research project or program be conducted to
investigate the above-mentioned hypothesis
of the importance of Yerkish in Lana’s success
in language learning.
cludes a six-minute feature on the
chimpanzee Lana, seen during training
sessions of the LANA project where Lana
communicates via her keyboard with re-
searcher Tim Gill. The movie can be
viewed at http://www.greatapetrust.org/
research/general/lana.php#
7. Also mentioned in Maturana and Varela
(1987), pp. 215–217
37
 historical; cognitive-psychological
EMPIRICAL
References
Ceccato, S. (1951) Language and the table of
Ceccatieff. Hermann & Cie: Paris.
Ceccato, S. (1953) Consapevolizzazione
dell’Osservare, mod. 3", Atti del Con-
gresso di Metodologia. Ramella: Torino.
Ceccato, S. (1964/1966) Un tecnico fra i
filosofi. Vol. 1 & 2. Marsilio: Padova.
Ceccato, S. (1964) A model of the mind.
Methodos 16: 3–78.
Ceccato, S. (1967) Correlational analysis and
mechanical translation. ORIGINAL
CITATION. Reprinted in: Nirenburg, S.,
Somers H. & Wilks, Y. (eds.) (2003) Read-
ings in machine translation. MIT Press:
Cambridge.
Ceccato, S. & Zonta, B. (1980) Linguaggio,
Consapevolezza, Pensiero. Feltrinelli:
Milan.
Ceccato, S., Beltrame, R., Glasersfeld, E. von,
Perschke, S., Maretti, E., Zonta, B., &
Albani, E. (1961) Linguistic analysis and
programming for mechanical translation.
Feltrinelli: Milan & Gordon & Breach:
New York.
Gardner, B. T. & Gardner, R. A. (1971) Two-
way communication with an infant chim-
panzee. In: Schrier, A. M. & Stollnitz, F.
(eds.) Behavior of non-human primates.
Vol. 4. Academic Press: New York, pp. 117–
184.
Gardner, R. A. & Gardner, B. T. (1969) Teach-
ing sign language to a chimpanzee. Science
165: 664–672.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1965) An approach to the
semantics of propositions. In: Proceedings
38
of the conference on computer-related
semantic analysis, December 3–5, 1965,
Las Vegas USA. National Science Founda-
tion & Office of Naval Research, U.S. Air
Force, pp. XIII 1–24.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1970) The correlational
approach to language. Thought and Lan-
guage in Operations 1(4): 391–398.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1974) The Yerkish lan-
guage for non-human primates. American
Journal of Computational Linguistics 1,
microfiche 12.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1977a) Linguistic com-
munication: Theory and definition. In:
Rumbaugh, D. M. (ed.) Language Learn-
ing by a Chimpanzee: The LANA project.
Academic Press: New York, pp. 55–71.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1977b) The Yerkish lan-
guage and its automatic parser. In: Rum-
baugh, D. M. (ed.) Language Learning by
a Chimpanzee: The LANA project. Aca-
demic Press: New York, pp. 91–129.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1995) Radical construc-
tivism: A way of knowing and learning.
Falmer Press: London.
Glasersfeld, E. von (2000) Silvio Ceccato and
the Correlational Grammar. In: Hutchins,
W. J. (ed.) Early years in machine transla-
tion. John Benjamins: Amsterdam, pp.
313–324.
Glasersfeld, E. von & Pisani, P. P. (1968) The
Multistore System MP-2. Scientific
Progress Report, Grant AFOSR 1319–67.
Georgia Institute for Research: Athens.
Hutchins, J. (ed.) (2000) Early years in
machine translation. John Benjamins:
Amsterdam.
radical constructivism
Lehmann, D., Koenig, T., Pascual-Marqui, R.
D., Koukkou, M. & Strik, W. K. (2000)
Functional tomography of EEG
microstates of visual imagery and abstract
thought: Building blocks of conscious
experience. Brain Topography 12: 298.
Lehmann, D., Strik, W. K., Henggeler, B.,
Koenig, T. & Koukkou, M. (1998) Brain
electric microstates and momentary con-
scious mind states as building blocks of
spontaneous thinking: I. Visual Imagery
and abstract thoughts. Int. J. Psychophysi-
ology 29: 1–11.
Maturana, H. R. & Varela, F. (1987) The tree
of knowledge. The biological roots of
human understanding. Shambhala: Bos-
ton.
Rumbaugh, D. M. & Washburn, D. A. (2003)
Intelligence of apes and other rational
beings. Yale Universitiy Press: New Haven.
Savage-Rumbaugh, E. S., Rumbaugh, D. M.,
Smith, S. T., & Lawson, J. (1980) Refer-
ence: The linguistic essential. Science 210:
922–925.
Savage-Rumbaugh, S., & Lewin, R. (1994)
Kanzi: The ape at the brink of the human
mind. John Wiley Publishers: New York.
Sowa, J. (1984) Conceptual structures. Infor-
mation processing in mind and machine.
Addison-Wesley: Reading.
Terrace, H. S., Petitto, L. A., Sanders, R. J. &
Bever, T. G. (1979) Can an ape create a sen-
tence? Science 206: 891–902.
Received: 30 September 2006
Accepted: 28 January 2007
Constructivist Foundations
 historical radical constructivism
OPINION

Ernst to Amherst, Massachusetts

Jack Lochhead A DeLiberate Thinking (USA) <jacklochhead@comcast.net>
turtle to Athens to see if Lana could learn to made a powerful impression on me. Basically
M emory is no less of a construction than
reality. So the truth of how Ernst program in LOGO. I doubt if all of the world’s it set my ski goals for the next two decades.
decided to move from Athens to Amherst is current problems can be traced to our failure Perhaps it did the same for Ernst.
most likely floating in foam sliding down the to pull off this experiment. But things might In 1987 Ernst retired from the University
side of a drained pint. My first clear memory be fundamentally different if we of Georgia and moved to Amherst, Massachu-
of Ernst is dinner with him and John Richards all had to construct realities setts. Charlotte’s daughter Lisa was working
at a Philadelphia Magic Pan during the 1975 that included chimps who in Northampton, 10 miles distant, so the
Piaget Conference. For years afterwards I were busy writing com- move brought them closer to her. Ernst was a
searched out Magic Pans, yet never again puter programs. welcome addition to my research team at
found the same magic. Dinner was a long Over the next ten years UMass; especially since I had a grant from
discussion of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Ernst made several trips NSF to develop an interdisciplinary science
Maintenance punctuated by occa- to Amherst in an effort course based on an explicitly constructivist
sional diversions that to help us struggle with perspective. After three years and hundreds of
slammed into the the implications of con- hours of discussion a team of faculty from
wall. This was my first structivism for educa- physics, chemistry, biology and science edu-
introduction to Radical Constructivism tion. I made trips to cation discovered that while we all used the
and on the whole I liked it. Why some Athens including one term “energy” in a mathematically common
people are immediately attracted to that seems to have manner we could not jointly agree on how the
this perspective while others are repelled caused the Columbia Shuttle to concept should be presented. Academics have
is as much a mystery to me explode and constructed the disciplines so they cannot be
as are the apparently intelli- Why some people are another that froze merged.
gent people who after care- pipes all over I believe Ernst and I share a conviction that
ful consideration find ways
immediately attracted to this Georgia. Constructivism has something important to
of rejecting Constructiv- perspective while others are We met at vari- say about education. But exactly what that
ism. Piaget had prepared repelled is as much a mystery ous conferences: important something is appears to be increas-
me for modest acceptance to me as are the apparently Piaget in Philadel- ingly elusive. The Constructivist craze, now
of the extent to which we phia and PME all crushed by the Bush Regime, never captured
construct our reality. But intelligent people who after over North Amer- what we felt was most important. Construc-
Ernst and John wanted me careful consideration find ways ica. tivism carries within itself the conviction that
to understand that it was I of rejecting Constructivism For a PME in it is only one of many ways of perceiving expe-
who had constructed the Montreal Ernst rience. Thus it is not surprising that specific
Magic Pan’s brick walls so that none of us and Charlotte drove up from Athens to educational recommendations springing
could walk through them. Had I constructed Amherst only to suffer on north in the from Constructivism can invariably be
those walls differently perhaps they would no exhaust fumes of my diesel Rabbit. I was eager reached via another path and often one that
longer be an obstacle. to show them the sights of my home state of seems completely at odds with Constructiv-
A dozen years later Ernst and I were in Vermont but unfortunately had not accu- ism. For years Art Whimbey and I were easily
Hungary at the ICME conference watching rately constructed our car’s wake. able to collaborate on the books we wrote
the Hungarians reconstructing their walls. My efforts to torture Ernst also included even though Art was a strict behaviorist who
During lunch at a Budapest cafe Boyan Pen- cross country skiing. Without understanding considered constructivism to be the worst
kov told how he had found himself hiding quite how large the footsteps were that I was kind of bunk. Yet rarely did we have reason to
copies of Pravda so the Bulgarian authorities attempting to follow I loaned Ernst a pair of argue about how a classroom should be run.
would not know he was reading it. Then a few boots that were too small. Then I eagerly So why then do I feel Constructivism is
months later in Amherst as the Berlin Wall dragged him through our woods ending any useful? I believe it is only through Construc-
actually came crashing down, Boyan insisted interest he may have had in the cross country tivism that one can appreciate the critical role
that it would never happen in Bulgaria. So aspect of skiing. We finished up at the top of a of the learner. While a teacher may be impor-
much for walls. sledding hill which Ernst plunged down in a tant he or she is never essential and can in no
In 1975 Ernst was still working on the Lana beautiful series of linked telemarks. This was manner determine the learning outcome.
project and I was playing with turtles. So we well before telemarking became a common This realization should have profound impli-
cooked up a scheme where I would bring a sight on American ski slopes and the image cations. But with the realization rare and

Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3 39

http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
 historical
OPINION
Ernst von Glasersfeld sunning at St. Anton (Austria) 1999 (Photo by Jack Lochhead).
unpopular the profound implications will
have to wait.
I suspect Ernst moved to Massachusetts in
the hope of getting back into skiing, a sport he
had given up over 20 years earlier when he left
Italy for Georgia. But for his first years in Mas-
sachusetts there was little evidence of this.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jack Lochhead is an innovator, developer and
researcher in the field of Cognitive Instruc-
tion. At the University of Massachusetts,
1975–1990, he established new programs in
research and teaching and he led the team at
Mount Holyoke College that created Sum-
merMath. He has had teaching positions at
the Univ. of Massachusetts, Mount Holyoke
College, Harvard Univ. and the Univ. of the
Western Cape in South Africa.
40
Ernst constructed a short ski run through the
woods on the hill behind his house but our
snow conditions gave him little opportunity
to practice. Then in March of 1990, 25 years
after Ernst gave up skiing for good, we spent 5
days at Jay Peak in Northern Vermont. I
twisted my ankle on the first day and made
fantastic progress on a chapter I was writing.
Ernst froze in the Vermont winter with condi-
tions which were windy and icy.
Five years elapsed and then Ernst suggested
that we submit a paper to the Journées Interna-
tionales sur la communication, l'éducation et la
culture scientifiques et industrielles which met
in Chamonix, March 1995. After a gap of 30
years Ernst was back to skiing in the Alps! We
returned the following year, stayed longer and
included a run down the Mer de Glace, the
longest lift-served run in the world. During
this run I managed to spray Ernst, rather thor-
oughly, with a can of draft Guiness which I
radical constructivism
opened without first calculating the effect of
altitude on pressurized cans.
In 1997 we diverted to Alta in Utah. Here
Ernst discovered, 2 weeks after his birthday,
that at Alta anyone over 80 can ski for free. We
were hooked. The following year we encoun-
tered a poleless skier dressed in an English
sports jacket. Pandamonium had indeed come
to Alta.
In May of 1998 Ernst returned from a sem-
inar in Austria with the news that he had skied
up and down the Wildspitze. Viability may
require more than one instance but belief and
confidence do not. Ernst now knew he could
ski the mountains of his youth.
Somewhere in the midst of all this Ernst
learned that Chamonix might allow free skiing
after age 100. We continue our preparations
for 2017.
Received: 2 October 2006
Accepted: 5 February 2007
Constructivist Foundations
 philosophical-epistemological radical constructivism
CONCEPTS

Radical Constructivism:
A Scientific Research Program
Leslie P. Steffe A University of Georgia (USA) <lsteffe@uga.edu>

ing model of knowing and learning. Glasers-

Purpose: In the paper, I discuss how Ernst Glasersfeld worked as a scientist on the project,
feld captured the intensity with which we
Interdisciplinary Research on Number (IRON), and explain how his scientific activity
approached our work in IRON2 in a passage
fueled his development of radical constructivism. I also present IRON as a progressive
in Thirty Years Radical Constructivism:
research program in radical constructivism and suggest the essential components of such
“We had heated arguments and for all of us
programs. Findings: The basic problem of Glasersfeld’s radical constructivism is to
it was a powerful lesson, hammering in the
explore the operations by means of which we assemble our experiential reality. Concep-
fundamental fact that what one observer
tual analysis is Glasersfeld’s way of doing science and he used it in IRON to analyze the
sees is not what another may see and that
units that young children create and count in the activity of counting. In his work in IRON,
a common view can be achieved only by a
Glasersfeld first conducted a first-order conceptual analysis of his own operations that
strenuous effort of mutual adaptation.”
produce units and number, and then participated in a second-order analysis of the language
(Glasersfeld 2005, p. 10)
and actions of children and inferred the mental operations that they use to produce units
This passage points to the countless hours
and number. Further, Glasersfeld used Piaget’s concept of equilibration in the context of
we spent trying to reach some semblance of a
scheme theory in a second-order analysis of children’s construction of number sequences
consensus concerning video-recorded mate-
and of more advanced ways and means of operating in the traffic of numbers.
rial of children’s numerical operating and the
Research Implications: The scientific method of first- and second-order conceptual anal-
way in which we operationalized the basic
ysis transcends our work in IRON and it is applicable in any radical constructivist research
tenets of radical constructivism. So it is natu-
program whose problem is to explore the operations by means of which we construct our
ral for me to portray Glasersfeld as a scientist
conceptions. Because of the difficulties involved with introspection, conducting second-
as well as to portray how his scientific work
order conceptual analyses is essential in exploring these operations and it involves analyz-
was a constitutive part of his development of
ing the language and actions of the observed. But conceptual analysis is only a part of the
radical constructivism.
research process because the researchers are by necessity already involved in creating
In the following text, I provide a brief
occasions of observation. The “experimenter” and the “analyst” can be the same person
account of our interdisciplinary work on how
or they can be different people. Either case involves intensive and sustained interdiscipli-
children construct number. After that, I por-
nary thinking and ways of working if the research program is to be maintained over a
tray IRON as a progressive research program
substantial period of time as a progressive research program.
in the sense of Lakatos (1970) and explain
Key Words: Scientific research program, attentional model, conceptual analysis.
how Glasersfeld’s work was essential in con-
stituting the program as progressive. I also
suggest how our work in IRON contributes to

It isicaleasyconstructivism
to read Glasersfeld’s texts on rad-
and interpret them
as indicating that he regards radical construc-
tivism as a finished model of knowing. How-
ever, after working with Glasersfeld for a
rather extended period of time while he was
developing his model of knowing, I fully
believe that he does not regard radical con-
structivism in that way. Rather, my interpre-
tation is that he regards it as a continually
evolving model whose evolution is fueled and
sustained by the novel scientific work of its
adherents.1 I feel justified in my belief
because, as I worked with Glasersfeld, I
learned that his scientific work indeed fueled
and sustained his philosophical and episte-
mological inquiry. So, I was delighted that my
account of how Glasersfeld regards radical
constructivism is compatible with Alexander
Riegler’s characterization of the constructiv-
ist community at large as “a coherent and
largely consistent scientific effort to provide
answers to demanding complex problems”
(Riegler 2005, p. 1).
I came to know Glasersfeld as a scientist
through our intensive collaboration in the
project, Interdisciplinary Research on Num-
ber (IRON). Through that collaboration, I
experienced radical constructivism as a way
of thinking and learning when doing science.
It was a part of who we were and how we
thought, and I still regard it as a living, grow-
other radical constructivist research pro-
grams whose central problem is to explore the
operations that are involved in constructive
activity.
Explaining how children
construct number
The IRON project began in 1975 after Gla-
sersfeld joined the Psychology Department at
the University of Georgia in 1969 and after his
colleague Charles Smock had introduced him
to the work of Piaget. One might wonder why
an epistemologist, mathematics educators,
and a philosopher of mathematics would

Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3 41

http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
 philosophical-epistemological
CONCEPTS
spend countless hours in heated arguments
concerning children’s construction of num-
ber. Perhaps the most salient reason is that
explaining how children construct number is
an extraordinarily compelling problem that
has far-reaching implications for solving
other such problems. In addition, it was our
intention to establish a constructivist research
program in mathematics education that
included mathematics teaching as a central
core. Also on our agenda was initiating a con-
structivist revolution in mathematics educa-
tion to countermand the stranglehold that
behaviorism had on the field in the United
States after the demise of the modern mathe-
matics movement.3 But our most immediate
goal was to synthesize our different ways of
thinking for the purpose of constructing an
explanatory model of children’s construction
of number.
We each brought results from our preced-
ing work to our discussions in IRON. I
brought an experiential model of children’s
numerical operating that was developed as a
result of longitudinal teaching experiments
and Glasersfeld brought his attentional model
for the construction of units and number.
Before we began the interdisciplinary work of
IRON, Glasersfeld, being the passionate and
consummate scholar that he is, had read a
substantial portion, if not all, of the books by
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Leslie P. Steffe earned a B.S. in mathematics
and physics from Morningside College in
Sioux City, Iowa; a M.S. in mathematics from
Kansas State Teachers College in Emporia,
Kansas; and a Ph.D. in mathematics educa-
tion from the University of Wisconsin in
Madison, Wisconsin. During his doctoral
program, he served as a research associate
in the Wisconsin Research and Develop-
ment Center working with Henry Van
Engen on research and development activ-
ities concerned with elementary school
mathematics education. He joined the fac-
ulty of mathematics education at the Uni-
versity of Georgia in 1967 where he
currently serves as a distinguished research
professor. He is best known in mathematics
education for his interdisciplinary research
with Ernst von Glasersfeld and as the men-
tor of outstanding doctoral students.
42
Piaget and his collaborators.4 This was a fun-
damental factor in our work because it not
only grounded our work in Piaget’s genetic
epistemology, it also grounded our work in
the scientific work of the Genevans.5
It is crucial to point out that we each had
our own purposes for engaging in interdisci-
plinary work. My educational purpose was to
develop an itinerary for children’s construc-
tion of number that would be useful in the
mathematics education of children and Gla-
sersfeld’s scientific purpose was to “study how
intelligence operates, of the ways and means it
employs to construct a relatively regular
world out of the flow of its experience” (Gla-
sersfeld 1984, p. 32).6 Although we collabo-
rated on developing a model of how children
construct number, the fact that we did have
different purposes illustrates the power of our
interdisciplinary collaboration.
The preliminary work
An experiential model
Initially, I experimented with using Piaget’s
analysis of children’s construction of number
as a guide when working with children.
Piaget’s analysis had led him to the following
position:
“The development of number does not
occur earlier than that of classes (classifi-
catory structures) or of asymmetrical
transitive relations (serial structures), but
there is, on the contrary, a simultaneous
construction of classes, relations and
numbers.” (Piaget 1966, p. 259)
His minimal criterion for children’s con-
struction of number was operative one-to-
one correspondence that, in his model, was
made possible by the emergence of the arith-
metical unit. The stages in the construction of
one-to-one correspondence exactly paral-
leled those of the construction of operative
classification and seriation (Piaget 1966,
260ff), so I focused on classifying, ordering,
and one-to-one correspondence as activities
that might engender children’s construction
of number. Unfortunately, this effort proved
to be of questionable value. So, I abandoned
Piaget’s analysis as a guide in how I operated
and turned to teaching young children for
rather extended stretches of time so that the
children might teach me what their ways and
radical constructivism
means of operating with number might be
like (Steffe, Hirstein, & Spikes 1976). It is of
great interest to me now that others studying
children’s construction of reading and writing
have taken a similar approach to how to make
progress in children’s education (Ferreiro
1991).
A major thing that I learned was that the
activity of counting is children’s primary
means of solving their arithmetical situations.
I also learned that there are major differences
in the units that children create when count-
ing. For example, when finding how many
checkers were hidden by two cloths, one hid-
ing seven and the other five, some children
would sequentially put up seven fingers in
synchrony with uttering “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,” and
then continue sequentially putting up the
remaining three fingers in synchrony with
uttering “8, 9, 10.” They would then fold all
fingers down and continue by sequentially
putting up two more fingers in synchrony
with uttering “11, 12” and then say, “twelve.”
This was in contrast with children who
couldn’t count unless they could actually see
and/or touch the checkers, and in contrast
with children who would simply start with
“seven” and count on five more times (i.e., 7;
8-9-10-11-12”). There were other more
advanced ways of counting as well as other
variations of units.
The first way that I described above
regarding how some children counted is
indeed spectacular because the children cre-
ated their own units to count [sequentially
putting up fingers] when intending to count
checkers. In fact, at the time I believed that the
act of sequentially putting up fingers while
counting was the first indication of the pres-
ence of Piaget’s arithmetical unit. When chil-
dren had to actually see and/or touch the
checkers in order to count, these acts still indi-
cated that the children were creating units to
count while counting, but they were more
immediately tied to their perceptual experi-
ence in counting. When children simply said,
“seven,” and then continued counting five
more times, this was a more solid indication
of Piaget’s arithmetical unit. Piaget (1970)
was well aware of the importance of units, but
his characterization was restricted to arith-
metical units and he did not provide an
account of units at the sensory-motor level.
For Piaget, arithmetical units are created
when; “Elements are stripped of their quali-
Constructivist Foundations
 philosophical-epistemological
CONCEPTS
ties” (Piaget 1970, p. 37). He gave no account
of children’s construction of units that pre-
cede or follow arithmetical units nor did he
give an account of mechanisms that do the
stripping.
When I began working with Glasersfeld in
1975, as I suggested above, I had an extensive
corpus of video-recorded material of children
solving numerical problems as well as an
experiential model of the units children create
in counting activity. But I was yet to construct
a theoretical model for how the mind makes
the units that I observed the children making
as well as a theoretical model for children’s
counting that explained the differences that I
had observed. More importantly, I was yet to
explain how children constructed number.
A hypothetical model of children’s
construction of units and number
Although Glasersfeld was never involved in
the actual teaching experiments with chil-
dren that I directed, he was highly engaged in
the conceptual analyses7 of an extensive cor-
pus of the video-recorded material of chil-
dren solving numerical problems. I will never
forget late one morning circa 1978 when Gla-
sersfeld declared to me that, “I now under-
stand what mathematicians mean by a set!!”
This event signaled a major breakthrough in
our attempts to understand how the mind
makes the units in counting that I had
observed, and it occurred prior to the publi-
cation of his seminal paper on the conceptual
construction of units and number (Glasers-
feld 1981). In formulating his model, Gla-
sersfeld drew on his work with Silvio Ceccato
whom he credits as the first to interpret the
structure of certain abstract concepts as pat-
terns of attention (Ceccato 1974). According
to Glasersfeld,
“Attention is not to be understood as a
state that can be extended over longish
periods. Instead, I intend a pulselike suc-
cession of moments of attention, each one
of which may or may not be ‘focused’ on
some neural event in the organism. By
‘focused’ I intend no more than that an
attentional pulse is made to coincide with
some other signal (from the multitude
that more or less continuously pervades
the organism’s nervous system) and thus
allows it to be registered. An ‘unfocused’
pulse is one that registers no content.”
(Glasersfeld 1981, p. 85)
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
Glasersfeld’s model of pulsating moments
of attention provided an explanation of the
mental operation that is involved in the con-
struction of ordinary items of experience and
the role these items play in the construction of
numerical units. He called the operation
“unitizing.” A group of co-occurring sensory-
motor signals becomes a “whole” or “object”
when an unbroken sequence of attentional
pulses is focused on these signals and the
sequence is framed or bounded by an unfo-
cused pulse at both ends. The unfocused
pulses provide closure and set the sequence of
contiguous focused pulses apart from prior
and subsequent attentional pulses.
A focused moment of attention registers
sensory material and an unfocused moment
of attention can be regarded as a blank space.
The records of making a sensory-motor item,
or an item of experience, were graphically
illustrated in terms of an attentional pattern as
shown in Figure 1 (Glasersfeld 1981, p. 87).
I I I
0 … 0
ab k
Figure 1: An attentional pattern:
Sensory-motor item
The unfocused moments of attention are
designated by “O” and bound the focused
moments of attention designated by “I.” The
letters a, b, … , k designate sensory material
selected by attention and this sensory mate-
rial is registered as records of experience. I
emphasize that the attentional pattern or rec-
ognition template is established as a result of
individual–environment interaction and the
process it symbolizes constitutes a model of
the operation that is involved in compound-
ing sensory-motor signals together in the
immediate here-and-now to form items of
experience – the unitizing operation.
Sensory-motor items are isolated in expe-
rience and there may be no element of recog-
nition in their establishment. If a child does
recognize an experiential item as having been
experienced before, this constitutes the
beginnings of categorizing items together.
Categorizing, however, goes beyond the sim-
ple recognition of a sensory-motor item. It
involves a sense of similarity in the way
explained by Inhelder & Piaget (1964) when
distinguishing graphic and nongraphic col-
lections.
radical constructivism
“We use the term “collection” rather than
“class” in the strict sense, because the
former term carries no implication of a
hierarchical structure of class-inclusions.
However, these collections are no longer
graphic, and objects are assigned to one
collection or another on the basis of simi-
larity alone. (p. 47)
Assigning objects to a collection in this
sense requires an abstraction beyond the
abstraction that is involved in recognizing a
particular sensory-motor item. It involves
more because sensory-motor items are
formed in the moment and there may be no
recollection of a preceding experience even
though a current item may be recognized.
Categorizing sensory-motor items together
involves recollection of previously experi-
enced items,9 and re-focusing attention on
the items is an act of taking them together, a
process that Glasersfeld called reprocessing or
attentional iteration.
Reprocessing sensory-motor items
encourages focusing attention on the unitary
wholeness of each item, which is an operation
of unitizing the sensory-motor items. The
unitary item produced is diagrammed in Fig-
ure 2 (1981, p. 89).
I
0 0
n
Figure 2:The attentional structure of
a unitary item
Glasersfeld used the notation in Figure 2 to
designate a single attentional moment
focused on the unitariness of a sensory-motor
item. In this, n is used to denote the necessity
of having some, but no particular, sensory-
motor material on which to focus. This devel-
opment of the unitizing operation opens the
possibility of the child categorizing non-
homogeneous items together on the basis of
their unitariness or wholeness – “things” that
go together because they are put together. Gla-
sersfeld referred to these types of collections
as lots to indicate that the categorization was
not constrained to any particular perceptual
material.
Reprocessing the items of lots encourage
stripping sensory content from the unitary
items, which produces an abstract unit item
notated in Figure 3 on the next page (Glasers-
feld 1981, p. 91).
43
 philosophical-epistemological
CONCEPTS
tion of the critical video segments was essen-
I
0 0 tial. The conceptual analysis in which Glasers-
I feld engaged to produce the attentional model
(0 0)
n was extraordinarily insightful scientific work,
and his collaborative conceptual analysis in
Figure 3:The attentional structure of constructing a model of children’s counting
the abstract unit item. types was every bit as insightful.
The construction of the abstract unit item
opens the possibility of using that item to A model of children’s
recursively reprocess the items of lots. This
recursive reprocessing can produce an atten-
counting types
tional structure called a composite unit – a unit Glasersfeld wasn’t as interested in his inter-
of abstract units – diagrammed in Figure 4. pretations of the children’s mathematical
activity as he was in how the others in the
0(0 I 0 0 I 0 0 I 0 0 I 0 0 I 0)0 project thought about the children’s mathe-
matical activity. He did make his own inter-
Figure 4:The attentional structure of a pretations of the children’s numerical ways
composite unit. and means of operating, but he always
checked his interpretations with the other
I have chosen to portray the composite members of the interdisciplinary project, and
unit in Figure 4 as containing only five this was the source of our heated argu-
abstract unit items to emphasize the role that ments.10 Through our collaborative work, I
figurative patterns play in the initial construc- learned that conceptual analysis is an essential
tion of composite units containing five or part of doing science in mathematics educa-
fewer items (Glasersfeld 1982b). These struc- tion and I have used this kind of analysis in all
tures are what Glasersfeld meant by the emer- of my subsequent work in IRON and beyond.
gence of sets in children.9 Through our discussions, an important
Even though the above development of the insight came to the fore that opened the way
attentional model is not complete, it does for major progress. The insight was that chil-
portray what Glasersfeld brought to the scien- dren create the items they count in the activity
tific work on children’s construction of num- of counting. This is clearly demonstrated
ber. After explaining a series of abstractions when a child appears to count specific items
that produced these items, he commented in a situation where no items of that kind are
that: within the child’s perceptual field in the way
“It now remains to be seen whether this that I described children establishing putting
model provides a new and more successful up fingers as unit items when counting hid-
approach to an understanding of the still den checkers in my experiential model. Creat-
problematic activities of counting and the ing motor unit items as substitutes for hidden
operations involved in establishing specific unitary items is the culmination of a rather
numerosities.” (Glasersfeld 1981, p. 94) intricate development in the child. Involved
The preceding quotation captures the ini- in that development is the progressive ability
tial thrust of our collaborative scientific work to create unit items on the basis of, first,
in IRON, where our attempt was to use what visual, auditory, and tactual perception, and
was then an evolving version of Glasersfeld’s then proprioceptive sensation (Steffe, Gla-
hypothetical model in constructing the unit sersfeld, Richards, & Cobb 1983, p. 116).
items that children create as they count. An
indispensable step in constructing a model of Creating perceptual unit items
children’s counting types involved our recur- When children use their unitizing operation
sively returning to critical segments of the recursively to unitize sensory-motor items, as
videotaped material that I had developed. I noted above, Glasersfeld used “unitary
This was an indispensable step because Gla- items” to refer to the result. In the model of
sersfeld’s attentional model constituted a new counting types, we decided to call the unit
way of thinking about how children construct items that children create when counting uni-
units of all kinds, so a continual reinterpreta- tary items perceptual unit items to distinguish
44
radical constructivism
them from the unitary items. We also called
children who are restricted to creating per-
ceptual unit items when counting unitary
items counters of perceptual unit items.11
That some children of even six years of age
are restricted to creating perceptual unit items
in counting was not anticipated by Glasers-
feld’s model of units and number, nor was the
abstraction that is necessary for children to
make the next step in creating items in count-
ing when the unitary items are hidden from
the children’s view. But it did provide an
essential tool to explain how children use
motor acts like putting up fingers, hitting
their desk with a pencil, or some other rele-
vant motor act as countable items that are
substitutes for hidden unitary items that they
intend to count.
Creating motor and verbal unit items
When children use their unitizing operation
to unitize the proprioceptive sensation that is
involved in counting, we called the results of
the operation motor unit items. It was neces-
sary to use children’s capability to produce
visualized images of unitary items to explain
how children substitute motor unit items for
hidden unitary items that they intend to
count. It seemed natural to call the re-pre-
sented unitary item a figural unit item and
characterized the substitution as occurring at
the level of re-presentation. We also called
children who are restricted to creating motor
unit items as substitutes for hidden unitary
unit items when counting counters of motor
unit items.
Counters of motor unit items always start
counting with “one” as do counters of verbal
unit items, which is the next unit item we iso-
lated in children’s counting. When children
unitize the vocal productions when counting
motor unit items, the vocal productions come
to be used as substitutes for the motor unit
items. The motor unit items are dropped out
because simply saying a number word signi-
fies them.
Creating abstract unit items
The abstract unit item was the next countable
unit item in the progression of the types of
units children create while counting. Count-
ing-on, as I describe below, is the behavioral
indicator of the ability to use the abstract unit
item in acts of counting. Given, for example,
the following task: “There are seven marbles
Constructivist Foundations
 philosophical-epistemological
CONCEPTS
in this cup” (rattling the marbles in the cup).
“Here are four more marbles” (placing four
marbles on the table). “How many marbles
are there in all?” Glasersfeld analyzed count-
ing-on as follows.
“If the child says there are seven in the cup,
and proceeds to count the additional mar-
bles, “8, 9, 10, 11 – eleven!” it suggests that
in uttering “seven” the child knows that the
number word, in the given context, stands
for a specific collection of individual uni-
tary items that satisfy the template called
‘marble’ and that, if counted, they could be
coordinated with utterances of the num-
ber words from ‘one’ to ‘seven.’ The child
knows this and therefore does not have to
run through the activities that would actu-
ally implement it on the level of sensory-
motor experience.” (Steffe et al. 1983,
p. 42)
Such counters can also mentally “run
through” counting activity starting with
other number words and count so many more
times. They can turn anything whatever into
countable items because counting has
become a reflective process in Piagetian terms
and, as such, it is “operative” rather than “fig-
urative”.12
Fueling and sustaining
the radical aspect of
radical constructivism
Even though the above discussion of our work
on counting types is necessarily brief, I have
sketched some of the results of Glasersfeld’s sci-
entific work on matters of crucial importance
in the mathematics education of children as
well as in radical constructivism. It is impor-
tant to point out that our work formed an
essential connection with Piaget’s genetic epis-
temology (Glasersfeld 1982a). In a paper that
represents his early analysis of Piaget’s genetic
epistemology (Glasersfeld 1974), Glasersfeld
provided an extensive discussion of Piaget’s
research that undermines the belief that, the
knower and the things of which, or about
which, he or she comes to know are, from the
outset, separate and independent entities. The
basic research that he drew from is Piaget’s
account of the child’s construction of the con-
cept of an object that has some kind of perma-
nence in his stream of experience (Piaget
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
1955). In the paper, Glasersfeld portrays how
the infant comes to be but one element or
entity among others in a universe that he or she
has gradually constructed for him-or herself
out of the elementary particles of experience.
This powerful insight into the child’s construc-
tion of his or her ordinary items of experience
serves as a justification that, from the outset,
the knower and the things of or about which he
or she comes to know are separate and inde-
pendent entities is not viable.
The connection between Glasersfeld’s
model of the unitizing operation and Piaget’s
account of the child’s construction of experi-
ential reality resides in the realization that the
unitizing operation provides an opening to
study mental operations of the mind that are
involved.
“Radical constructivism maintains – not
unlike Kant in his Critique – that the
operations by means of which we assemble
our experiential world can be explored,
and that an awareness of this operating …
can help us do it differently and, perhaps,
better.” (Glasersfeld 1984, p. 18)
Our work using the attentional model in
specifying the types of units children use in
counting constituted an exploration of those
operations of the mind that are involved in
assembling not only experiential reality, but
mathematical reality as well. Husserl also pro-
posed, “that the mental operation that unites
different sense impressions into the concept
of “thing” is similar to the operation that
unites abstract units into the concept of num-
ber” (Glasersfeld, 2006, p. 65). So, given that
children construct what Glasersfeld calls
experiential realities out of elementary parti-
cles of experience, one can infer that children
construct their mathematical realities using
their experiential realities. That is, one can
infer that a child’s mathematics is abstracted
from his or her experiential reality and it is
not given from the outset as an entity inde-
pendent of the child. This analysis definitely
served in fueling and sustaining the radical
aspect of radical constructivism:
“Radical constructivism is, thus, radical
because it breaks with convention and
develops a theory of knowledge in which
knowledge does not reflect an “objective”
ontological reality, but exclusively an
ordering and organization of a world con-
stituted by our experience.” (Glasersfeld
1984, p. 24)
radical constructivism
Radical constructivism
as the core of scientific
research programs
Glasersfeld’s work in IRON demonstrates
how radical constructivism can constitute
the core of a scientific research program.
“All scientific research programmes may
be characterized by their ‘hard core.’ The
negative heuristic13 of the programme
forbids us to direct the modus tollens at
this ‘hard core’.” (Lakatos 1970, p. 133)
Lakatos used “hard core” but I prefer to
use just “core” because the adjective “hard”
can indicate a non-changing core although
this is not what Lakatos intended: “The
actual hard core of a programme does not
actually emerge fully armed … . It develops
slowly, by a long, preliminary process of trial
and error” (p. 133). Although I wouldn’t say
that it has changed by trial and error, it is
indeed the case that the core of IRON has
changed since it began.
First- and second-order analyses
Glasersfeld’s model of units and number
definitely should be a part of the core of any
radical constructivist research program
whose goal is to explore the operations by
means of which we construct our concep-
tions. When I consider the architecture of
the units and composite units that we pro-
duced when constructing the counting-
types model, and the operations that chil-
dren perform using these units as input,14 I
consider the counting types model as modi-
fying the attentional model. For example,
the concept of a figural unit item arose in
analyzing children’s counting behavior and
this unit is not presented in the attentional
model. The motor and verbal unit items
were also not presented. These unit types
certainly are not restricted to children’s
counting [e.g., sign language]. So, there is a
reciprocal relationship between the atten-
tional model and the counting-types model
in that essential elements of the latter
become knowledge of the analyst that can be
used in further analyses.
Glasersfeld produced his model of units
and number by using mental operations to
analyze his own conceptions of units and
number. So, I refer to his analysis as a first-
order analysis. The goal of a first-order anal-
45
 philosophical-epistemological
CONCEPTS
ysis concerns specifying the mental opera-
tions that produce particular conceptions of
the analyst. It is an analysis of first-order
models, which are models the analyst has
constructed to organize, comprehend, and
control his or her experience; that is, the ana-
lyst’s own knowledge. The distinction I am
making between the mental operations that
produce particular conceptions of the ana-
lyst and those conceptions is crucial in
understanding how the knowledge of
researchers can be used in radical construc-
tivist research programs concerned with
exploring the operations by means of which
we construct our conceptions. It is crucial
because these operations are involved in pro-
ducing second-order models.
When the goal is to explore operations by
means of which human beings construct
mathematics, following Piaget (1970), this
involves exploring children’s constructive
activity.15 In the exploration, we construct
second-order models, which are models an
observer constructs of the observed person’s
knowledge in order to explain their observa-
tions (Steffe, et al. 1983, p. xvi). Because the
goal of the analyst in constructing second-
order models concerns constructing concep-
tual operations that explain the observed
language and actions or interactions of the
observed person, I refer to it as a second-
order analysis. The analysis in which we
engaged to produce the counting-types
model was a second-order analysis in which
we used the results of Glasersfeld’s first-
order analysis. The reciprocal relationship
between first- and second-order analyses is
basic in radical constructivist research pro-
grams because it illustrates that researchers
and their ways and means of operating and
observing constitute the research programs.
The fundamental principles of the
core
The fundamental principles of radical con-
structivism that Glasersfeld presented in
1989 were already a defining a part of the
core of IRON even though the principles had
not been as explicitly stated.
“1. Knowledge in not passively received
but built up by the cognizing subject.
“2. The function of cognition is adaptive,
and serves the organization of the experi-
ential world, not the discovery of onto-
logical reality.”
46
When I first read these principles, I dis-
tinctly recollect how they encapsulated
much of the content of radical constructiv-
ism that was known to me at that time. The
second principle, of course, is a restatement
of the radical aspect of radical constructiv-
ism. I mention them because they cut across
radical constructivist research programs of
all kinds.16 But I do not regard the funda-
mental principles as explanatory principles
in the way that we used the attentional model
for units and number in constructing expla-
nations of the units that children create in
counting. Rather, researchers construct
models in what Lakatos called the protective
belt of the core of the research program that
corroborates the core principles, such as
Glasersfeld’s analysis of Piaget’s research on
children’s construction of permanent
objects and our analysis of children’s count-
ing types.
A progressive research program
Although the book Children’s counting types:
Philosophy, theory, and application was a
landmark publication in IRON, we only
used those core principles that were useful to
us in the work that produced the book.
Essentially, after the publication of this
book, we still had not explained how chil-
dren construct number sequences. We had
explained the units that children create in
the activity of counting and hypothesized
that they formed a developmental progres-
sion, but we had not explained children’s
counting in terms of number sequences nor
had we specified the accommodations that
produced the number sequences. So, I
retreated into mathematics education and
Glasersfeld retreated into his theoretical
work. I launched a new teaching experiment
because, in mathematics education, building
experiential models precedes building theo-
retical models.
At the same time as I began the teaching
experiment, Glasersfeld was fortunately
working on a paper in which he interpreted
Piaget’s concept of equilibration and the two
activities that constitute it, assimilation and
accommodation, in the context of scheme
theory. There was no agreement between the
two of us that we would work on mutually
compatible problems, but I wouldn’t say that
it was fortuitous either because we were both
concerned with exploring operations by
radical constructivism
which we construct our experiential worlds.
In what I consider as one of Glasersfeld’s most
important papers for mathematics education,
he commented that:
“Piaget’s conception of assimilation and
accommodation remain incomprehensi-
ble unless it is placed within the frame-
work of his theory of knowledge and, spe-
cifically, into the context that he calls
schéme. “Schemes” are basic sequences of
events that consist of three parts. An initial
part that serves as trigger or occasion. …
The second part, that follows upon it, is an
action … or an operation … . These two
are, as a rule, explicitly mentioned when
schemes are discussed. The third part is
often only implied, but that doesn’t make
it any less important: it is what I call the
result or sequel of the activity.”17 (Glasers-
feld 1980, p. 81).
Analogous to the collaborative scientific
work that produced our explanation of chil-
dren’s counting types, Glasersfeld’s concep-
tual analysis of scheme, assimilation, accom-
modation, and perturbation18, served in our
collaborative scientific work in accounting for
children’s construction of number sequences
after the teaching experiment had concluded.
Five stages emerged in the constructive activ-
ity – two pre-numerical counting19 schemes
and three distinctly different numerical
counting schemes20 along with an explana-
tion of the transitional accommodations
(Steffe, Cobb, & Glasersfeld 1988). We also
accounted for children’s construction of add-
ing and subtracting schemes within each of
the stages. These number sequences quickly
became part of the explanatory constructs of
the IRON research program and were subse-
quently used to explain children’s construc-
tion of multiplying and dividing schemes
(Steffe 1994).
Although Glasersfeld retired from the
University of Georgia in 1987 and joined the
Scientific Reasoning Research Institute at the
University of Massachusetts, that did not stop
our scientific collaboration. After the work
with children’s construction of multiplying
and dividing schemes, another problem shift
occurred in IRON that became known as the
reorganization hypothesis: children’s frac-
tional schemes can emerge as accommodations
in their numerical counting schemes. Glasers-
feld worked as a consultant on this project
throughout its duration and was more than
Constructivist Foundations
 philosophical-epistemological
CONCEPTS
tangentially involved in the conceptual analy-
ses of the video-recorded material that was
produced when teaching children fractions.
That the hypothesis was confirmed (Olive
1999; Olive & Steffe, 2002; Steffe, 2002; Tzur
1999) is, according to Lakatos, essential to
claim that the IRON research program is a
progressive program because the confirma-
tions involved novelties not predicted by the
hypothesis.
“Finally, let’s call a problem shift progres-
sive if it is both theoretically and empiri-
cally progressive, and degenerating if it is
not.” (Lakatos 1970, p. 118)
The explanatory constructs of IRON were
continually expanded to include an organiza-
tion of schemes of action and operation that I
call the mathematics of students. Aspects of
these schemes would be explanatory princi-
ples of other radical constructivist research
programs that explicitly include dynamic
equilibrium, assimilation, accommodation,
and scheme theory because they elaborate
Glasersfeld’s concept of scheme in significant
ways such as the counting-types model elab-
orated his attentional model of units and
number. Toward that end, the architecture of
a scheme presented by Glasersfeld does not
include, for example, reversible schemes,
recursive schemes that take the scheme as its
own input, schemes that are the result of
coordinating a more basic scheme with the
operations involved in producing a unit of
unit of units, or schemes that function at dif-
fering levels of interiorization. So, rather than
present the numerical schemes of the IRON
research program per se as a part of the
explanatory constructs of compatible
research programs, the schemes’ architecture
is what is relevant.
Notes
1. Here, I am speaking of radical constructiv-
ism on the intersubjective level (cf. Glaser-
sfeld 1995, p. 120).
2. The philosopher, John Richards, was an
initial member as well as Patrick Thomp-
son and Paul Cobb who were then doctor-
al students.
3. See Steffe & Kieren (1994) for an historical
account of the rise of constructivism in
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
Final comments
I have tried to say enough to portray IRON as
an evolving and changing scientific research
program. From the time we started to work
together onwards, Glasersfeld developed the
fundamental principles of radical construc-
tivism concurrently with using them in inter-
disciplinary scientific work. Although the
results of his analytical work proved to be of
more immediate use than the results of his
philosophical and epistemological work, the
second fundamental principle of constructiv-
ism is essential in establishing what I think of
as a constructivist school mathematics.
The primary difference between a con-
structivist and a conventional school mathe-
matics resides in one’s conception of school
mathematics. In the latter case, school math-
ematics is regarded as a thing-in-itself inde-
pendently of human thought and experience
and, in the former case, school mathematics
is constituted by the results of conceptual
analyses, which are models of mathematical
thinking and learning. These models consist
of an organization of mathematical schemes
of operation and the accommodations of
these schemes that children produce as a
result of interactive mathematical communi-
cation. The models can open possibilities for
mathematics teachers to construct their own
school mathematics in conjunction with their
children. In fact, the models should be
regarded as providing possibilities for teach-
ers to explain their students’ mathematical
language and actions and for teachers’ goal
setting. Thinking of a constructivist school
mathematics as a dynamic organization of
mathematical schemes of operation in the
mental life of teachers casts mathematics edu-
mathematics education and the zeitgeist
in which we operated.
4. In fact, Glasersfeld said that he used “rad-
ical” for the first time in a paper in which
he interpreted the epistemological aspects
of the work of Piaget (Glasersfeld 1974).
5. I use “Genevans” to refer to not only to
Piaget, but to his collaborators as well.
6. John Richard’s purpose was to reconsti-
tute the philosophical foundations of
mathematics.
radical constructivism
cation as a very exciting field and marks it as
an evolving and changing professional prac-
tice. Glasersfeld has said in many places that
radical constructivism doesn’t tell you what to
do. His comment marks an essential attitude
in how radical constructivism is used. One
does not simply apply radical constructivism.
Rather, one builds living models of radical
constructivism that do not countermand its
basic principles such as a constructivist
school of mathematics.
The members of the IRON research pro-
gram did indeed set a revolution in motion in
school mathematics and Glasersfeld was at
the vortex of that revolution. But the influ-
ence of constructivism manifest in profes-
sional recommendations for reform in math-
ematics education primarily concerned the
first principle of radical constructivism with-
out consideration of the second principle
(National Council of Teachers of Mathemat-
ics 1989, 2000). As a result, recommendations
for what was to be taught were not based on
the second principle. But the constructivist
revolution in mathematics education has not
run out of steam, and as long as radical con-
structivist research programs like the IRON
program remain in a progressive phase, these
research programs will serve to sustain and
intensify the revolution. That is the legacy of
Ernst von Glasersfeld’s work in mathematics
education.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Amy Hackenberg, John
Olive, Erik Tillema, Ron Tzur, Pat Thompson,
and two anonymous reviewers for their com-
ments on earlier drafts of this article.
7. Conceptual analysis was imported by Gla-
sersfeld through his work with Ceccato
and widely used in the IRON project. A
conceptual analysis is an analysis of what
might constitute the mental operations of
others. When used to explain children’s
behavior, the aim is to produce thick de-
scriptions of conceptual operations that,
were children to have them, might result
in them thinking in the way they do (Th-
ompson & Saldanha, 2003).
47
 philosophical-epistemological
CONCEPTS
8. When an attentional pattern is used in cat-
egorizing sensory-motor items together,
Piaget’s (1955) studies on object perma-
nence indicate that children have devel-
oped the capability to use attentional
patterns to produce visualized images of
sensory-motor items that they can recog-
nize (Glasersfeld 1995). These images pro-
vide the child with an awareness of an
experiential item apart from its location in
immediate experience.
9. I have only underscored the emergence of
composite units. Children must learn to
use these nascent structures as input for
operating further, such as disembedding a
subpart from a composite unit, joining
two composite units together, removing
items from composite units, etc.
10.Our attempts to establish intersubjective
agreement were very difficult because the
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chologie 50: 191–218.
Glasersfeld, von E. (1984) An introduction to
radical constructivism. In: Watzlawick, P.
(ed.) The invented reality. W. W. Norton:
New York, pp. 17–40.
Glasersfeld, von E. (1989) Constructivism in
education. In: Husen, T. & Postlethwaite,
N. (eds.) International encyclopedia of
education (Supplementary Volume). Per-
gamon: Oxford, pp. 162–163.
Glasersfeld, von E. (1995) Radical construc-
tivism: A way of knowing and learning.
Falmer Press: London.
Glasersfeld, von E. (2005) Thirty years radical
constructivism. Constructivist Founda-
tions 1(1): 9–12.
Glasersfeld, von E. (2006) A constructivist
approach to experiential foundations of
mathematical concepts revisited. Con-
structivist Foundations 1(2): 61–72.
Inhelder, B. & Piaget, J. (1964) The early
growth of logic in the child. The Norton
Library: New York.
Kenny, V. (1988) Radical constructivism,
autopoiesis & psychotherapy. The Irish
Journal of Psychology 9(1): 25–82.
radical constructivism
IRON is similar with the exception that the
work is embedded in mathematics teaching
and learning as well as in development.
16.IRON wasn’t the only research program
influenced by Glasersfeld. He has also
worked in family therapy (Steffe & Gale
1995), science education (Larochelle, Bed-
narz, & Garrison 1998), and psychothera-
py (Kenny 1988), among others.
17.Schemes can be interpreted as negative
feedback loops (Glasersfeld 1995).
18.Dynamic equilibration, assimilation, ac-
commodation, perturbation, and scheme
are all core principles.
19.We called these two counting schemes the
perceptual counting scheme and the figu-
rative counting scheme.
20.We called these numerical counting
schemes the initial, tacitly nested, and ex-
plicitly nested number sequences.
Lakatos, I. (1970) Falsification and the meth-
odology of scientific research programs.
In: Lakatos, I. & Musgrave, A. (eds.) Criti-
cism and the growth of knowledge. Cam-
bridge University Press, Cambridge, pp.
91–195.
Larochelle, M., Bednarz, N. & Garrison, J.
(eds.) (1998) Constructivism and educa-
tion. Cambridge University Press: Cam-
bridge.
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
(1989) Curriculum and evaluation stan-
dards for school mathematics. Author:
Reston VA.
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
(2000) Principles and standards for school
mathematics. Author: Reston VA.
Olive, J. (1999) From fractions to rational
numbers of arithmetic: A reorganization
hypothesis. Mathematical Thinking and
Learning 1: 279–314.
Olive, J. & Steffe, L. P. (2002) The construc-
tion of an iterative fractional scheme: The
case of Joe. Journal of Mathematical
Behavior 20: 413–437.
Piaget, J. (1955) The child’s construction of
reality. Routledge & Kegan Paul: London.
Piaget, J. (1966) Some convergences between
formal and genetic analyses. In: Beth, E. W.
& Piaget, J. (eds.) Mathematical episte-
mology and psychology. D. Reidel: Boston,
pp. 259–280. First published in 1965 by
Constructivist Foundations
 philosophical-epistemological
CONCEPTS
Ernst von Glasersfeld holding skis at St. Anton (Austria) 1999 (photo by Jack Lochhead).
Presses Universitaires de France, Paris as
Volume XIV of the “Études d’ Épistémolo-
gie Génétiqué”
Piaget, J. (1970) Genetic epistemology.
Colombia University Press: New York.
Riegler, A. (2005) Editorial. The constructiv-
ist challenge. Constructivist Foundations
1(1): 1–8.
Steffe, L. P., Cobb, P. & Glasersfeld, von E.
(1988) Construction of arithmetical
meanings and strategies. Springer: New
York.
Steffe, L. & Gale, J. (eds.) (1995) Constructiv-
ism in education. Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates: Hillsdale NJ.
Steffe, L. P. & Hirstein, J. & Spikes, C. (1976)
Quantitative comparison and class inclu-
sion as readiness variables for learning first
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
grade arithmetic content. Technical
Report No. 9. Project for Mathematical
Development of Children: Tallahassee, FL.
ERIC Document Reproduction Service
No. ED144808.
Steffe, L. P. & Kieren, T. (1994) Radial con-
structivism and mathematics education.
Journal for Research in Mathematics Edu-
cation 26(6): 711–733.
Steffe, L. P., Richards, J., Glasersfeld, von E., Y
Cobb, P. (1983) Children’s counting types:
Philosophy, theory, and application. New
York: Praeger.
Steffe, L. P. (1994) Children’s multiplying
schemes. In G. Harel, & J. Confrey (eds.)
Multiplicative reasoning in the learning of
mathematics. SUNY Press: Albany NY, pp.
3–39.
radical constructivism
Steffe, L. P. (2002) A new hypothesis concern-
ing children’s fractional knowledge. Jour-
nal of Mathematical Behavior 20: 267–
307.
Thompson, P. W. & Saldanha, L. (2003) Frac-
tions and multiplicative reasoning. In: Kil-
patrick, J. & Martin, G. (eds.) Research
companion to the NCTM Standards.
National Council of Teachers of Mathe-
matics: Washington DC, pp. 95–114.
Tzur, R. (1999) An integrated study of chil-
dren’s construction of improper fractions
and the teacher’s role in promoting that
learning. Journal for Research in Mathe-
matics Education 30: 390–416.
Received: 25 August 2006
Accepted: 11 December 2006
49
 educational
CONCEPTS
The Challenge of
Understanding Radical Constructivism
Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr. A Boise State University (USA) <ddykstra@boisestate.edu>
To say “it is” is to grasp for permanence.
To say “it is not” is to adopt the view of nihilism.
Therefore a wise person
Does not say “exists” or “does not exist.”
– Nagarjuna, Mulamadhyamakakarika,
2nd century C.E. (Garfield 1995, Chapter 15:10)
T oone’s
honestly agree or disagree with some-
position, one must first under-
stand that person’s position. Only then can
one really decide about the other person’s
position.
Many people have expressed disagreement
with von Glasersfeld’s notion of radical con-
structivism.1 The list of references to the
expressions of disagreement in print is very
large. In addition there are probably gigabytes
of such expressions on-line. Much of the
debate has been on a philosophical level,
removed at least somewhat from applica-
tion.2 But some have gone so far as to claim
that radical constructivism is dangerous
when applied to education.3
Most, if not all, of these lines of disagree-
ment with radical constructivism have one
aspect in common. They are expositions of
how radical constructivism contains contra-
dictions with the basic premises of realism.
Unfortunately, this common thread is not
acknowledged.
A fundamental
difference
The basic position of radical constructivism is
fundamentally incommensurate with that of
realism. Von Glasersfeld (1999a, [13]) puts
forth the essential difference:
“What differentiates radical constructivism
from the tradition, is the proposal unequiv-
ocally to give up the notion that knowledge
ought to be a veridical ‘representation’ of a
world as it ‘exists’ prior to being experi-
enced (that is, ontological reality).”
50
radical constructivism
Purpose:This contribution to the Festschrift honoring Ernst von Glasersfeld gives some
insight into the perpetual problem of understanding radical constructivism (RC). Parallels
with the Middle Way school of Buddhism appear to shed light on this challenge.
Conclusions:The hegemony realism has over the thinking of even the most highly edu-
cated in our civilization plays a major role in their failure to understand RC. Those still
subject to realism in their thinking interpret statements by those in RC in ways incom-
patible with RC. Until realists disequilibrate over mismatches between realist expecta-
tions and experiences, no alternative way of thinking is accessible to them and
misinterpretations of RC will continue. Practical implications:While we cannot change
someone else’s understanding, in our interactions with them we can focus on creating
situations in which those who do not understand us might disequilibrate. If we are suc-
cessful, they are likely to begin to escape the domination of realism in their thinking.
Value:This insight may enable eventual success in our assisting others to understand RC.
Key words: Realism, Buddhism, disequilibration.
Coming from a different experience, his- The problem with the
tory and philosophy of physics, Max Jammer
(1957, p. 2) seems to be referring to the same debates about radical
thing when in the middle of the last century constructivism
he wrote:
“As a result of modern research in physics,
The issue of initial assumptions
the ambition and hope, still cherished by
most authorities of the last century, that Every position, paradigm or ideology that
physical science could offer a photo- describes the nature of human knowing is
graphic picture and true image of reality based on its own particular set of initial
had to be abandoned.” assumptions. Initial assumptions are at best
Still, the realist position is alive and well in taken on belief and fit with experience.4 It
physics, as evidenced by this comment from appears the initial assumptions of a culture
de la Torre and Zamorano (2001, p. 103): are uncritically adopted as an implicit part of
“…we postulate the objective existence of one’s milieu by those less careful or thought-
physical reality that can be known to our ful. Initial assumptions cannot be known to
minds… with an ever growing precision by be true. They cannot be proved.
the subtle play of theory and experiment.” If one discovers an initial assumption does
It appears that a consequence of the realist not fit experience, then the logical structure
position is: everything is ultimately about the built on this assumption is at least suspect, if
truth, which can be known. Furthermore, in not demolished. No challenges to radical con-
realism, when comparing two statements structivism seem to explore this avenue.
about the world it must be possible to deter- Initial assumptions are usually very hard,
mine which is closer to the truth. On the other if not impossible, to test. Even if one were to
hand, in radical constructivism, truth is not come to understand another view and its ini-
the point because such truth is not accessible. tial assumptions, understanding the initial
In radical constructivism our ways of know- assumptions generally reveals how well they
ing do not access such truth. Hence, the two too fit experience.5 In the end we come back
positions could hardly be more different. to the realization that to choose a set of initial
Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
 educational
CONCEPTS
assumptions from which to operate is either
an act of faith or an arbitrary decision.
The standards of logic
Each paradigm generally operates by the rules
of logical operations agreed upon by all across
paradigms.6 The structures and conclusions
of each paradigm are merely the proper
results of these logical operations starting
from a particular set of initial assumptions.
For this reason the structures and conclusions
of one paradigm cannot be expected to be
consistent with another paradigm based on
different initial assumptions.
These things being the case, the structures
and conclusions from a paradigm can only be
judged faulty or incorrect, if it can be demon-
strated that there is an error in logic at some
point after the initial assumptions, that faulty
data have been used or that the conclusions
do not fit experience. A claim that a conclu-
sion from one paradigm is false because it
does not fit another paradigm is trivial and
non-sequitur. Conclusions from within a par-
ticular paradigm are not intended to apply to
another paradigm and cannot logically be
required to apply to that other paradigm’s dif-
ferent set of initial assumptions. It is impor-
tant to note that since such conclusions are
intended to fit experience, another paradigm
with different initial assumptions may indeed
have an entirely different conclusion to fit the
same experience. Both sets of conclusions are
equally valid, each in their own paradigm.
Sadly, few, if any, of the arguments offered
in the many publications and gigabytes of on-
line discussion attempt to point out an error
in logic from the basic premise of radical con-
structivism or from faulty data. They all make
the strategic blunder of pointing out errors in
radical constructivism as if it must be com-
mensurate with realism. Hence, much effort
has been expended in this program to prove
radical constructivism wrong, but to no avail.
There are two problems with this strategy.
One, as has been pointed out, is the logical
error that conclusions must be universally
applicable instead of dependent on the initial
assumptions from which they are derived.
The other is that such lines of reasoning reveal
that their architects are not operating from
the initial assumptions of radical constructiv-
ism. Such arguments are not likely to impress
the thoughtful observer of such debates, let
alone change someone’s mind.
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
To challenge a view
Observing then that thoughtful people work
diligently and carefully to reason appropri-
ately from initial assumptions and that the
initial assumptions too are subjected to
intense scrutiny to check how well they fit
experience, how can one judge a paradigm?
Beyond previous experience, the only way is
to test its usefulness. Do the predictions
made from it fit experience? Can it be used to
successfully accomplish desirable goals? As
von Glasersfeld (1999a, [3]) has put it:
“Ultimately, of course, a way of thinking
must not only be claimed feasible but, in
order to become attractive, its advantages
must be shown in action.”
We shall come back to some evidence of
the usefulness of radical constructivism later
in this piece.
Evidence of the logical
error: An example
Consider an example illustrating the logical
errors made by realists attempting to prove
radical constructivism wrong, useless or
dangerous. The point in bringing up this
example and commentary is not to demon-
strate the superiority of one view over
another, but the logical errors typically made
in such arguments.
One can see the persistence of realist
assumptions in the following comment by
Owen (1999, [4]) in response to von Glasers-
feld’s paper (1999a).7(Sentences have been
numbered in arabic numerals surrounded
by curled brackets to facilitate reference in
the following analysis.)
“{1}The Archimedian predicament above
is joined by the much-discussed paradox-
icality when radical constructivism tries
to observe itself and construct a theoreti-
cal similitude of itself that can be {i}
selected as the most ‘efficient’ among oth-
ers by means of a criterion of judgment
that is likewise selected in a non-arbitrary
manner, while {ii} avoiding the appear-
ance of violating its own Canon of the
subjectivity of efficiency or utility. {2}
How can a Doctrine of the Subjectivity of
‘Knowledge’ describe itself in generally
valid terms? {3 } After all, we cannot claim
that the Doctrine of radical constructriv-
radical constructivism
ism is a prior principle or schematum for
the synthetic understanding of itself. {4}
I falter here, as Kant did: I am seeking to
make objectively valid statements about a
document that specifies such statements
are logically undecidible. {5} One is dis-
couraged from doing the heavy lifting
required here when no matter how intel-
lectually conscientious one is, the reduc-
tion to ‘a mere matter of personal opin-
ion’ cannot be logically defeated. {6} Or
the retort, ‘Well, if radical constructivism
works for you, that’s fine!’ {7} No matter
what radical constructivism officially
states, its originators were seeking episte-
mological ‘Truth’.”8
In the rather long sentence {1} two
attributes of radical constructivism deemed
incompatible are presented. Attribute {i}
refers to a desire for radical constructivism
to be “most “efficient” among others by
means of a criterion of judgment that is …
selected in a non-arbitrary manner.” Of
course, it would be “violating its own Canon
of the subjectivity of…utility,” (attribute
{ii}) if it were to attempt to demonstrate it is
the most superior by non-arbitrary criteria
of judgment. Stated this way there does
appear to be a paradox. But, in radical con-
structivism, one would neither claim to have
the most efficient explanation or theory nor
that there could be non-arbitrary criteria of
judgment. One might claim that an explana-
tion fits or enables one to be effective at
something, but having the most efficient
explanation is not required. We can never
prove there is not another “more efficient”
explanation out there. Nonetheless, to be
effective or even apparently more effective,
does no more than to suggest a degree of fit
with experience.
Sentences {2} & {3} explicitly reveal the
belief that the goal of radical constructivism
is validity. That Owen wrote to this effect is
evidence that his thinking about radical con-
structivism is subject to realist criteria. Cer-
tainly, if by validity one means truth, or
closer proximity to truth, then this is neither
the goal nor the claim of radical constructiv-
ism.
The intent expressed in sentence {4} is to
make “objectively valid statements.” This is a
realist goal, not a radical constructivist goal.
In sentences {5} & {6} the dilemma presented
is the conflict between the desire to logically
51
 educational
CONCEPTS
defeat something that does not yield to such
methods. Apparently, intellectual “heavy
lifting” is only rewarded by achieving the
goal of logically disproving something or at
least the possibility of logically disproving
something. Finally, in sentence {7} is the
claim that radical constructivist adherents
are really “seeking epistemological ‘Truth’,”
in spite of what is stated explicitly in the arti-
cle Owen is commenting upon. It seems
clear, at least from these words, that the real-
ist view is most consistent with the desired
methods and goals: that thinking and logic
can enable us to prove which of two positions
is closer to a veridical picture of reality.
Again, apparently, the point is to come to a
true picture of reality, which can be arrived
at through our mental efforts.9
We see similar evidence that truth is the
be all and end all in determining value in sci-
entific explanation among critics of radical
constructivism in the writing of Matthews
(1998, p. 5):
“There is a not-too-subtle difference
between the constructivist formulation
‘making sense,’ and the realist formula-
tion ‘finding out.’ The former has no epis-
temological or referential bite; the latter
has both. Things can make perfect sense
without being true; and making still more
sense does not imply any increase in truth
content.”
… and from Kragh (1998, p. 129):
“The epistemology characteristic of con-
structivists is either relativistic or agnostic,
in the sense that they do not admit any dis-
tinction between true and false accounts of
nature…, Denying the existence of an
objective nature, or declaring it without
interest, scientists’ accounts are all there is,
and it is with these accounts the construc-
tivist sociologist is solely concerned. How,
then, do scientists manage to produce
their results and build up a corpus of con-
sensual knowledge about what they call
nature?”
In these two passages there seems to be
the implicit expectation that the sense made
by mere students is extremely unlikely to
resemble what scientists decided before.
This suggests a belief about human nature,
e.g., that most people are not capable of
making the same sense of phenomena that
scientists have in the past. Apparently, in
this view, scientists are the few special peo-
52
ple who can make proper sense of the phe-
nomena.
Both authors do seem to be able to give
accurate descriptions of these facets of radi-
cal constructivism, but just as they are clear
in their descriptions, they clearly fail to rec-
ognize the logical error of expecting radical
constructivism to be consistent with the ini-
tial assumptions it has discarded: those of
realism.10 This does not make radical con-
structivism right, but it renders the argu-
ments of these authors invalid. From the
radical constructivist position, attempting
to make such arguments is inappropriate.
Where did these non-radical constructiv-
ist notions come from? The most likely ori-
gin could be the realism so prevalent in west-
ern culture. This realism is pervasive in our
culture and there is little or no exposure to
an alternative experienced by most of soci-
ety. It goes unexamined by most members of
the culture. The realist origins of the oft-
described difficulties are even more plausi-
ble when one takes a critical look at many
such passages on difficulties with radical
constructivism. Owen clearly expresses dis-
belief in the words of the article on which he
is commenting. In paragraph 52 of von Gla-
sersfeld’s article (1999a) we find the follow-
ing:
“The value of the constructivist model –
and I emphasize once more that radical
constructivism makes no ontological
claims and is intended as no more, but
also no less, than a useful model of
knowledge and the activity of knowing –
will have to be determined by its applica-
tion to basic problems we run into in the
construction of our experiential worlds.”
It appears then that one major challenge,
possibly the major challenge, in understand-
ing radical constructivism is the pervasive,
implicit grounding we all have in realism
from our culture and our own nature. Until
one gets past this hurdle, one cannot be
described as understanding radical construc-
tivism. Throughout the discussions, argu-
ments and debates concerning radical con-
structivism, reference to Truth maintains its
presence as revealed by the words of very
intelligent, sincere detractors. This is evi-
dence of the difficulty of letting go of realist
criteria, which are not part of radical con-
structivism. Such criteria are unnecessary and
counter productive in radical constructivism.
radical constructivism
A possible parallel with
Buddhist thought
There are probably readers of these words
more conversant with Buddhism11 than the
author, but it appears that there is a school of
thought in Buddhism that arrived at ideas
similar to those in radical constructivism,
albeit by a different path.12 It has been
explained that these schools of thought are to
be considered a sequence one moves through
or can move through in thinking about the
nature of what we know and how we know
it.13 The final school of thought is called the
Middle Way. An expression of the Middle Way
is the opening passage by Nagarjuna. The
Middle Way appears to have encountered and
continues to encounter challenges very simi-
lar to those faced by radical constructivism.
What light might this shed on the challenges
mounted against radical constructivism?
The central idea in the Middle Way when
first translated into English was referred to as
“emptiness.” This word is still used in the lit-
erature. What it refers to is the notion that
when we attempt to go beyond the conven-
tional existence of anything, we find no ulti-
mate essence. The consequence is that the
conventional existence of something has a
beginning, middle and end. For Buddhists
this is characteristic of the world we know.
This beginning, middle, and end, sometimes
put as arising, existing, ceasing, applies also
to what we think things are – all things:
objects, ideas, etc. Thus conventional exist-
ence is an expression of emptiness. Von Gla-
sersfeld (1999b, [6]) appears to have
intended something similar when he wrote:
“Considered as a proposed way of think-
ing and not as a description of the way
things are, the question to ask about the
constructivist model is simply: does it give
a viable account of the knowledge I rely on
in my actual living. I obviously believe it
does – but this in no way denies the possi-
bility that tomorrow or the next day a
more elegant or effective model might be
constructed.”
Without ultimate essence there is no ver-
idical picture of essential or ultimate reality.
Any current viable account of experience that
exists now, arose and we can expect it to be
discarded at some point in the future for
another viable account that we consider
more useful at that point.
Constructivist Foundations
 educational
CONCEPTS
A text on the Middle Way was written by
the Buddhist scholar, Nagarjuna, in the sec-
ond century C. E. This text is still studied by
Buddhist scholars today. In it Nagarjuna
explains and defends the Middle Way in verse
form. The book from which the opening
translation was taken includes a very interest-
ing and useful commentary. What is consid-
ered to describe the Middle Way in a nutshell
is Chapter 24, verse 18 (Garfield 1995):
“Whatever is dependently co-arisen
That is explained to be emptiness.
That, being a dependent designation,
Is itself the middle way.”
It appears that what is meant here is that
the impermanence of everything we know
conventionally means that everything we
know conventionally lacks ultimate essence;
it is empty. Any essence we might perceive is
our own imputation, human construction.
In addition the designation “empty” is itself
empty; hence, emptiness is empty of ultimate
essence, also. This notion that emptiness
itself is empty seems to be very similar to a
claim repeated by radical constructivists
(Glasersfeld 1999a, [4]):
“I would be contradicting one of the basic
principles of my own theory if I were to
claim that the constructivist approach
provides a true description of an objective
state of affairs.”
Challenges to the Middle Way come from
essentialism in its various forms. Essentialism
entails the notion that the ultimate essence of
something exists and can be known. A conse-
quence of this ultimate essence of something
is permanence, hence it does not arise nor
does it cease and it can have no cause either to
arise or to cease. There are two extremes in
essentialism. In the case of the reification of
the phenomenal world then emptiness
(dependence) cannot exist, but ultimate
essence does. In the case of the reification of
emptiness, nihilism, the phenomenal world
cannot exist, hence the ultimate essence of the
phenomenal world is permanent non-exist-
ence. These two extremes in essentialism
seem to be realism and solipsism, respectively.
Either physical reality exists or it does not. If
it exists, then we can work on knowing it bet-
ter and better. The only other option in essen-
tialism is non-existence.
The nature of the responses Nagarjuna
makes to challenges to the Middle Way
become evident when one reads the commen-
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
tary. Repeatedly he shows how positions
involving either extreme of essentialism, lead
to contradiction. The only way to avoid these
contradictions is to avoid the extremes of
essentialism. Avoiding the contradictions
enables one to be consistent with the funda-
mental Buddhist tenets.14 This middle path
then holds emptiness, as well as all of the phe-
nomenal world, as empty.
Every challenge to the Middle Way is effec-
tively countered by Nagarjuna in essentially
this same way. The many examples of Nagar-
juna’s counters to the challenges suggest that
the chief challenge to understanding the Mid-
dle Way has its origins in not being able to step
outside of essentialism, i.e., realism. Hence,
even in cultures considered to be majority
Buddhist, the notion of the Middle Way was
misunderstood, apparently in a way very sim-
ilar to the misunderstanding of radical con-
structivism.
This may help us to understand better our
own situation in which so many seem to mis-
understand radical constructivism. Even in a
setting in which a similar philosophical posi-
tion is officially sanctioned, there is resistance
of the same sort. Apparently the situation is
not simply a matter of our realist culture but
of something deeper in the human experience
and functioning.15
What can we do?
Considering possible responses to the chal-
lenge of understanding radical constructiv-
ism, we need to keep in mind important fea-
tures of radical constructivism:
1. Meaning exists only in the mind, hence it
cannot be transmitted (Glasersfeld, in
press)
2. The only person who can make new
understanding for a person is that person.
3. In the case of communication, meaning
can be negotiated, but at best we can only
take this negotiated meaning as shared.
4. Meaning or understanding is formulated
to fit experience, and so revised when
needed.
The consequence of these features of radi-
cal constructivism is that we should strive to
emulate von Glasersfeld (1999b, [1]) – as he
explained:
“I entered the fray neither to preach nor to
convince, but in the hope of being criti-
radical constructivism
cized in a way that might push me to think
and above all to express my thoughts more
clearly.”
Certainly, given the number of recurrences
of application of realist criteria to radical con-
structivism and the number of responses to
these misapplications in different words and
different contexts, it appears that there is no
magic bullet, no set of words that can be used
to avoid initial misunderstanding of what is
intended by radical constructivism.16 The
results of von Glasersfeld’s eloquence over
many years now support this contention. The
process of constructing a new understanding
is a process, not something that can be handed
out to anyone who will read or listen. Simi-
larly, the practitioners of the Buddhist
Madhyamaka (Middle Way) philosophy
point out that a crucial feature is meditative
praxis that enables the experience of the emp-
tiness of all phenomena. This significance of
process in knowing, both on the part of radi-
cal constructivism and of the Buddhist Mid-
dle Way, is in stark contrast with the realism
that dominates Western philosophy and sci-
ence with the focus on final product.
Disequilibration as
central to change in
understanding
The problem of realists understanding radi-
cal constructivism is analogous to that in sci-
ence education (Dykstra 2005). Those teach-
ing science usually have significantly
different understandings of the phenomena
than their students. This has been known for
some time and is well documented (Duit
2006). Much effort has been expended by
many very diligent, sincere, intelligent
instructors, yet the outcome is most students
leave with the same understanding of the
phenomena they came with, new terms not-
withstanding. Meaning was not transmitted
to the students (Duit 2006). Of course, this
negative result has to be explained. The realist
adopts the elitist doctrine that only a few spe-
cial students can properly receive what has
been transmitted. radical constructivism
offers an alternative.
If meaning cannot be transmitted, then is
instruction for all a hopeless cause? It appears
that attempts to transmit meaning in science
53
 educational
CONCEPTS
instruction generally fail. To attempt to trans-
mit something entails something that can be
transmitted. In realism this meaning, often
called knowledge, is assumed to have this
property. That the attempt to transmit “sci-
ence knowledge” is such a spectacular failure
in science education suggests a substantial
failure of the realist program to fit experience.
An alternative exists to this dismal pros-
pect. The Swiss Genetic Epistemologist, Jean
Piaget, and his colleagues studied the think-
ing of children and students for more than 60
years. This work focused not on what happens
in school, but on what appears to be happen-
ing in the minds of young human beings.
Piaget and his co-workers developed an
explanatory model for the developmental
processes they observed in many students
(Piaget 1985). Human beings establish and
maintain equilibrium between their concep-
tions of their world and their experiences in
their world. When they perceive disequilibra-
tion, they move to re-establish equilibrium.
This can happen in either of two ways. The
offending experience can be ignored or
avoided, swept under the carpet, so to speak.
On the other hand, conceptions of the world
can be changed such that the offending expe-
rience no longer offends.
In this model, human beings are con-
stantly experiencing their world. There is a
constant, not always conscious, checking of
these experiences against expectations based
on existing explanatory schemes. As long as
experiences are consistent with existing
explanatory conceptions, these experiences
reinforce those conceptions. It should be
noted that a significant part of this process is
the selective ignoring of certain differences
that in the applicable conception are deemed
unimportant. This processing of experience
that matches or fits existing explanatory con-
ceptions is called by Piaget “assimilation.”
Under these conditions, existing explanations
account for experience, hence there is neither
need nor motivation to revise or devise new
explanatory conceptions. There is equilib-
rium between experience and existing expla-
nation.
When experience is encountered that is
perceived not to fit existing explanation and
this mismatch cannot be ignored, a state of
disequilibration between explanation and
experience is experienced. Once avoidance is
not an option, then a process of self-regula-
54
tion is initiated and existing explanation is
modified and tested until the new or modified
explanation fits these new experiences. An
accommodation is developed. The disequili-
bration can be minor or monumental. Either
way the new explanation fits experience better
than the previously existing explanatory con-
ceptions.
If one wishes to engage someone in devel-
oping new understanding, disequilibration is
key. This is central for any teacher who wishes
students to leave the instructional setting with
new understanding. The teacher needs to
understand the students’ thinking about a
phenomenon. With this understanding in
mind, the teacher needs to search for exam-
ples of experience with the phenomenon that
do not fit the students’ thinking. Having
picked an example, to maximize the chances
that students disequilibrate, the teacher will
engage the students in making and explaining
predictions about the example. This engages
commitment to the explanation by the stu-
dents and makes explicit features of their
explanatory conceptions. The prediction sets
up a test of their explanations. If the teacher
has developed a sufficient understanding of
the students’ understandings, then when they
experience the example experience, they will
not be able to assimilate it. Disequilibration is
the result. If the teacher has not developed a
sufficient understanding of the students’
understandings, then they will be able to
assimilate the new experience. Disequilibra-
tion does not occur and no change in existing
explanations will be necessary. Even though
the students do not change their understand-
ings, the event provides evidence for the
teacher to develop a better understanding of
the students’ understandings.
If, in the classroom, it is safe for their pre-
dictions to be found not fitting their explana-
tions, then it is safe to speculate about and test
alternative explanations, on the evidence of
the new experience. These alternative expla-
nations can be tested. This process of elicita-
tion of explanatory conceptions, comparing
these conceptions with experience, and
resolving discrepancies can be cycled over
additional experiences that do not fit explana-
tion at each cycle. The result is always explan-
atory conceptions that fit more experience
and usually fit more closely.
Dykstra (2005) shares data in evidence
that change in understanding the phenomena
radical constructivism
can be the result of this approach to instruc-
tion. On established diagnostics of students’
conceptions, course averages for non-science
majors routinely change by four or five times
the amount the class averages change for sci-
ence and engineering majors that experience
conventional instruction on the same topics.
The large change in understanding is not just
achieved by a few special students, but essen-
tially by all who are willing to participate in
the process.17 The instruction described is
pursued with the goal of engaging students in
examining and testing their own sense of the
phenomena. This is in contrast to typical
instruction in which the activity has the
exclusive goal of transmitting the knowledge
to the students by telling and showing them.
The structure of the canonical knowledge
does not drive this instruction. Instead, the
students’ understanding and the experiences
it can be applied to drive the instruction. It is
not a focus on the phenomena, nor is it an
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr., currently a Professor
of Physics at Boise State University in Boise,
ID, USA, began his interest in science by
reading science fiction in grade 3. Active in
science fairs through the middle and high
school grades in Maryland, at Case Institute
of Technology in Cleveland, OH he earned
a B. S. in Physics in 1969. For three years he
taught Physics and Physical Science at East
Technical High School in Cleveland, OH and
the next year 9th grade Physical Science and
senior Physics at Middletown High School in
Middletown, MD. While earning a Ph. D. in
condensed matter Physics at The University
of Texas at Austin, he stumbled upon a
description of the work of Jean Piaget and
its applications to thinking about physics
learning. On the Physics faculty at Okla-
homa State University and at Boise State
University, Dykstra’s work has focused on
understanding the nature of understanding
physical phenomena and how, why, and
under what circumstances this understand-
ing appears to change. Having heard of con-
structivism already from others, he was not
exposed to the writing of Ernst von Glasers-
feld until 1989. Since then, Ernst has been a
valued mentor. Dykstra sometimes finds
time to play bagpipes.
Constructivist Foundations
 educational
CONCEPTS
attempt to guess what scientists figured out in
the past. It is a focus by the students on their
own understanding and testing it carefully
against experience with the phenomena. In
other words, it is the process that makes the
changes in understanding possible.
Disequilibration:
Key to breaking the
bonds of realism
If this approach to education can shed any
light on engaging people in constructing an
understanding of radical constructivism, it
seems to be in inducing disequilibration. One
cannot disequilibrate someone else, but one
can create settings in which people are more
likely to disequilibrate themselves. The effort
to accomplish this induction of disequilibra-
tion must be understood as a process. We do
not have the luxury of having an impartial
third entity, such as some physical phenome-
non to check against. Consequently, all we
have to share is our words and the gestures we
make. The only experience another has to
work with to test their explanation of what we
are talking about is experience with our words
Notes
1. For the reader who is not familiar with
radical constructivism there are two
sources that serve as good starting points
for making sense of radical constructiv-
ism. The shorter of these two is the article
Knowing without metaphysics (Glasersfeld
1999a). The article is accessible on-line. A
more extensive description is in the book
Radical constructivism: A way of knowing
and learning (Glasersfeld 1995).
2. A few examples: Bickhard (1995); Phillips
(2000); Suchting (1992).
3. For example: Matthews (2000); Kragh
(1998); Nola (1998).
4. Since the objects of interest here are para-
digms concerning the explanation of ex-
perience, any paradigm whose initial
assumptions do not fit experience will
have a hard time surviving the need for fit
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
and gestures. Just as experience with a physi-
cal phenomenon neither conveys nor proves
the truth of an explanation, our words and
gestures do not convey or prove meaning to
someone else. In the case of radical construc-
tivism the process is more complicated and
requires more time than the phenomena of
introductory physics.18
It is necessary in our interactions with
realists that we recognize they do not realize
we are working with a profoundly different set
of initial assumptions. Society is set up by
realists to be compatible with their view. They
will work very hard at interpreting what we
say in their terms. They cannot “hear” what
we are saying in our own terms, because they
have yet to construct the requisite ideas.
Before they begin to develop another way of
thinking, they have to disequilibrate. We have
to calculate to say and do things, to bring their
attention to things that do not fit their realist
explanations of their world, i.e., things that do
not make sense to them. We run the risk of
their concluding we are deluded or misled.
This is the equivalent of sweeping the experi-
ence, and us, under the carpet. On the other
hand, there will be some who draw near to the
discrepancy they perceive and begin to
develop new conceptions in interactions with
to experience. “Being explained” entails fit
between explanation and that which is to
be explained. Since the attempt is to ex-
plain experience, it is not an assumption
that initial assumptions in a paradigm
must fit experience. It is a consequence of
the belief that experience can be explained.
Fitting experience is the point of the pro-
cess. An explanation that does not fit
would neither be viable nor an explana-
tion. This is not uniquely Piagetian. It is
fundamental to the process of any attempt
to explain a specified set of experiences
from any paradigm. It is certainly the basis
of science.
5. It is important to keep in mind the differ-
ence between understanding a view and
accepting that view.
6. By “logic” and “logical operations” I mean
to distinguish initial assumptions, de-
scriptions of experience and conclusions
radical constructivism
us. We cannot afford to let the risk of being
written off deter us from our efforts to induce
disequilibration. Without disequilibration,
no change in understanding happens.
It should be clear that this process requires
patience. We see this in Ernst von Glasersfeld’s
approach. For many his calm and patient
demeanor, coupled with his willingness to
interact, have provided necessary ingredients
to enable us to construct our understandings
of radical constructivism. We can only hope
to emulate him in our own efforts to help oth-
ers understand.
Thank you Ernst for engaging with us in
constructing our own new understandings,
for being our mentor.
Acknowledgements
In addition to the mentorship of Ernst von
Glasersfeld, I am indebted to Geshe Lhakdor
and Allan Wallace for the opportunity to
interact with them about Buddhist philoso-
phy. A very large number of students have
helped immeasurably by being willing to
share their understandings with me. Contri-
butions have also been made by two anony-
mous reviewers of this manuscript.
from the logical operations used to derive
conclusions from the assumptions and de-
scriptions of experience. The logical oper-
ations are in the “if…, then…” and the
“because…” parts of explanation.
7. This passage is reproduced exactly as it ap-
pears on-line. The only thing changed is
the font and font size.
8. It should be noted that in the case of this
particular author, reading the note in its
entirety reveals the author is working on
making sense of radical constructivism.
This is relatively rare. Most negative pub-
lications about radical constructivism are
attempts to disprove it, not understand it.
9. Alan Wallace (2006, personal communi-
cation) suggests: “The fundamental ques-
tion as I see it is: are you seeking to
understand reality as it exists indepen-
dently of perceptual experience and
thought? Or are you seeking to understand
55
 educational
CONCEPTS
the world of experience (Lebenswelt),
which does not exist independently of per-
cepts and concepts? Philosophical realists
are concerned with the former, whereas
Buddhists (especially Madhyamikas
[Middle Way adherents]) are concerned
with the latter.” In radical constructivism
the position is that our experiential reality
is all we can access. We have no way to ac-
cess something that might be independent
of perceptual experience and thought.
This suggests a certain similarity between
the positions of Buddhism and radical
constructivism in contrast to realism.
10.One should note that Riegler (2001) shows
how one can understand science from a
radical constructivist point of view. Of
course, the drive to find truth is not part of
this way of understanding science.
11.Others associated with radical construc-
tivism have explored connections between
Buddhist thought and radical constructiv-
ism. The interested reader should consult
Varela, Thompson & Rosch (1991). In the
present piece the point is not primarily the
similarities between the two philosophies,
but that both have faced analogous on-
slaughts from defenders of realism.
References
Bickhard, M. H. (1995) World mirroring ver-
sus world making: There’s gotta be a better
way. In: Steffe, L. P. & Gale, J. (eds) Con-
structivism in education. Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates: Hillsdale NJ, pp. 229–
267.
de la Torre, A. C. & Zamorano, R. (2001)
Answer to question #31. Does any piece of
mathematics exist for which there is no
application whatsoever in physics? Ameri-
can Journal of Physics 69(2): 103.
Duit, R. (2006) Students’ and teachers’ con-
ceptions in science: A bibliography.
Retrieved from http://www.ipn.uni-
kiel.de/aktuell/stcse/stcse.html on 29 Jan-
uary 2007.
Dykstra, D. I. Jr. (2005) Against realist
instruction: Superficial success masking
catastrophic failure and an alternative.
Constructivist Foundations 1(1): 40–60.
Garfield, J. L. (1995) The Fundamental Wis-
dom of the Middle Way: Nagarjuna’s
56
12.It is the case that Buddhism practices sim-
ilar ideals to those of radical constructiv-
ism. In particular both are based on the
extent to which they fit experience. This is
one of many differences in Buddhism
from religions we in the west are generally
familiar with. The consequence is that
Buddhist philosophy evolves as does our
understanding in radical constructivism.
13.This explanation of the relationship be-
tween these philosophical schools was giv-
en in verbal interaction by Geshe Lhakdor,
Director of the Library of Tibetan Works
and Archives, Dharamsalla, India, Decem-
ber, 2005.
14. The Four Noble Truths in Buddhism and
their implications serve as the foundation
on which Buddhism and its philosophy
are built. They are: (1) All life in cyclic ex-
istence is suffering. (2) There is a cause of
this suffering, namely, craving caused by
ignorance. (3) There is a release from suf-
fering. (4) The path to that release is the
eightfold Buddhist path of Right View,
Right Understanding, Right Speech, Right
Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort,
Right Mindfulness and Right Concentra-
tion (Garfield 1995, p. 294). The order in
Mulamadhyamakakarika. Oxford Univer-
sity Press: New York.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1995) Radical construc-
tivism: A way of knowing and learning.
Falmer Press: London.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1999a) Knowing without
metaphysics: Aspects of the radical con-
structivist position. Karl Jaspers Forum
Target Article 17. Retrieved from http://
www.kjf.ca/17-TAGLA.htm on 11 Sep-
tember 2006. Originally published in 1991
in: Steier, F. (ed.) Research and reflexivity
(Inquiries into Social Construction). Sage
Publications: London, pp. 12–29.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1999b) Construction in
religion and art. Response 5 to commen-
tary 5 by G. Morgenstern to Karl Jaspers
Forum Target Article 17. Retrieved from
http://www.kjf.ca/17-R5MOR.htm on 12
September 2006.
Glasersfeld, E. von (in press) The constructiv-
ist view of communication. Presented at
the 2003 Memorial Meeting for Heinz von
Foerster, Vienna. Retrieved from http://
radical constructivism
this list of the eightfold path has been ad-
justed to conform to the standard in Tibet-
an Buddhism.
15.One wonders with access to cinema pre-
mises, such as that in The Matrix, and ac-
cess to virtual reality, if there is the slow
evolution of culture beyond realism. Sad-
ly, many young people seem more inter-
ested in material gain. In this context it
appears The Matrix is still science fiction,
with the emphasis on fiction.
16.The typical conclusion first jumped to
about radical constructivism while still
rooted in realist foundations is that radical
constructivism is nothing more than the
absurd assertion of solipsism.
17.The elitist notion implied in the realist
criticism by their assumption that mere
students making sense about phenomena
cannot lead to what scientists have decided
is without merit in the light of this data.
18.The shift from the goal of students “get-
ting” the distilled wisdom transmitted to
engaging students in making sense of their
experiences seems similar to Piet Hut’s
(2003) reference to “goal-as-path” forms
of Buddhism in contrast to what might be
goal-as-result forms.
www.vonglasersfeld.com on 5 March
2007.
Hut, P. (2003) Conclusion: Life as a labora-
tory. In: Wallace, B. A. (ed.) Buddhism an
science. Columbia University Press: New
York, pp. 399–416.
Jammer, M. (1957) Concepts of force. Har-
vard University Press: Cambridge MA.
Republished in 1999 by Dover Publica-
tions: Mineola NY,
Kragh, H. (1998) Social constructivism, the
gospel of science, and the teaching of phys-
ics. In: Matthews, M. R. (ed) Constructiv-
ism in science education. Kluwer
Academic Publishers: Norwell MA, pp.
125–138.
Matthews, M. R. (1998) Introductory com-
ments on philosophy and constructivism
in science education. In: Matthews, M. R.
(ed) Constructivism in science education.
Kluwer Academic Publishers: Norwell
MA, pp. 1–10.
Matthews, M. R. (2000) Appraising construc-
tivism in science and mathematics educa-
Constructivist Foundations
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tion. In: Phillips, D. C. (ed.) Construc-
tivism in education: Opinions and
second opinions on controversial
issues. National Society for the Study
of Education: Chicago, pp. 161–192.
Nola, R. (1998) Constructivism in science
and in science education: A philosoph-
ical critique. In: Matthews, M. R.
(ed.) Constructivism in science
education: A philosophical exam-
ination. Kluwer Academic Pub-
lishers: Norwell MA, pp. 31–60.
Owen, R. (1999) Difficulties with con-
structivism. Commentary 24 to Karl
Jaspers Forum Target Article 17.
Retrieved from http://www.kjf.ca/17-
C24OW.htm on 11 September 2006.
Phillips, D. C. (2000) An
opinionated
account of the
constructivist
landscape. In: Phil-
lips, D. C. (ed.) Con-
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
radical constructivism
structivism in education: Opinions and
second opinions on controversial issues.
National Society for the Study of Educa-
tion: Chicago, pp. 1–16. (See also the Edi-
tor’s Introduction to each section of the
book).
Piaget, J. (1985) The equilibration of cogni-
tive structures: The central problem of
intellectual development. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press.
Riegler, A. (2001) Towards a radical construc-
tivist understanding of science. Founda-
tions of Science 6 (1–3): 1–30.
Suchting, W. A. (1992) Constructivism de-
constructed. Science and Education 1(3):
223–254.
Varela, F., Thompson, E. & Rosch, E. (1991)
The embodied mind: Cognitive science
and human experience. MIT Press: Cam-
bridge MA.
Received: 15 September 2006
Accepted: 13 February 2007
57
 philosophical-epistemological radical constructivism & biology of cognition
CONCEPTS

Distinguishing Ernst von Glasersfeld’s

“Radical Constructivism” from
Humberto Maturana’s “Radical Realism”
Vincent Kenny A Accademia Costruttivista di Terapia Sistemica (Italy) <kenny@acts-psicologia.it>

Empiricus, of Montaigne, Berkeley, and

Purpose: Ernst von Glasersfeld has dedicated a lot of effort to trying to define just where Vico … the company of all the coura-
his views and those of his friend Humberto Maturana part company, epistemologically geous sceptics who … have maintained
speaking (Glasersfeld 1991, 2001).As a contribution to unravelling this puzzle I propose in that it is impossible to compare our
this article to delineate just where they seem to differ most and why these differences arise. image of reality with a reality outside. It
Approach: Part of my contribution is to propose drawing a distinction between von Gla- is impossible, because in order to check
sersfeld’s Radical Constructivism as the last viable outpost of constructivism before enter- whether our representation is a ‘true’ pic-
ing into the domain of solipsism, in contrast to Maturana’s position which is saved from ture of reality we should have to have
being located within the solipsistic domain by virtue of his ideas on “structure determined access not only to our representation but
systems” and his theory of how language arises in human experience. also to that outside reality before we get to
Findings:Von Glasersfeld’s puzzle arises due to what Kant called “transcendental illusion,” know it. And because the only way in
that is, the error of trying to encompass two mutually untranslatable phenomenal domains which we are supposed to get at reality is
within the same language framework. Conclusions: After an examination of some of the precisely the way we would like to check
crucial differences between von Glasersfeld and Maturana I typify Maturana’s positioning and verify, there is no possible escape
as that of “radical realism” in contrast to von Glasersfeld’s “radical constructivism.” from the dilemma.” (Glasersfeld 1987,
Key words: Epistemology, transcendental illusion, radical realism, map–territory. pp. 137–138).
So here is a very clear condemnation of
The leaking describe an independent reality. That is “epistemological cheating” – the impossible
why I prefer to call it an approach to or a feat of trying to peep around our perceptual
constructivist boat theory of knowing. Though I have used “goggles” to see if our “picture” is approxi-
adrift in an ocean of them in the past, I now try to avoid the mating to the “real reality” or not. Over the
terms ‘epistemology’ or ‘theory of knowl- past 20 years Ernst von Glasersfeld has put a
realism edge’ for constructivism, because they lot of effort into understanding just where
tend to imply the traditional scenario his work and the work of Humberto Mat-
It is not my intention to compare their entire according to which novice subjects are urana differ, especially in the fundamental
works in this short paper. It would be like born into a ready-made world, which matters of epistemology. Apart from his
comparing apples and pears – they have pro- they must try to discover and ‘represent’ grave reservations about key concepts of
duced very different models and for very dif- to themselves. From the constructivist Maturana’s work such as the “observer” (and
ferent purposes. While Ernst von Glasersfeld point of view, the subject cannot tran- how he comes about), “consciousness,”
has always limited himself to a sharp focus on scend the limits of individual experience.” “awareness,” and “language” (its genesis, and
epistemology, Humberto Maturana has (Glasersfeld 1995, pp. 1–2) that it precedes cognition, etc.), Ernst von
developed several different models relating to In his early studies Ernst von Glasersfeld Glasersfeld shares the perplexity of other
the different areas of cellular biology, experi- noted a problem in Wittgenstein’s (1933) authors regarding the ways in which Mat-
mental epistemology, neurophysiology, lan- assertions about comparing our picture of urana can be seen to be “smuggling realism”
guage, visual perception, and the “definition reality with the reality in question in order to back into his opus in one form or another
of the living,” among others. Indeed, in recent determine whether or not our own picture (Mingers 1995, Johnson 1991, Held & Pols
years Ernst von Glasersfeld (1995) has written was true or false. Ernst von Glasersfeld 1987). In Maturana’s writings there are many
that he now tries to avoid even using the term (1987) comments: passages where one gets the impression that
“epistemology” and writes about human “How could one possibly carry out that he edges over into the terrain of “realism” in
“knowing.” comparison? With that question, his discussions and phraseologies. In
“…(this book) is an attempt to explain a although I did not know it at the time, I attempting to understand this Ernst von Gla-
way of thinking and makes no claim to found myself in the company of Sextus sersfeld (1991) tries to explain that Maturana

58 Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3

http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
 philosophical-epistemological
CONCEPTS
“… is obliged to use a language in his
expositions that has been shaped and pol-
ished by more than two thousand years of
realism – naïve or metaphysical – a lan-
guage that forces him to use the word
‘to be’ which, in all its grammatical forms,
implies the assumption on an ontic real-
ity.” (Glasersfeld 1991, p. 66)
However, I believe that there is more
involved here than the constraints of the “lan-
guage of realism,” because Maturana (1986)
has frequently not helped matters by inserting
passages in his writings which are epistemo-
logically ambiguous. For example, he has
claimed that it is an “epistemological neces-
sity” to expect that there is a “substratum” as
the ultimate medium in which everything
takes place. Such remarks can lead one to
question whether or not he is smuggling
“realism” back into his model.
In this brief article I will try to throw a little
light on Ernst von Glasersfeld’s puzzle about
where he and Maturana part epistemological
company. I will try to trace several important
differences in their theories, relating my dis-
cussion to how they variously define the way
the person experiences their living. I will try
to point out some forks in the road where they
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vincent Kenny about himself:“I was born in
Ireland and studied for degrees in philoso-
phy and psychology at Trinity College Dub-
lin in the 1960s. I graduated from there at
a time when these subjects were still called
“Mental and Moral Science” and have spent
my subsequent years wondering which was
which. Since the 1970s I have worked
applying constructivist ideas in the very dif-
ferent fields of psychotherapy, consulting to
organisations, and to tennis psychology –
working with professionals in the ATP and
WTA tours. I live in Rome, where I also
work much of the time. My main current
position is as director of the “Accademia
Costruttivista di Terapia Sistemica” in
Rome, which is a new center for training in
radical constructivist psychotherapy
approaches. I have a long-term writing
project with Ernst von Glasersfeld – a book
on the application of radical constructivism
to the area of psychotherapy – which I
seem reluctant to finish.”
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
radical constructivism & biology of cognition
wander off in different directions, being
mindful that while Maturana has tried consis-
tently to build up a major overarching philo-
sophical model, von Glasersfeld has strictly
limited himself to the epistemological task of
delineating what human knowing can be and
cannot be.
Structure-determinism
and the dilemma of
“choice”
A good starting point for this task is the issue
of how “free” or “constrained” we are in our
interactions with our world and others. Both
Ernst von Glasersfeld and Humberto Mat-
urana can be read as dealing with how much
freedom to manoeuvre we have in coping
with life’s events. Ernst von Glasersfeld
describes how we must “fit” with the con-
straints of the environment, while Humberto
Maturana’s notion of structure determinism
can be read as implying that the system has no
“real choice” when it comes to the moment of
taking action. Let us look a little more closely
at these two positions.
The relation of fitting that von Glasersfeld
(1984) has in mind is conveyed in his meta-
phor of a key fitting a lock:
“A key fits if it opens the lock. The fit
describes a capacity of the key, not of the
lock. Thanks to professional burglars we
know only too well that there are many
keys that are shaped quite differently from
our own but which nevertheless unlock
our doors. …. From the radical construc-
tivist point of view, all of us – scientists,
philosophers, laymen, school children,
animals, and indeed , any kind of living
organism – face our environment as a bur-
glar faces a lock that he has to unlock in
order to get at the loot.” (Glasersfeld 1984,
p. 21).
To continue his elaboration, von Glasersfeld
(1995) says that our knowledge does not con-
stitute a picture of the world.
“It does not represent the world at all – it
comprises action schemes, concepts, and
thoughts, and it distinguishes the ones
that are considered advantageous from
those that are not. In other words, it per-
tains to the ways and means the cognizing
subject has conceptually evolved in order
to fit into the world as he or she experi-
ences it.” (Glasersfeld 1995, p. 114)
In this relationship of knowledge to “real-
ity” we see that it is a matter not of searching
for an iconic representation of reality but
rather the search for ways of “fitting” the con-
straints that the environment provides. The
real world is “contacted” by the system only
where his modes of fitting the constraints
break down and do not manage to allow him
to circumnavigate the encountered impedi-
ments. It is also clear from his use of the met-
aphor of lock/key that one may be outfitted
with a range of alternative keys one of which
may work better than others to open the lock.
This is an idea common to other constructiv-
ists, notably among them George Kelly
(1955), whose constructivist theory applied
to clinical psychology and psychotherapy was
premised on the notion of “constructive alter-
nativism.” Kelly believed that in order to con-
tinue to learn and to positively elaborate the
personal construct system, the person must
choose those alternatives which will lead to
the extension and/or definition of the con-
struction system. Survival simply means con-
structing any alternative means whatever
which manage to get by the constraints. In any
given environment there may be an infinite
variety of viable alternative solutions.
“There are other consequences of the con-
structivist approach to knowing that are
sometimes met with indignation. If viabil-
ity depends on the goals one has chosen –
goals that necessarily lie within one’s
world of experience – and on the particu-
lar methods adopted to attain them, it is
clear that there will always be more than
one way. When a goal has been attained,
this success must, therefore, never be
interpreted as having discovered the way.
This goes against the notion that repeated
success in dealing with a problem proves
that one has discovered the workings of an
objective world. Solutions, from the con-
structivist perspective, are always relative –
and this, in turn, makes clear that problems
are not entities that lie about in the uni-
verse, independent of any experiencer.
Instead, problems arise when obstacles
block the way to a subject’s goal.” (Glasers-
feld 1988, p. 88)
While Ernst von Glasersfeld, on the one
hand, seems to share with George Kelly the
outlook of “constructive alternativism,” on
59
 philosophical-epistemological
CONCEPTS
the other hand, as I have previously observed
(Kenny 1989), Maturana would seem to pre-
empt out any alternative structural compen-
sations at the moment of interacting with the
perturbation at hand:
“Maturana is not a constructive alterna-
tivist because at the moment of choosing
there are no other alternatives possible.
The ‘choice’ made was determined by the
system’s coherence. It had to be made.
Kelly himself would also appear not to be
an alternativist with his emphasis on
‘choice’ as a form of self-involvement and
self-ordering, rather than saying much
about the ‘objects chosen’.” (Kenny 1989,
p. 120).
So while for von Glasersfeld the person
may hold several alternative “keys,” for Mat-
urana the person is the key, and the person’s
structures have implied the character of the
“lock” – or brought it forth – as part of their
cognitive domain in such a way that there
exists an effective structural intersection
between the “person-as-key” and the “lock.”
The structural autonomy of the system is
paramount for Maturana. This means that
the system can only do what it does at any
particular moment of doing. There are no
other choices in the system. A system is always
in its proper place and cannot be mistaken.
For Maturana, at the moment of taking
action the system has no other choice than
what it does. The system does what its struc-
ture is set up to do. Unlike von Glasersfeld’s
images of “bumping into” the constraining
features of the environment, for Maturana it
is as if the system/medium structural coher-
ences were “full up-” and every-“thing” was
in its reciprocally complementary position-
ing – there being little or no space for new or
extra elements to easily enter into the picture.
In other words, there are no spare compo-
nents “hanging around” in the environment
waiting for us to bump into them.
From this point of view, to speak of having
a range of “choices” is misleading. Since these
implicative construct pathways are already
laid down within the ongoing system one
could argue that the “choices” are illusory
since the structures of the system already
contain the preferential direction of move-
ment and action.
Even though he has usually avoided label-
ling his approach, Maturana once said jok-
ingly to me that if Ernst was a “radical con-
60
radical constructivism & biology of cognition
structivist” then he (Maturana) was a
“radical radical constructivist,” because at
the moment of perceiving there is no alterna-
tive other than what our structure-deter-
mined system dictates that we must do in
order to compensate effectively to the current
perturbation
On this analysis, the fact of having “no
choice” is a crucial parting of the ways
between Ernst von Glasersfeld and Hum-
berto Maturana. Humberto Maturana’s posi-
tion is that our system specifies our medium
in such a way that it is co-existent, co-exten-
sive, conterminous with our own embodied
existence.
So in this relationship of knowledge to
reality, for von Glasersfeld the notion of
“truth” is replaced by that of “viability” and
“fit.” For Maturana it is not so much an issue
of “fitting” or “viability” as it is an issue of
structural coherences of the system in its
medium. Maturana tries to elaborate this by
describing the ways in which the observer
brings forth his own reality, and in doing so
generates a pattern of structural synchrony or
structural coherences.
The inside–outside
distinction
In their rejection of “realism” both authors
have been obliged to demonstrate how they
avoid the epistemological quagmire of solip-
sism. Here there is another difference that
opens up in their various approaches, with
von Glasersfeld taking the road of denying
that he is saying that “nothing exists outside
of people’s heads,” and repeating that he is not
saying that reality does not exist. As a wry
aside he says that: “In practice, solipsism is
refuted daily by the experience that the world
is hardly ever what we would like it to be”
(Glasersfeld 1995, p. 113). For Maturana’s
part, his refutation of solipsism takes off
along the road of languaging (coordinations
of coordinations of actions) – which seems in
my view to lead him to the area of “structural
realism.”
Ernst von Glasersfeld reminds us that
constructivists must be unwavering agnos-
tics as regards “existence” because whatever
may lie beyond our experience is inaccessible
to our reasoning. He has many times
attempted to clarify that his concern is with
what can be known rationally; he does not
deny that mystics and artists may access some
“ulterior reality” in their own ways but only
that such access must not be confused with a
rational theory of knowing.
Among his many refutations of being a
solipsist, Maturana refers to his theory of
“languaging” which states that language
comes about through the coordinations of
the coordinations of actions among people in
a co-ontogenic structural drift. The fact that
later on we come to use this language to
invent notions such as “solipsism” saying that
the mind alone creates the world, is a notion
simply refuted by the fact that his (Mat-
urana’s) view of language development is
premised on the precedent existence of peo-
ple who are coordinating their activities
together – clearly not a solipsistic context!
Maturana and Varela positioned this prob-
lem as part of an epistemological Odyssey,
“sailing between the Scylla monster of repre-
sentationism and the Charybdis whirlpool of
solipsism” (Maturana & Varela 1987, p. 134).
As part of his strategy to deal with the
“outside world” and not be trapped in accu-
sations of solipsism, von Glasersfeld pro-
poses the use of the notion of the “black box.”
This also helps in the task of avoiding the
confusions of epistemological cheating by
pretending that we can compare our “pic-
ture” of the world to the “actual reality.” He
comments:
“If it is the experiencer’s intelligence or
cognitive activity that, by organizing
itself, organizes his experience into a via-
ble representation of a world, then one
can consider that representation a model,
and the ‘outside reality’ it claims to repre-
sent, a black box.” (Glasersfeld 1987,
p. 156)
This helps emphasise that for von Glasers-
feld there is a clear separation of what is
“inside” the person and what is “outside” as
the “environment” or “reality.” It means that
everything that is outwith oneself – the envi-
ronment, other people, children, dogs, etc. –
are all black boxes from the observer’s point
of view. It means we can never “really know”
what others are thinking or what they “really
mean.” It means that we can never know that
what another person is feeling is “really like”
what I am feeling. We can never find out what
the other is “really like” because all we have to
go on are our interpretations of what our
Constructivist Foundations
 philosophical-epistemological
CONCEPTS
senses tell us about our experience of them.
The most we can do is to construct models of
the others which establish and “explain” cer-
tain regularities in our experiences of these
others. Our task, also in the “interpersonal”
domain, is to “get by the constraints” which
are continually posed to us. One has to
“squeeze between the bars of the constraints”
– but how one manages to achieve this is not
determined by the environment.
To be more clear about his use of the con-
cept of “adaptation” and viability in this con-
text von Glasersfeld notes that:
“What organisms adapt to, and what ulti-
mately determines the pragmatic viabil-
ity of their constructs, are certain regular-
ities in the input–output relations the
organism registers, with respect to the
black box which they experience as ‘envi-
ronment’ or ‘world.’ … The structures he
calls ‘things,’ ‘events,’ ‘stages,’ and ‘pro-
cesses’ are the result of the particular way
in which he himself has coordinated his
‘particles of experience.’ (Glasersfeld
1987, p. 113)
However for Maturana this distinction of
“inside/outside” is blurred to the point of
irrelevance. Since the person’s structure-
determined system has instantiated its cogni-
tive domain there is little sense in even mak-
ing this “inside/outside” distinction.
“This circularity, this connection between
action and experience, this inseparability
between a particular way of being and
how the world appears to us, tells us that
every act of knowing brings forth a
world … all doing is knowing, and all
knowing is doing.”(Maturana & Varela
1987, p.26)
This contrasts sharply with von Glasers-
feld’s notion that the environment is a “black
box” for the observer. Instead for Maturana
there is no “outside-as-black-box” because
the “system-in-its-medium” is the result of
millions of years of co-ontogenic structural
drift. Rather, for Maturana, the person oper-
ates not only as if there is no “black box” but
as if there were no “outside” at all.
So here we can see the radical conse-
quences of the fact that the structure-deter-
mined system is implicative in nature. The
structure-determined system implies a very
specific medium as a structural extension of
itself. In implying this medium the system
brings forth a world where it is in adaptive co-
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
radical constructivism & biology of cognition
evolution, and where the “inside–outside”
distinction is meaningless for understanding
the “causes” of our experiences.
In Bateson’s (1972) terms, whenever sci-
entists use the notion of the “black box” they
are making a conventional agreement to stop
trying to explain things at a certain point – at
least temporarily. In this sense, von Glasers-
feld’s use of the notion of the black box is his
way of clearly signalling the limits to his task
– of specifying what can and cannot be
explained in his model of knowing, and what
will necessarily be left out.
This characterises von Glasersfeld’s view
that there is a strict “inside–outside” differ-
entiation of the person/environment rela-
tionship – and this is another place where
Maturana takes off in a different direction.
Maturana uses different metaphors to that of
von Glasersfeld’s black box when he
describes the organisational closure of the
autonomous system. He has often used the
image of an aeroplane pilot flying and land-
ing his plane (on a dark night with zero visi-
bility) by using his instrument panel, or the
image of a submarine captain guiding his
craft “sightless” to the outside world, but
who, by using his electronic instruments,
succeeds in his task. So here, while von Gla-
sersfeld uses the “black box” imagery to be
careful to maintain his “inside/outside dis-
tinction, Maturana (1987) instead depicts
the person as operating blind to, and out of
all awareness of, what an observer would call
the person’s “medium” or environment (per-
haps like Piaget’s “self uncognizant of
itself ”).
“All that exists for the man inside the sub-
marine are indicator readings, their tran-
sitions, and ways of obtaining specific
relations between them. It is only for us on
the outside, who see how relations change
between the submarine and its environ-
ment, that the submarine’s behaviour
exists and that it appears more or less ade-
quate according to the consequences
involved.” (Maturana & Varela 1987,
p. 137)
and also they say that,
“… for the operation of the nervous sys-
tem, there is no inside or outside, but only
maintenance of correlations that continu-
ously change (like the indicator instru-
ments in the submarine) …” (Maturana
& Varela 1987, p.169)
Radically different
At this point I will try to clarify some of the
differences between Ernst von Glasersfeld
and Humberto Maturana by positioning
their approaches in relation to Realism. Both
authors define themselves in epistemological
positions far away from that of “naïve real-
ism.” Let us recall, in summary form, some of
the primary features of both theorists – why
they are variously radical in their departures
from the mainstream of thinking.
Ernst von Glasersfeld’s model is
radical because he says that “the
map is not the territory.”
[ The “map” cannot ever be the territory.
[ The “map” can never be compared to the
presumed territory.
[ The “map” is where we know and create
meanings for our experiential world.
[ Environment is a “black box.” We can
only know what it is not.
[ We are forever banished from the Garden
of Eden of Ontological Truths.
[ “Inside–Here Vs Outside–There” is a fun-
damental distinction, reminding us that
we can say nothing about the ontological
status of the world we experience.
[ Environment is a type of “obstacle race.”
[ The notion of “fit” and “viability” is cen-
tral in describing the relationship of the
person to their world.
From a whimsical viewpoint, this model
appears to me as if an endless experiential
Sudoku puzzle where we may exclude or
eliminate numbers from every cell, but we
may never fill in the “actual number” which
occupies any cell. The whole matrix must
always remain blank! With this in mind it is
easy to understand the frustrations with
which many readers greet von Glasersfeld’s
model!
Von Glasersfeld (1987) describes the situ-
ation as follows:
“…the only indication we may get of the
‘real’ structure of the environment is
through the organisms and the species
that have been extinguished; the viable
ones that survive merely constitute a
selection of solutions among an infinity of
potential solutions that might be equally
viable … What I suggest now, is that the
relationship between what we know, i.e.,
our knowledge, is similar to the relation-
61
 philosophical-epistemological
CONCEPTS
ship between organisms and their envi-
ronment. In other words, we construct
ideas, hypotheses, theories, and models,
and as long as they survive, which is to say,
as long as our experience can be success-
fully fitted into them, they are viable.”
(Glasersfeld 1987, p. 139)
Humberto Maturana’s model is
radical because he says that “the
map is the territory.”
[ There is no distinction between “map”
and “territory” because we create our
reality by living it, enacting it. For this
reason the observer ends up in a position
which is indistinguishable from that of
the realist observer.
[ At the moment of perceiving one cannot
distinguish a hallucination from a per-
ception.
[ At the moment of perceiving/acting you
have no “choice” – you do that which your
structure-determined system is set up to
do.
[ To all intents and purposes “the map is
the territory.”
[ Environment is an intimate part of the
evolution and survival pattern of the
unity “person + medium.”
[ The “Inside–Outside” distinction per-
tains to the position of an observer. Mat-
urana reminds us to be very careful in our
observer’s “book-keeping” regarding
from what point of view we are making
our statements.
[ Environment is implied by the structure
of the person, and as such is “co-exten-
sive” with the bodyhood of that person.
Environment cannot be an “obstacle,”
even though the person can make a “miss-
take.”
[ The notions of “fit” and “viability” are
replaced by Maturana’s emphasis on the
minimum “unit of survival” which is
defined as “the person + medium.” Here
the survival of both is in question, and
not just whether one manages to “fit the
constraints.” Survival depends on the
simultaneous double conservation of
“internal coherence” and of “external fit-
ting.”
Clearly, in these two summaries we have
two very different forms of “radicality” lead-
ing to different positions in the range of epis-
temologies.
62
radical constructivism & biology of cognition
Where von Glasersfeld
and Maturana part
company
It is clear that having created two different
maps these two authors end up in different
worlds. It is interesting to note that despite
their many conversations and familiarity with
one another’s writings, they are unable to put
a consensual finger on where exactly they do
not agree – or to explain how it is that they end
up in very different worlds – “worlds apart.”
Recently, Maturana (2004) has jokingly
described himself as, “a super-realist who
believes in the existence of innumerable
equally valid realities. Moreover, all these dif-
ferent realities are not relative realities
because asserting their relativity would entail
the assumption of an absolute reality as the
reference point against which their relativity
would be measured.” (Maturana 2004, p. 34).
Over millions of years of co-ontogenic
structural drift with a medium, the structures
of the human body are configured in an infer-
ential, anticipatory and implicative manner.
The structures anticipate the ongoingness of
those congruent structural features of the
environment. A Martian examining a human
body on Mars could come up with a very
accurate description of what our environ-
ment is like, doing a kind of “reverse engineer-
ing” from the body’s structures to infer the
necessary properties of the medium with
which the human system is structurally inter-
sected for survival. For example, the fact that
we have lungs implicates the existence of a
medium with oxygen and other gases for
breathing; the presence of a stomach impli-
cates a medium with consumable food
objects; the structure of the eyes implicates
the presence of a certain range of light waves,
and so on through the whole range of bodily
structures. Maturana (2004) himself puts this
a bit more romantically where he says:
“The fundamental condition of existence is
trust. When a butterfly has slipped out of its
cocoon, its wings and antennae, its trunk
and its whole bodyhood trust that there will
be air and supporting winds, and flowers
from which to suck nectar. The structural
correspondence between the butterfly and
its world is an expression of implicit trust.
When a seed gets wet and begins to germi-
nate, it does so trusting that all the neces-
sary nutrients will be there for it to be able
to grow.” (Maturana 2004, pp. 198–199).
Maturana describes a world where organ-
ism and medium are structurally intersected,
co-extensive and coessential. There is no
“separation”; there is no “in here/out there”
except for some observer. All of this means
that Maturana is not at all a “constructivist”
(indeed he has always denied it) but rather
occupies a novel position in the epistemolog-
ical chart which I see to be based upon a form
of “structural realism.”
I want to suggest that this “super-realist”
position can be seen as a novel location in the
varied terrain of the epistemologies which
already contain these well-known features,
among many others:
Naïve Realism, Direct Realism, Critical
Realism, Representationalism, Trivial Con-
structivism, Critical Constructivism, Con-
strained Constructivism, Communal Con-
structivism, Pragmatism, Scepticism, Social
Constructionism, Phenomenalism, Internal
Realism, Radical Constructivism, Radical
Idealism, and what I would now like to call
radical realism.
It is “radical realism” because the implica-
tion of Maturana’s theory is that we can
directly and intimately know the “reality” we
are living because it is we ourselves who have
made it. It is not a black box for us, it is our cog-
nitive domain and we can know about our
effective actions in this domain. So the way I
intend the term “radical realism” arises from
the fact that our sense of “objective reality”
derives radically from our “subjective reality-
making.” This in turn derives from the impli-
cativeness of structure determinism. So this is
the sense in which I read Maturana as a “radical
realist.” We have no choice in the world we our-
selves have instantiated through our structure-
determined system. What we do next is always
structure-determined and thus has the sense of
“inevitability” that we attribute to an “objective
reality.” With the dissolution of the “inside/
outside distinction we attribute our lived expe-
rience of our own structural objectivity to what
an observer would call our “environment.”
Considering this mapping of Maturana as
contrasted with von Glasersfeld, we can under-
stand how it is that Maturana is often misun-
derstood as a “determinist,” “behaviourist,”
“cognitivist,” “reductionist” etc which are all
positions defined in part by their sharing a real-
ist epistemology.
Constructivist Foundations
 philosophical-epistemological
CONCEPTS
Conclusion
While von Glasersfeld claims that the person
or cognitive system may make contact with
ontological reality only when and where their
schemes to eliminate perturbations break
down – when our constructions are invali-
dated, we can know only what the world is not
– for Maturana this is not the case because he
has positioned his observer-actor in the
midst of a process of structural coherences
(co-ontogenic structural drift etc.). For Mat-
urana this means that the system cannot
make a “mistake,” and that it is always in the
“right place” because of its long history of
structural drift in the medium.
We can also appreciate how Ernst von Gla-
sersfeld therefore holds the bulwark position
on the extreme borders of “idealism” just
before it goes on to various forms of solipsis-
tic closure. As von Glasersfeld says,
“… a model is a good model whenever the
results of its functioning show no discrep-
ancy relative to the functioning of the
black box. That relation, I claim, is analo-
gous to the relation between our knowl-
edge and our experience. Given that there
is nothing but a hypothetical connection
between our experience and what philos-
ophers call ontological reality, that reality
has for us the status of a black box.” (Gla-
sersfeld 1995, p. 157)
In this analogy I believe we have a major
clue for understanding where von Glasersfeld
and Maturana part company. Von Glasersfeld
uses the analogy of organism/environment to
illustrate how he conceives of the relationship
of what we know to our own experiencing.
However, as an analogy it can only take us so
far because on the one hand von Glasersfeld
is locked into the strictly limiting domain of
experiencing and how one may variously
construct meaning for these experiences. In
the case of organisms and their environment
we are in a very different phenomenal
domain of activity. This is where Maturana’s
structure determinism takes care of survival
– it is a question of “know-how,” and not, as
for von Glasersfeld, a question of “say-how”
(saying or describing or cognitively con-
structing sense out of our experiences). In
effect, we cannot really compare these two
domains proposed in this analogy because
von Glasersfeld is describing the interfacing
of a domain of experience with the domain of
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
radical constructivism & biology of cognition
explanations in order to produce rational
knowledge, while for Maturana the organ-
ism/environment is a matter of flowing in the
phenomenal domain of structural coupling
(of experiencing the structural relatedness) –
out of which, later, the system-observer may
or may not have to enter the domain of expla-
nations to work out what “really happened”
during a given experience. From this point of
view, von Glasersfeld is always already at the
business of producing rational knowledge,
while Maturana may describe the person or
system as being simply in a drift of ongoing
structural transformations, without neces-
sarily arriving to a domain of “reflections.”
For von Glasersfeld the main focus is on
the cognitive effort to make sense of experi-
ence, rather than on describing events in the
physiological or biological domain. The
bodily senses have already produced the
experiences which must now be organised to
make sense, and to fit with the existing frame-
work of sense that we have built up. But also,
in the mind, because there is no “embodi-
ment,” we can invent or imagine all sorts of
things to be going on. In fact this is what the
mind does best; endless inventions, conjec-
tures and hypotheses are churned out given
half an excuse. This in effect is the source of
the problems of many impatients1 in psycho-
therapy who enter into self-paralysing self-
interrupting loops of negative, frightening,
destructive and maladaptive ideas – which
produce a very poor “fit” indeed. This is an
example which helps to clarify the fact that
for von Glasersfeld the constraints that we
have to “fit” with are not necessarily inherent
in an ontological reality (Glasersfeld 1987, p.
140). Rather, the dominant constraints arise
from within our own patterns of constructions
and the ways in which we have learned to
organise these into a working system.
By now, at the end of this article, it seems
clear that the solution to the puzzle of von
Glasersfeld as to how and why his theorising
and that of Maturana become so different lies
in what Kant called the “transcendental illu-
sion” – the error of trying to use the same lan-
guage descriptions for two incompatible phe-
nomena, or for two different phenomenal
domains that are non-collapsible (or mutu-
ally untranslatable). I have tried to grasp this
difference by shifting backwards and for-
wards across what seems to be an unbridge-
able gap between these two theorists.
This kind of puzzle may arise due to the
error of attempting to apply concepts and
language descriptions beyond the domain
wherein they were evolved or constructed. In
George Kelly’s terms we are attempting to
apply a construct way beyond its “range of
convenience,” creating only the illusion of
having “described” or even “explained” the
other phenomena arising in a different
domain.
In trying to warn us about the error of
“transcendental illusion,” Kant (1968) urges
us to pay adequate attention to the differen-
tiating boundaries which mark off one terri-
tory as appropriate and another as not for the
application of certain categories. He says he is
warning us about
“… actual principles which incite us to
tear down all those boundary-fences and
to seize possession of an entirely new
domain which recognises no limits of
demarcation.” (Kant 1968, p. 299)
In the present case it is perhaps important
to realise that the theorising of von Glasers-
feld and Maturana takes place in two very dif-
ferent domains of activity: one in the philo-
sophical domain of inquiry into our
possibilities for knowing; the other in the
construction of a biological basis for knowl-
edge, language, consciousness and more.
Along with Piaget, von Glasersfeld recog-
nises that there are two very different
domains of “survival,” one at the biological
level where there is at stake the viability of the
organism/environment relation; and the
other at the level of “cognitive reflection”
where what is at stake is the viability of the
person’s conceptual network or “construct
system.” It is clear that the process of adapta-
tion in the biological domain is different in
many ways to adaptation in the cognitive
domain. There are different forms of “viabil-
ity” and “instrumentality” pertinent in the
two different domains of action – on the bio-
logical level it is literally a matter of survival,
while on the conceptual level it is a matter of
maintaining one’s internal coherence or
equilibrium. It is interesting to note again
here that for Maturana “survival” is defined
as the simultaneous conservation of both
one’s internal coherence (organisational clo-
sure) and the conservation of one’s fit or rel-
evance to one’s niche. This is another major
difference in the focus of the writings and
research of the two authors under examina-
63
 philosophical-epistemological
CONCEPTS
tion here. Ernst von Glasersfeld once
described constructivism as “a theory of what
thinking produces” – which is sometimes
called knowledge – and this shows clearly the
domain of optimal application of his model,
which indeed has seen more successful appli-
cations in the field of teaching and training
than in any other.
So while von Glasersfeld is extremely care-
ful to stay with his definition of RC as a “the-
ory of knowing” and avoids any attempts or
temptations to describe what “exists,” Mat-
urana’s writings do seem to be replete with
affirmations of what exists, such as the
description of the “living” as being “autopoi-
etic.” Indeed, the main disagreements that
von Glasersfeld expresses in relation to Mat-
urana’s writings are to do with asking how
Maturana comes to take as “given” many dif-
ferent features of his theory, as if he knew how
“things really are.” This is a major parting of
the ways since von Glasersfeld’s entire effort
is to present a model of how the cognising
subject is able to construct their knowledge
without any reference to a “given” or “pre-
existing reality.”
It seems therefore that the main impossi-
bility in “joining” the theorising of von Gla-
sersfeld with that of Maturana lies in the fact
that von Glasersfeld has focussed on the
adaptations and learnings that go on at the
“cognitive” level whereas Maturana’s work is
principally in the biological domain. Perhaps
if Maturana is taken seriously in his repeated
denials that he is a “constructivist” we would
more readily recognise the non-collapsible
distance between him and von Glasersfeld.
To this end I have found it useful to locate
Maturana’s approach as existing in the inter-
stices of theory between the various “con-
structivisms” and the various “realisms.”
Since Maturana seems to “go beyond” the
epistemological positioning of von Glasers-
feld’s Radical Constructivism, and since
Maturana is clearly outwith the domain of
the “realists” (despite the impressions of
“leaking realism”), I think the name “radical
realism” describes this interstitial epistemo-
logical space which Maturana has brought
forth in his theorising over the past 40 years
or so.
64
radical constructivism & biology of cognition
Note
1. I use the term “impatients” for those who
participate in psychotherapy because the
medical term “patient” has nothing to do
with what goes on in psychotherapy, and
moreover, unless the person has a certain
impatience about getting on with things
they are unlikely to make much progress
in changing their life experiences.
References
Bateson, G. (1972) Steps to an ecology of
mind. Ballantine books: New York.
Foerster, H. von & Glasersfeld, E. von (2001)
Come ci si inventa. Odradek: Rome.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1984) An introduction to
radical constructivism. In: Watzlawick, P.
(ed.) The invented reality. Norton: New
York, pp. 17–40.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1987) The construction
of knowledge: Contributions to concep-
tual semantics. Intersystems Publications:
Salinas CA.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1988) The reluctance to
change a way of thinking. The Irish Jour-
nal of Psychology 9(1): 83–90.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1991) Distinguishing the
observer: An attempt at interpreting Mat-
urana. Methodologia 8: 57–68.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1995) Radical construc-
tivism: A way of knowing and learning.
Falmer Press: London.
Held, B. & Pols, E. (1987) Dell on Maturana:
A real foundation for family therapy? Psy-
chotherapy 24: 455–481.
Johnson, D. K. (1991) Reclaiming reality: A
critique of Maturana’s ontology of the
observer. Methodologia 9: 7–31.
Kant, I. (1968) Critique of pure reason
(Translated by N. Kemp Smith). Mac-
millan: New York.
Kelly, G. (1955) The psychology of personal
constructs. 2 Volumes. Norton: New York.
Kenny, V. (1989) Anticipating autopoiesis:
Personal construct psychology and self-
organizing systems. In: Goudsmit, A. (ed.)
Self-organisation in psychotherapy.
Springer-Verlag: Heidelberg.
Maturana, H. (1986) The biological founda-
tions of self consciousness and the physical
domain of existence. (personal communi-
cation.)
Maturana, H. R. & Poerksen, B. (2004) From
being to doing: The origins of the biology
of cognition. Carl-Auer: Heidelberg.
Maturana, H. R. & Varela, F. J. (1987) The tree
of knowledge: The biological roots of
human understanding. New Science
Library: Boston.
Mingers, J. (1995) Self-producing systems:
Implications and applications of auto-
poiesis. Plenum Press: New York.
Piaget, J. (1971) Insights and illusions of phi-
losophy. Meridian: New York.
Wittgenstein, L. (1933) Tractatus logico-
philosophicus. Kegan-Paul: London.
Received: 14 September 2006
Accepted: 7 February 2007
Constructivist Foundations
 cognitive-psychological radical constructivism
CONCEPTS

The Co-Emergence of Parts and Wholes

in Psychological Individuation
Bernard Scott A Cranfield University (UK) <b.c.e.scott@cranfield.ac.uk>

what I hope is a reasonably comprehensible

Purpose:The purpose of the paper is to provide a constructivist account of the “self as
linear narrative. I begin with a discussion of
subject” that avoids the need for any metaphysical assumptions.
the cybernetic concept of “organisation.” This
Findings:The thesis developed in this paper is that the human “psychological individual,”
is followed by a more extended discussion of
“self” or “subject” is an emergent within the nexus of human social interaction.With
the genesis of self-consciousness and person-
respect to psychological and social wholes (composites) there is no distinction between
hood, drawing on the seminal ideas of Piaget,
the form of the elements and the form of the composites they constitute, i.e., all elements
Mead and Vygotsky and the more recent
have the form of composites. Further, recursively, composites may serve as elements
cybernetically inspired formulations of von
within higher order composites. Implications for a rational theory of ethics are discussed.
Foerster and Maturana. There is then a brief
Originality/Value:The thesis contributes in a fundamental way to the research pro-
look at the logic of interpersonal interaction
gramme of radical constructivism by demonstrating that metaphysical assumptions about
and the notion of “theories of mind.” This
the nature of the “subject” are not an a priori necessity. Although the thesis in itself is not
leads on to an overview of Gordon Pask’s
original, the paper offers a useful synthesis of ideas from a number of key thinkers in the
cybernetic conversation theory, which, with
disciplines of cybernetics, biology, psychology and philosophy.
its distinction between two kinds of organisa-
Keywords: Psychological individuation, co-emergence, collective, self-consciousness,
tion, the “mechanical” and the “psychologi-
interpersonal interaction, theory of mind, conversation theory, conscience.
cal,” affords a useful synthesis of much that
has gone before. Finally, there are some
Introduction “As to the concept of self, constructivism – thoughts on implications about ethics, with
as an empirical epistemology – can pro- reference to the views of von Foerster and von
Chapter 6 of Ernst von Glasersfeld’s book vide a more or less viable model for the Glasersfeld.
(1995) Radical Constructivism: A Way of Know- construction of the experiential self; but I would like to draw the reader’s attention
ing and Learning is entitled, “Constructing the self as the locus of subjective awareness to the writings of Ranulph Glanville which
Agents: The Self and Others.” In the third to last seems to be a metaphysical assumption also address foundational concerns about
paragraph of that chapter, he states, “…the and lies outside the domain of empirical ethics and the nature of selves and others from
subject creates not only objects to which inde- construction.” (Glasersfeld 1995, p. 128)2 a cybernetic perspective. (See, e.g., Glanville
pendent existence is attributed but also others The metaphysical status of the subject 1988, 2002). There is not space here to indi-
to whom the subject imputes such status and leaves von Glasersfeld open to critiques from cate the many parallels between Glanville’s
capabilities as are conceivable, given his or her “postmodernists” and “social construction- discussion of “subjects” as self-reproducing
own experience” (Glasersfeld 1995, p. 128). ists,” who both emphasise that the “subject” is “objects” and the thesis developed in this
Much as I admire von Glasersfeld for so elo- constructed or occurs “in language” (see, e.g., paper. I have written about Glanville’s
quently setting out the principles of radical Salmon (1989) and McCarty and Schwandt approach in Scott (2005).
constructivism, I believe his assumption about (2000). From the standpoint of rational sci-
the existence of a “subject” and “others” is one ence, those positions lack coherence and clear
that can be usefully unpacked and elucidated. empirical foundations. The thesis presented On organisation
As its stands, von Glasersfeld’s reference to a here can be seen as an attempt to develop the
“subject” posits an entity whose genesis still required coherent, well-founded explana- Ashby in his 1956 Introduction to Cybernetics
has to be explained.1 The thesis of co-emer- tion.3 writes: “Cybernetics might in fact be defined
gence proposed here is intended to provide The paper began as a collage of extracts as the study of systems that are open to energy
such an explanation. The explanation provides from various sources, including some of my but closed to information and control – sys-
a constructivist account of the self as the agent own earlier papers, which, as a set, were tems that are “information tight” (Ashby
of construction. It thus avoids the need for any intended to provide the context and justifica- 1956). Von Foerster, Pask, Maturana, von
metaphysical assumptions about the nature of tion for the thesis proposed. Through discus- Glasersfeld, Glanville and Luhmann have all
the self, as von Glasersfeld seems to believe is sion at the PIE conference (see footnote 1) been particularly alive to the epistemological
the case when, in the final paragraph of the and further reflection, I have refined and consequences of this “organisational clo-
chapter referred to, he states, modified that set and present them here as sure.”4 In brief, an organism does not receive

Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3 65

http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
 cognitive-psychological
CONCEPTS
“information” as something transmitted to it,
rather, as a circularly organised system it
interprets perturbations as being informative.
It is important to note that this use of the term
“information” is clearly different from the
usage in computer science (“information
processing” meaning, strictly, data process-
ing, the transmission of data and the transfor-
mation of one data “pattern” into another) or
by Shannon and Weaver (a measure of the
surprise value of a “message”) or Stonier (a
measure of the extent to which a system is
“ordered”). The use of the term by Ashby is
essentially the same as that of Gregory Bate-
son in his aphorism “Information is a differ-
ence that makes a difference” and that of Jersi
Kerzinski (“Information cannot be separated
from its utilisation”), and that of Heinz von
Foerster (“The environment contains no
information; it is as it is”).
Here are some remarkably parallel com-
ments on “circularity” of organisation from
Alfred Korzybski, the founder of “General
Semantics.” From his book Science and Sanity
(1958, p. 12):
“Language […] represents the highest and
latest physiological and neurological func-
tion of an organism. It is […] of uniquely
human circular structure, to use a logical
term – or of spiral structure, to use a four-
dimensional or a physico-chemical-aspect
term […] In these processes an ‘effect’
becomes a causative factor for future
effects, influencing them in a manner par-
ticularly subtle, variable, flexible, and of an
endless number of possibilities. ‘Knowing,’
if taken as an end-product, must be con-
sidered also as a causative psychophysio-
logical factor of the next stage of the
semantic response […] This structural
and functional circularity introduces real
difficulties […] Before we can be fully
human, we must first know how to handle
our nervous responses – a circular affair.”
Both Gregory Bateson and Heinz von Foe-
rster cite Korzybski’s “the map is not the terri-
tory” with approval.
As von Foerster notes, consideration of the
circularly closed organisation of living sys-
tems obliges one to adopt a constructivist
epistemology,5 as developed for example by
Jean Piaget. Piaget (1972) develops his
“genetic epistemology” from the notion of the
living system with “cybernetic circuits in
equilibrium.” His cognitive structures arise
66
because “the representation is in the act.”
From the starting point of acknowledging
that living systems are organisationally
closed, we now go on to consider how, in phy-
logenesis and ontogenesis, such systems
become “self-conscious.”
On the development of
self-consciousness
“Universal grammar” – that which is com-
mon to all “languages” when viewed, à la
Chomsky, in the abstract as syntactic and lex-
ical systems – requires a logical syntax with
negation. In Piaget’s account, this logic is
imminent in the logic of action and the con-
cept of reversibility (actions may be
“undone”). Integration of sensori-motor
schemata into coordinated wholes both gen-
erates “object permanence” in the environ-
ment and a differentiation of subject from
object. With the “semiotic function,” the
organism may represent its own actions (cf.
Maturana’s phrase “interact with its own
interactions,” Maturana 1969) There is an
accompanying “awareness of awareness”; in
so far as the organism’s actions are part of a
coordinated, co-adapted whole, there is
awareness of self (cf. Kagan 1979, p. 293),
though, as yet, no stable “self-image” or “self-
consciousness.”
As there is a “sensori-motor” or “enactive”
logic of action, so there is a tacit logic of inter-
action. An organism’s adaptations coordi-
nate sensory and motor activity. In the
“dance” of social activity, these coordinations
become coordinated. Piaget (1956, p. 256)
says of the former: “Without a mathematical
or logical apparatus, there is no direct ‘read-
ing of facts,’ because this is a prerequisite.
Such an apparatus is derived from experi-
ence, the abstraction being taken from the
action performed upon the object and not
from the object itself.” This is essentially what
Mead says of social interaction: its logic arises
as an abstraction from the experience of
interaction. (Mead’s ideas are elaborated on
further, below). In this logic, the distinction
between participants arises and with it, the
“social signs” that will serve later to encode
logic. Together, the “tacit” logics of action
and interaction provide the “semantic base”
that, when “digitalised” as “units of mean-
ing,” gives rise to a syntax.
radical constructivism
Language arises as behaviours (“languag-
ing”) that coordinate “coordinations of coor-
dinations” (Maturana & Varela 1980; cf.
Vygotsky 1962; Luria 1961).
Through mutual coordinations, organ-
isms may come to compute themselves and
others as “selves,” giving rise to the “I/Thou”
relationship. That is, by becoming observers
of “others,” we “transcend into the domain of
self-observation” where “I am the observed
relation between myself and observing
myself ” (Foerster 1980).6
Maturana (1995) makes essentially the
same points in a more elaborated form (the
reader should perhaps be aware that von Foe-
rster’s and Maturana’s ideas are very closely
aligned, von Foerster at one time having been
a mentor for Maturana), that “[t]he experi-
ence that we connote as we use the word con-
sciousness is one of self-distinction as we dis-
tinguish ourselves making distinctions”
(p. 163) and that “consciousness takes place as
a particular relational dynamics when an
organism operates as participant in a domain
of recursive distinctions in language.” (ibid.)
Thus, for Maturana, consciousness is experi-
enced by participants in “languaging.”
“Languaging takes place as recursive con-
sensual coordinations of consensual coor-
dinations of behaviour […] There is a
recursion whenever […] the re-applica-
tion of an operation occurs on the conse-
quences of its previous application […]
Any level of recursion may recursively
become a domain of objects that operates
as a ground level for further recursions.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bernard Scott is Head of the Flexible Learn-
ing Support Centre, Cranfield University,
Defence Academy, Shrivenham. Previous
appointments have been with: the Univer-
sity of the Highlands and Islands Millennium
Institute, De Montfort University, the Open
University and Liverpool John Moores Uni-
versity. Dr. Scott’s research interests include:
Theories of learning and teaching, course
design and organisational change and foun-
dational issues in systems theory and cyber-
netics. He has published extensively on
these topics. Dr. Scott is a Fellow of the
Cybernetics Society and an Associate Fel-
low of the British Psychological Society.
Constructivist Foundations
 cognitive-psychological
CONCEPTS
“Objects arise in language in the first
recursion of consensual coordinations of
consensual coordinations of behaviour.
[…] Observing arises as an operation in a
second recursion that distinguishes a dis-
tinction […] The observer appears in a
third order recursion that distinguishes
distinguishing […] . Self-consciousness
(self-awareness) arises in a fourth order
recursion in which observing the observer
takes place.” (ibid., p. 164).
“The self arises as an experience in the
experience of self-consciousness […] self-
consciousness and self take place in the
dynamic relations of languaging […] The
distinction of the self is an overwhelming
experience […] . once it takes place the
distinction becomes the referential
ground for all other distinctions […] The
experience of the self as an object obscures
its original constitution as a relation […]
in the relational dynamics of languaging
animals.” (ibid., p. 165).
I have tried to summarise Maturana’s
observations, as his somewhat idiosyncratic
prose style and arcane vocabulary can be a lit-
tle daunting and obscure what, in fact, is a
very rigorous line of argument.
In the next section, I develop the key idea
of the co-emergence of individuals and collec-
tives in psychological individuation. I go on in
the sections that follow to elaborate on this
process, first by looking in more detail at
Mead’s concept of the self as a social process
and then, in turn, by fleshing this out by using
concepts from the more recent literature on
interpersonal perception. My account of self
and other dynamics and psychological indi-
viduation culminates in a brief overview of
key ideas from “conversation theory” (CT) as
developed by Gordon Pask. CT is a compre-
hensively rich theoretical framework, partic-
ularly useful for unifying much work that has
gone before.7
Emergence as
singularity
Above von Foerster’s use of the phrase “tran-
scendence into another domain” was noted in
discussing the emergence of self-conscious-
ness as a singular event. Thom, amongst oth-
ers, has extended the classic mathematical
concept of a “singularity.” This problem exer-
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
cised the mind of the great 19th Century logi-
cian, George Boole, throughout his life. Here
is a simple example, taken from his writings,
of the “law of change of quantity to quality” at
work.
Take an arbitrary circle as a starting point
and draw smaller circles of fixed diameter
whose centres all lie on the perimeter of the
first circle:
As the number of smaller circles
approaches infinity, a new form emerges:
There are now two “new circles,” each con-
centric with the first circle.
The key proposition of this paper is that
with respect to psychological and social wholes
(composites) there is no distinction between
the form of the elements and the form of the
composites they constitute, i.e., all elements
have the form of composites. The above is a
simple model for this. In words, “A psycholog-
ical individual is a composite of concepts – but
a concept, as a stable, reproducible system is a
composite of concepts, is a psychological indi-
vidual. Recursively, a social system is a com-
posite of psychological individuals and as a
stable, reproducible system is itself (has the
form of) a psychological individual.”
radical constructivism
Note that the model serves well for the
tacit, non-languaging “awareness of aware-
ness,” experienced to some extent by all living
creatures (the pre-linguistic “re-ligio” experi-
ence of self that Kagan discusses). The dia-
logic form of I/Thou awareness in which “I”/
“Thou” languaging emerges is not encom-
passed. The form of such a model is discussed
below in the section “The logic of interper-
sonal perception.”
George Herbert Mead:
Self as social process
Mead’s (1934) key concept is that of the “sig-
nificant symbol.”8 A better label, perhaps, is
“the social sign.” Its significance lies in the fact
that communication employing such a sign
system is between participants who can “take
the perspective of the other.” Such signs not
only have an agreed or shared meaning, in the
sense that an external observer notes that they
are used in similar ways by the participants,
they also have agreed or shared meanings
from the perspective of the participants. In
brief, the participants, too, are observers.
Human consciousness and awareness, as
now known, is an evolved phenomenon. In
modern times, Rastafarians have a concept of
self and “super-self ” encapsulated in the for-
mula “I and I.” Some accounts of the cogni-
tion of Australian aborigines suggest that sim-
ilarly, they lack a distinct concept of
individuality: the “individual” psyche is in
direct contact with the powers that have cre-
ated the cosmos.
Mead’s account is a framework sufficient
to account for this variety of consciousness.
The “I” emerges in the dialectic of reciprocal
role taking: taking the other’s perspective. The
“generalised other” is internalised. Thought
becomes an inner dialogue between perspec-
tives: the self is a social process. “Self-image”
is a social construct and, as noted, may take
different forms in different cultures.
It is difficult to do justice to Mead’s work
in a few sentences. What I admire most is the
“holistic” nature of his thought. His concern
with thought and language is contained in his
larger concern with the relation between an
individual and the society of which he is a
part. From these concerns, he constructs a
more general cosmology and epistemology
(Mead 1938 and Miller 1973).
67
 cognitive-psychological
CONCEPTS
A(B(A(T))) Level of Understanding or Not
A(B(T)) Level of Realisation or Not
A(T) Base Level (Agreement or Not) B(T)
Table 1: Dyadic interpersonal perception (after Laing, Phillipson,
and Lee 1966): A and B are participants.T is the topic, proposition
or object being contemplated or perceived. A(T) means A’s
perception of T; A(B(T)) means A’s perception of B’s perception of able as overt stimuli,
T … and so on.
In Mead’s analysis, the semiotic function,
the use of speech and tool using co-evolve.
The hand uses a tool in a social context. Skills
are transmitted through sign and gesture.
With skilled manipulation comes the internal
trial and error of “inhibited” responses.
“Social signs” first appear as “inhibited”
(reflected upon) intention movements.
Mead’s conclusion, that thought is an
internalised dialogue, comes close to
Vygotsky’s (1962) thesis but, whereas
Vygotsky is at some pains to distinguish the
“inner monologue” from the “external dia-
logue,” Mead conceives the former, too, as a
dialogue, as conversational in form. Unlike
Vygotsky, Mead has his concept of “the self as
a social process” to guide his thinking.
Vygotsky’s vision does not extend that far; he
sees only the oppositions: in “internal
speech,” we know what we are thinking about.
At one point, he does use the phrase “when we
converse with ourselves” and likens the abbre-
viated, “tacit” knowing of intimates to the
abbreviations in inner speech, but the conver-
sational aspect of inner speech is not empha-
sised, it remains tacit in Vygotsky’s thought.
Newson and Newson, in a critique of
Piaget’s account of cognitive development,
come very close to a similar position to that of
Mead, in their insistence that “Knowledge
itself arises within an interaction process”
[…] “Knowing, and being able to communi-
cate what we know need to be viewed as oppo-
site sides of the same coin” (Newson & New-
son 1979, p. 272). They argue that the
semiotic function arises out of the “primor-
dial sharing situation” (cf. Werner & Kaplan
1963), in which mother (or other adult) and
infant “share” an experience. This sharing is
“sensori-motor, affective, pre-symbolic,” in
short, shared awareness. Here Newson and
Newson come close to discussion of, to coin a
phrase, the effect of affect on affect. Human
beings (and other organisms) are capable of
68
B(A(B(T))) feeling each other’s feel-
ings and feelings may be
B(A(T)) shared, including a feel-
ing (or “sense”) of one-
ness and deep, tacit
understanding.
The effects of affect
are not directly observ-
responses and reinforc-
ers, though, presumably,
there are physiological concomitants. The
subtle role of affect in human communication
is largely missed in “behavioural” approaches
to analyses of infant-caretaker interaction.
There is a case to be made for the re-evalua-
tion of “learning theory” approaches to child
development, with perhaps a place being
found for the application of these constructs
in the “microstructure” of the interplay of
affect in dyadic interaction. An effective and
intellectually satisfying “social behaviour-
ism,” as proposed by Mead, might then serve
to unify extant theories and approaches.
The logic of
interpersonal
perception
The work of Laing, Phillipson, and Lee (1966)
was one of the first studies of interpersonal per-
ception that clearly articulated the way in
which human communication entails both
sender and recipient having perspectives of
each other’s perspectives, that is, metaperspec-
tives. This requirement is imminent in G. H.
Mead’s writings on the nature of a significant
symbol, one that “arouses in the sender the
same response as in the receiver” (Mead 1934).
Laing, Phillipson, and Lee’s construction
for dyadic communication is shown in
Table 1.
In developmental psychology, being able
to compute such perspectives and metaper-
spectives is known as having “a theory of
mind” (Whiten 1991; Baron-Cohen and
Wing 1994). Howard’s (1971) theory of meta-
games has a similar structure for a two-person
non-zero sum game, such as “prisoner’s
dilemma.” The fundamental point of the con-
structions is that they permit an analysis of
power relations and conflict and stability
between participants. As Laing et al point out,
radical constructivism
if one participant, say A, has an accurate view
of the other’s, B’s, perspectives and metaper-
spectives, whatever they are, and if B’s view of
A is inaccurate, A is in a potential position of
power or influence over B. Consider, for
example, the relations between parent and
child, teacher and learner.9
In Laing, Phillipson, and Lee’s model for
the dyad, two perspective levels above the base
level are drawn. Howard’s results show that, in
general, if one is to represent all possible con-
figurations of perspectives of perspectives for
n persons that account for possible stability
(coordination of action) or lack of it, it is nec-
essary to have n factorial levels above the base
level. This fact is in itself a possible reason for
error in human communication.10
We may conceive of a system where there
is, in the words of Peter Cariani (personal
communication; see also Cariani 2000),
“[S]witching between regenerative, stable,
resonance states […]Those systems that can
reproduce their own organization […] are
potentially conscious […] They are organisa-
tionally closed by virtue of their circular
internal dynamics.” We may then conceive of
two such entities synchronised in interaction,
where each is being “in-formed” of the other
and where we can see the dynamics of the one
reproduced in the other and vice versa,
clearly showing the stable “eigen values”
where both are “computing” the same
“object” and are “computing” that they both
“know” that is what is happening. They may
both then “compute” a second “object” such
that they both “know” the second “object”
stands for or “represents” the first “object,”
i.e., the second “object” is a Meadian “signif-
icant symbol.”
Gordon Pask’s
conversation theory
From different starting points, Pask (1975)
has arrived at similar conclusions to those of
Mead. He characterises the “psychological
individual” as a “self-replicating system of
memories and concepts.” Figure 1 shows his
“skeleton of a conversation,” the necessary
distinctions made by an external observer.
First order signalling takes place in the causal
action of processes on processes: knowing
leads to doing leads to knowing; memories
reproduce concepts that reproduce memo-
Constructivist Foundations
 cognitive-psychological radical constructivism
CONCEPTS

ries. Thus, levels of cognition are distin-

guished as a “hierarchy of control.” A concept
is a procedure that “recognises, reproduces or participant A participant B
(e.g., teacher) (e.g., learner)
maintains a relation,” e.g., in context, riding
a bicycle, performing a calculation. A
description of a concept is a “task structure” memories memories
knowing (processes) (processes)
that says “what may be done.” A memory is a
(metacognitive) procedure that “recognises,
reproduces or maintains concepts,” for
example, in context, justifying a method or
providing a “chain of explanation” showing
how the understanding of particular con- concepts concepts
doing (processes) (processes)
cepts is derived from or entails the prior
understanding of other concepts. A descrip-
tion of a memory is an “entailment mesh”
that says “what may be known.”
Entailment meshes and task structures,
Behavioural interaction with shared “modelling facility”
which are coherent and consistent, describe in which concepts may be instantiated or exemplified
“domains” (e.g., a learnable/teachable thesis)
that support “viable” (reproducible) conver-
© Constructivist Foundations
sations (“psychological individuals”).
Second order signalling takes place in the
Figure 1: Pask’s “skeleton of a conversation.” The horizontal arrows refer to “provocative
“provocative” interaction of participants.
interaction” between participants. Pragmatically, any utterance has the form of a command,
Understanding implies shared perspectives;
interpreted (in context) at the level of knowing (learn! remember!) or at the level of doing
the cognitive processes of the two partici-
(do!). For B to understand A, he must be able to instantiate A’s concepts (as models or
pants are to some extent synchronised. In
exemplars) and also be able to show how A’s concepts are inter-related as learnable,
teaching and learning (Pask’s main concern),
memorable wholes.
the cognitions of one participant are literally
replicated in the other. One becomes the
other. Pask argues that the distinctions made […] If you think in mechanical terms, you insisted that you lived inside your head.
by the external observer of a conversation can think of a population of general-pur- Isn’t it evident that you are distributed
must, logically, also be made to characterise pose computers called ‘brains,’ in which, through a lot of these general-purpose
the cognition of an isolated psyche (cf. Ryle given a suitable programming language, it machines? Don’t you love? Don’t you dis-
1971). Here, replication is literally self-repli- is possible to run classes of programs. like? Don’t you take part in the self-images
cation. The “psychological individual” is a Now we are at liberty to redefine an indi- of other people? If you do you are saying
stable systemic whole, is “organisationally vidual as being not one head, one general- that you partake of the nature of a class of
closed.” Thus Pask distinguishes a level of purpose computing machine, but one programs. This is simply a statement of
organisation, of coherent structure above named class of programs. And we can that fact.
that of the biological, that applies both to interpret the reproduction of this named “I use the word ‘program’ to designate any
persons and the social systems that they class of programs, not at all in a biological well-defined ‘formula for’ or class of ‘for-
form. In his “inner conversation,” the person sense, but in the sense of reproducing and mulae for’ with the possibility of having
explains and justifies himself to himself. In perhaps evolving a class of programs bear- underspecified goals in it; in other words,
observing himself, he makes the same dis- ing the same name. This is consonant with it’s a heuristic procedure. I refer to the
tinctions as when acting as the external the motive of the individual to reproduce individual as a class of ‘formulae for […]
observation of a conversation. In the “outer himself; it does not introduce the problem me,’ where ‘me’ is my name. And the
conversations” that constitute social institu- of overpopulating the world with general- important point about this is that these
tions, the participants agree and disagree and purpose machines; and it does allow for “formulae for” might be run in any conve-
negotiate shared descriptions, explanations the perpetuation of the individual and the nient machine, including the brain […]
and justifications. Self-analysis reveals a sim- proper interpretation of the term ‘con- “In a sense there are two parallel sorts of
ilar interaction between “participating atti- sciousness,’ as an inbuilt wish to repro- evolution: there is biological evolution
tudes” and “points of view.” duce that which specifies me. This isn’t of going on, and then, because of this inter-
The following is attributed to Gordon Pask course such a strange point of view, pretation of the individual, one can per-
(quoted in Bateson 1972, pp. 307–309). because although you may be mildly ceive a separate sort of evolution that I
“I phrase it from the point of view of a offended if I call you a class of programs, refer to as ‘symbolic evolution,’ which is
‘philosophical mechanic’; that is to say you should really be equally offended if I perhaps exemplified by this conference.

2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3 69

 cognitive-psychological
CONCEPTS
To avoid overpopulating the world with
general-purpose machines, what we have
to do is control the symbolic evolution
process. To do so, I believe that the first
thing we must do is redefine what we
mean by an individual, get away from
this idea of individuals as heads.”
Implications for ethics
“We need to make parents and teachers pure,
before we can make children so” (Mary Boole
1972, p. 10).
In recognising that self-awareness and
self-reflection arise in “languaging,”
which is necessarily a social affair, von
Foerster has been lead to develop a the-
ory of ethics (see, for example, von Foe-
rster 1993). He notes that conscience and
conscious have the same roots, a point
also developed by C. S. Lewis (1967).
The essence of the argument is that we
are conscious (we “know with” our-
selves, L. con-scio,) precisely because
we “know with” others. Awareness of
Notes
A version of this paper was presented at the
conference on Problems of Individual Emer-
gence (PIE), Amsterdam, 16–20 April 2001.
1. I have written more about von Glasers-
feld’s contributions to constructivist epis-
temology elsewhere (Scott 2001).
2. This metaphysical assumption about the
status of the subject is a recurrent theme
throughout von Glaserfeld’s seminal
book. I have not had opportunity to ex-
plore how consistent are his views there
with those expressed in his other writings,
earlier or later.
3. Whilst writing this paper, I came across
Thibault’s (2004) account of self and other
emergence. As far as I can judge, his argu-
ments and critiques with respect to Mead,
Piaget and Vygotsky are very similar to
those I present in this paper. However,
whereas in this paper, I draw extensively
70
the mutuality and interdependence is the root
of conscience: we know, without being told,
that the “other” is what makes us a “self,” that
on the cybernetics tradition to provide
conceptual foundations (von Foerster,
Pask, Maturana), Thibault’s draws mainly
from developmental linguistics and dis-
course analysis.
4. Various forms of “closure” are distin-
guished in the literature. The usage here
follows that of Pask and Maturana, a sys-
tem is organisationally closed if amongst
its products are those elements that are
necessary for the system’s persistence (re-
production) as a system (a composite of
elements).
5. The earliest account of this argument from
von Foerster that I am aware of is in von
Foerster (1960). The reader is directed to
von Foerster (2003) where that paper and
many later ones in von Foerster’s oeuvre
can be found.
6. Mead in a similar way distinguishes the “I”
and the “Me,” the process of being a self
radical constructivism
we owe her our respect, our care, our love for
helping us be a “self ” at all. Unfortunately, all
too often, this tacit knowledge is not fully alive
in us. We err; we sin.
At an earlier point in the chapter
referred to in the introduction to this
paper, von Glasersfeld discusses how
“the individual needs the corrobora-
tion of others to establish the intersub-
jective viability of ways of thinking
and acting, entails a concern for others
as autonomous constructors” (Glasers-
feld 1995, p. 127), thus, though not devel-
oping a thesis of co-emergence of
self and others as outlined in this
paper, he clearly sees the interde-
pendence of self and others and
comes to similar conclusions to
those of von Foerster that con-
structivism provides a rational
basis for the development of
ethics, noting, however, that “it
is in the choice of goals that eth-
ics must manifest itself ” (ibid).
With freedom to construct
comes responsibility for
one’s actions.
distinct from the out-
come of the process of
observing, objectifying self as a “self-im-
age.”
7. CT in its comprehensiveness is also tech-
nically and terminologically complex. For
reasonably accessible introductions, see
Glanville (1993) and Scott (1980, 1982,
1993).
8. Mead here is using the word “significant
symbol” to refer to socially constructed
objects that coordinate behaviours. This is
in contrast to the more commonly held
view that a “symbol” is a special kind of to-
ken that represents an object. For an ex-
tended discussion of “What is a symbol?,”
see Scott and Shurville (in press).
9. For more on power relations see Scott
(2006).
10.I have developed this argument elsewhere
(Scott 1997).
Constructivist Foundations
 cognitive-psychological
CONCEPTS
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Received: 5 October 2006
Accepted: 7 February 2007
71
 epistemological epistemic structuring of experience
CONCEPTS

Epistemology Returns to Its Roots

Herbert F. J. Müller A McGill University, Montreal (Canada) <herbert.muller@mcgill.ca>

A. Knowledge:
Purpose: Understanding the place of Ernst von Glasersfeld’s Radical Constructivism (RC),
and some of its implications, in the development of epistemology. Design: Characteriza- Two options in
tion of two main options for the content of “knowledge” (without and with belief in mind- occidental thought
independent structures), sketch of their history in occidental thought; comparison of their
properties concerning subjectivity, objectivity, second-order cybernetics, reliability of Epistemology has as main purposes to
mental tools, and the needs and mechanisms for certainty and overall structures. develop and strengthen our stance (epi-
Results: Awareness that we structure mental working tools can, as RC suggests, replace histanai = stand above; under-stand = stand
belief in mind-independent reality, and this change dissolves the conceptual problem of below; ver-stehen = stand in front of); and to
metaphysics-ontology, but also eliminates the certainty expected from it, which raises the get a handle or grip (com-prehend, grasp,
possibility of relativism.Working-concepts cannot be deconstructed because they imply can; be-greifen, er-kennen, können). Of and
no ontological claims. Subject(s) are necessarily included in all knowledge (which does not on what? There are two main possibilities for
mean solipsism): because subjective experience encompasses all mental tools, including this largely language-determined functional
those of objectivity and mathematics, while in contrast the subject itself cannot become layer of “knowledge,” which influences per-
an objective system. Practical reliability of mental tools differs from subjective certainty, ception and action in addition to the genetic-
which requires an ontological leap of faith to positive beliefs: for specific tools including instinctual layer:
automata, and for positive holistic structures. However, in agreement with the construc- (i) The constructivist option of using
tivist view, holistic views can instead have an unstructured center, with reliability = viability, working-entities (working-structures),2 in
which prevents relativism. In sum, belief in mid-independent reality is needed for certainty principle ad-hoc and temporary, structured
if desired; for all other purposes constructivism is more helpful. within otherwise not-structured experience
Implications:The change in view suggested by von Glasersfeld’s work is of relevance for (of mind-and-world) and invested with
a number of fields of study with conceptual problems (such as the mind-brain relation). trust; and
However, due to their generality, the implications will need evaluation in specific instances. (ii) the traditional metaphysical-ontolog-
The question of certainty needs attention for practical reasons. ical option of postulating pre-structured,
Key Words: Subject-inclusiveness, cybernetics, back-up function. persistent, and usually also mind-indepen-
dent, and indeed mind-exclusive, reality
(MIR) and truth.
I became aware of epistemological Radical
Introduction Constructivism (RC) in 1999, while searching The metaphysics puzzle
to access the mind–brain relation puzzle, and Many people prefer the pre-structured option
Ernst von Glasersfeld (2005, p. 10) wants to was glad to find authors who wanted an episte- (ii), in the belief that it provides an outside
go to the roots of epistemology, of “the prob- mology without traditional metaphysics, which source of certainty; however, it implies tran-
lems of knowledge and knowing” (Glasersfeld coincided with my need. They have made this scending one’s experience to an imagined
1995, p. 1), by examining the subjects’ ele- effort a central feature of their work. As von Gla- mind-independent source. This is a form of
mentary operations for structuring experi- sersfeld has pointed out, much of what one can wishful thinking: before it can provide cer-
ence. He replaces the ontology of Western say about these matters has been said before – it tainty, one must first postulate the MIR-
philosophy by a “functional fit” (or “viabil- may now be a question of clarifying one’s think- source, and then certify it as real or true by a
ity”) of concepts. He sees his work as indebted ing, of seeing the wood for the trees. leap of faith. In the words of Heinz von Foer-
to that of von Uexküll, Piaget (Glasersfeld Here I want to contribute (from my point of ster: “Objectivity is a subject’s delusion that
1995, Ch. 3), Bridgman, Ceccato, von Foer- view1) to the understanding of von Glasers- observing can be done without him. Involv-
ster, Maturana, Varela, and others; it is also in feld’s work, and constructivism in general, in ing objectivity is abrogating responsibility –
accordance with earlier studies, for instance the context of the development of epistemol- hence its popularity.” (Glasersfeld 1995,
by Vico, Berkeley, Bentham, the critical and ogy. My aim is not to repeat his historical sur- p. 149) It implies an inversion of thinking,1 in
posthumous work of Kant (1936; Glasersfeld veys (such as Glasersfeld 1995, Ch. 2), but to which agency, including goal-setting, is dis-
1985a, pp. 18ff; 1991, [5]; 1995). As Riegler evaluate his work, and some of what I think is placed from the subject onto postulated
(2005) points out, there is a plurality of con- implied in it, within this development, elabo- external entities, a circular procedure which
structivisms with a common basis; the field is rating on aspects which have struck me as actually reduces option (ii) to option (i). But
developing and presents conceptual and prac- important. This is my personal bias; I have also view (ii) is commonly maintained by exclud-
tical opportunities and challenges. included a few of my own ideas for discussion. ing the circularity from awareness, and often

72 Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3

http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
 epistemological epistemic structuring of experience
CONCEPTS

also the outward leap of faith. This has a long

history.3
Pre-Socratic thinkers did not share a com-
mon opinion on the question of whether real-
ity needs our structuring or is found pre-
structured (see also Glasersfeld 1985a,
pp. 24ff; 1995, Ch. 2). A long-term commit-
ment to option (ii) was the result of the meta-
physical-ontological teachings of Plato and
Aristotle of pre-existing but inaccessible truth
and reality. This required an ontological leap-
of-faith, and became a leading theme of occi-
dental thought, transmitted from the Greeks
to Arabic, scholastic-theistic, and later to nat-
uralistic epistemology. It helped to achieve
stability and collective unity of structured
thinking, secured by faith in a postulated
mind-external certainty, for about 1500
years. The price was incomprehensibility,
particularly when there was an attempt to
include the central subjective and holistic
aspects of mind (cf. Glasersfeld 1991, [5];
2001, [41]; and part J of this paper). The pos-
tulated MIR structures get in the way of criti-
cal thinking.
Still, modern science originated from Ernst von Glasersfeld at the Douglas-McGill Symposium on “Mind-Construction-Brain”, organized
here; but the leap-of-faith procedure was by the author, Herbert Müller, on 28 September 2001 at Douglas Hospital in Montreal (Canada).
largely maintained, and merely transferred (Photo by Douglas Hospital).
from MIR-God to MIR-Nature. Correction
was therefore difficult even after science
became independent of theism, and relapses The obstructive nature of MIR-belief is construction of the concept of plural (the
into some type of MIR-belief resulted almost illustrated by the fact that even those very “awareness of having recognized [an item]
invariably, including by those who set out bright people who used it as the basis of their more than once”; Glasersfeld 1985b [19]ff;
explicitly to abandon metaphysics (cf. Gla- thinking (and implied it to be the general 1995, pp. 93f).
sersfeld 1995, pp. 25ff). The ontological sub- basis of thought) were stymied by their wish RC replaces metaphysics-ontology by
ject-object split persisted, because it was not to exclude the subject in studies that included “viability” of mind-and-world structures (a
clearly changed into a pragmatic one, and the mind. At the present late stage of the revi- “tremendous shock for believers in represen-
thus the desire for MI-certainty (ii) contin- sion, we are trying to re-gain access to the tation”; Glasersfeld 1995, p. 14). This means
ued (cf. Glasersfeld 1991, [16]). original structuring process (i) within experi- being aware of the subject-inclusive opera-
Post-Cartesian (enlightenment) episte- ence, and to make it work reliably when con- tional origin of concepts, and reflects the
mologies were largely motivated as efforts to fronting uncertainty and ambiguity. needs of various scientific and practical disci-
overcome such obstacles to the correction, plines (such as linguistics, mathematics, edu-
but the attempts remained incomplete,4 and cation); it gives RC a broader than purely
some thinkers missed even that incomplete B. Radical philosophical base. Constructivism is “a
change. The so-called “Copernican Revolu- method for knowing” (Glasersfeld 1995,
tion” of Kant (who showed that the subject’s
constructivism p. 22); it requires a continuous effort of struc-
activity is needed for objective reality) was Von Glasersfeld’s work comes in at this point. turing and testing. Constructivism means
ignored or denied by many realists. Attempts He proposes replacing the search for postu- more responsibility (Glasersfeld 1985a, p. 27;
were often made (e.g., by logical positivists) lated already-structured MIR-entities (ii) by 1991, [37]), both individual and collective. It
to eliminate metaphysics, for instance by showing that structures are results of human means creating working-structures as
declaring metaphysical questions to be mean- activity (i). This change has re-opened the needed; MIR-assumptions are redundant.
ingless, or pseudo-problems. But this missed way for studies of basic structures. “Re-pre- An epistemological view cannot be the
the point that something similar is needed for sentations” point not to mind-independent result of empirical findings, the latter already
thinking, as Kant had observed. Everyone entities but to structures previously formed pre-suppose an opinion on where the struc-
uses metaphysics-ontology. within experience. A typical example is the tures in experience come from. “[T]he theory

2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3 73

 epistemological
CONCEPTS
of knowing does not depend on […] more or
less empirical findings. […] It is based on the
simple realization that, as our thinking, our
conceptualizing, and our language are devel-
oped from and in the domain of our experi-
ence, we have no way of incorporating any-
thing that lies beyond this domain”
(Glasersfeld 2005, p. 11). “We can, of course,
use metaphors to grope beyond our limits,
but as these metaphors are not redeemable in
the experiential domain to which we have
access, they can never shed their status of ‘as
if ’” (Glasersfeld 2001, [16]).
RC concerns fundamental aspects of epis-
temology; it is not the same as “social con-
struction,” although both have points in com-
mon (Glasersfeld 1995, p. 141). Most
concepts are socially shared, and dealing with
social questions pre-supposes an epistemo-
logical point of view.
C. Working
metaphysics-ontology
To address the metaphysics difficulty more
directly, one can go a step further by general-
izing from the well-accepted scientific
method of creating working-hypotheses: to
“operational” or “working-” (or “as-if ”-)
metaphysics-ontology (working-reality and -
truth). Re-interpreting inaccessible type (ii)
mind-independent metaphysics-ontology as
a type (i) working-tool gives it a status like
that of the language- and number-tools; the
metaphysics puzzle dissolves. But the cer-
tainty expected from type (ii) ontology-meta-
physics dissolves as well (cf. parts G and H
below).
The operational or working-structures,
including theories, do not exist outside struc-
turing and (individual and collective) use,
and thus remain in principle within reach and
comprehensible. They imply no (“ontic”)
claims of mind-independent validity, and
serve either circumscribed tasks, or else holis-
tic purposes such as unity and communality
of experience. They can compete with each
other, but are mutually exclusive only in an
operational sense.
All reality needs structuring (deliberate or
not), and some of it requires inventing: art,
language, or self-image need our invention;
hurricanes and toothaches are structured but
not invented by humans; this opinion differs
74
epistemic structuring of experience
from that of von Foerster (1992), and von
Foerster and von Glasersfeld (1999), who
appear to equate construction with invention.
The subject–object and subject–other dis-
tinctions become structured too during
development (Jean Piaget; see Glasersfeld
1991, [27]ff, 1995, Ch.3). Structures, and the
distinctions between them, originate in
reflection, a pause in experience (Wilhelm
von Humboldt; Piaget; von Glasersfeld (2001,
[25–36]).
Deconstruction-proofing, and back-
up versus MIR-fallback
Working-structures cannot be deconstructed
ontologically (in the sense of Heidegger and
Derrida) because they claim no ontic (pre-
structured) base.
This enables the constructivist method to
back up type (ii) views, which can be de-con-
structed (for instance by showing that the
notion of fictitious inaccessible MIRs is not
needed for them, since they are extrapolated
from mental tools). This back-up function
(that is, the working-structure is used to
replace the abandoned MIR-structure) might
be a useful conceptual tool, for instance in sci-
entific theory-building.
Since (ii) cannot back up (i), the relation
between (i) and (ii) is asymmetrical. While
backing-up or replacing (ii) by (i) serves con-
ceptual clarification, a move from (i) to (ii) is
a fall-back – by default and/or by design –
from responsible agency onto assumed mind-
independent certainty provided by postu-
lated guarantors.
The number of possible practical action
patterns is increased in working-ontology:
they are created as needed rather than deter-
mined by fixed dogmata that pre-determine
and restrict the choice.
Working-science
MIR-science (type (ii)) can be transformed to
working- (or as-if-)MIR-science (type (i)).
Science neither needs, nor can it produce, tra-
ditional metaphysics-ontology. “Science is the
collection of recipes and procedures that
always work […] Our faith [in it] rests
entirely on the certainty of reproducing or
seeing again a certain phenomenon by means
of certain well-defined acts” (Paul Valéry,
quoted by von Glasersfeld 1995, p. 117).
The physicist Percy Bridgman proposed
(1927), like Piaget, that all concepts result
from subjects’ operations: however, he still
talked about external nature, though he had
“little to say about it,” and added “what this
means we leave to the metaphysician to
decide.” von Glasersfeld wrote that he is
agnostic about a mind-external reality (1991
abstract, [17]ff; 1995; etc.). It may be more
consistent, I want to suggest, to define reality-
structures (ontology-metaphysics) in princi-
ple as ad-hoc working-tools only, even if they
are used on a permanent basis (Note 1 and
part C, above). Like words, numbers, trian-
gles, and dimensions, they are there because
we need and structure, posit, and use them:
that solves the puzzle. Assumption of things-
in-themselves that cannot be proved or dis-
proved is redundant.
D.The encompassing:
Subject-inclusiveness is
fundamental
The inclusion of subjective experience in all
knowledge is a central aspect of constructiv-
ism (but does not imply solipsism = exclu-
sive subjectivity without objectivity). “All
cognitive activity occurs within the experi-
ence of goal-directed consciousness” (Gla-
sersfeld 1985a, p. 31; but in principle at least
one needs to include all aspects of experi-
ence; see below). There is no way of getting
out of subjectivity, either individually or col-
lectively: the subject is an intrinsic compo-
nent of all mental structures, such as con-
cepts and theories. This is, in my
understanding, a defining aspect of con-
structivism, and needs to be kept at the cen-
ter of efforts to deal with it.
In theories that exclude the mind (such as
type (ii) exclusive objectivity) the subject(s)
are likely to re-surface at some point. Exam-
ples are the ad-hoc addition of “conscious-
ness” in particle physics, or the “anthropic
principle” in cosmology. But subject(s) must
be included from the outset. If they are
added to a type (ii) view at a later time, as in
these instances, a return to a type (i) view is
needed in order to deal with an aura of arti-
ficiality and an ontological subject–object
split.
This subject-aspect of experience too has
had a historical development in epistemol-
ogy: in phenomenology and related efforts.
Constructivist Foundations
 epistemological
CONCEPTS
Constructivist development beyond
phenomenology
Subject-inclusiveness is a theme (“existential-
ism”) of phenomenology since Kierkegaard
(1843/2005). He rejected claims of mind-
independent pre-structured truth and reality
as not relevant for individual experience –
Hegel’s (1807/1949) notion of the absolute
spirit as well as science’s claim of the universal
validity of exclusive MIR-objectivity.
Nietzsche (1888) wrote that the idols of MIR-
metaphysics were vanishing (“Götzen-Däm-
merung”). Jaspers emphasized that experi-
ence is “encompassing” (“the encompassing
in which we are and which we are ourselves”;
1991, p. 39). On the other hand, existential-
ism without specialization can amount to
fuzzy generalities;5 also, phenomenologists
have often suffered MIR-relapses.4
Constructivism is, inter alia, a further
development of phenomenology, mainly in
two respects. Firstly, it examines how struc-
tures (including goal-structures) are created
within experience; they are not (as phenome-
nologists implied) discovered – there or else-
where – in ready-made form. Secondly, it can
accommodate objective studies: theories and
objective methods develop within experience
as working- (or as-if-) MIR; this leads to a
joint subjective-objective (working) view.3
With its back-up ability (part C, above) con-
structivism can combine both methods.
In principle, all other aspects of experi-
ence (qualia, feeling and emotions, others,
world, universe, the whole, the unstructured
center) must also be included in discussions
of experience, even when they are difficult to
communicate, or at present not conscious;
they can become conscious experience.
E. The subject is not
observable
The subjective aspect of experience (or con-
sciousness) has “to remain empirically
inscrutable”; it cannot become objective
because “the reflecting self […] becomes the
governor and cannot contemplate itself from
the outside” as an object (Glasersfeld 2001,
[32]). There is no subject in exclusively-
objective studies. The unobservability of the
subject is a fundamental fact which is in prin-
ciple recognized in constructivism, but usu-
ally neglected in MIR-views. This point will
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
epistemic structuring of experience
need consideration in the discussion of “sec-
ond-order cybernetics” (below).
The mind-brain question cannot be
approached by MIR-views, because mind
cannot be made into an object; as von Gla-
sersfeld puts it (2001, [41]): “In order to do
that [understand consciousness objectively],
I would have to step out of [consciousness],
and at the same time remain conscious, in
order to face my own consciousness.” Brain
function studies take place within the
encompassing mind but cannot in turn reach
the mind. This does not mean that objective
studies have no value, quite the opposite; but
it means that subjective experience is pri-
mary.
The relation of objective studies (for
instance of brain function, or of quantum
physics) to subjective experience (conscious-
ness, observer, mind) is asymptotic, not one
of identity (notions like “the embodied
mind” or “the mind-brain” attempt to render
the mind objective and thus imply a misun-
derstanding of this relationship). Objective
functions can approach but not reach subjec-
tivity, and in contrast to geometry, the differ-
ence cannot be neglected without eliminat-
ing ourselves, as happens in MIR-views.
Words can become MIR-objects (for instance
as elements of grammar and syntax, in
printed form, etc.), and word-concepts too,
but the ongoing experience which they
express cannot.
To accommodate experience, scientists
must acknowledge that all working-struc-
tures (and the distinctions between them)
happen within mind or experience; keeping
experience at the center, without solipsism.
When maintaining this awareness, one can
safely alternate between working-objectivity,
working-idealism, working-subjectivity, etc.
The inverted thinking1 of MIR-belief is a
typically human problem. Animals too struc-
ture their own worlds (see Horvath 1997), but
the human capacity for distancing (reflec-
tion) is greater, in part related to language
use, i.e., the large-scale association of specific
communicable sounds to images (Glasersfeld
1995, Ch. 7; a classical example is Archi-
medes, who was so distant from events
around him that he did not notice that a
Roman soldier was going to kill him while he
reflected on geometric problems).
The aim of the objective method is to
eliminate observer-bias, not the observer.
F. Cybernetics,
subjectivity, and
objectivity
As a general principle, MIR-objectivity
becomes as-if-MIR-objectivity in construc-
tivism. But there are some conceptual diffi-
culties when goal-directedness is studied,
which can be viewed objectively as well as
developed subjectively. This question comes
up in second-order cybernetics, which is
endorsed by a number of constructivists.
The information-mechanisms of von Foe-
rster, Maturana, and others support the con-
structivist view, but do not describe mind;
they are mental structures within mind, like
all theories. Von Foerster’s “Principle of
Undifferentiated Encoding” (derived from
work by the 19th century physiologist J.
Müller on “nerve physics” and “specific sense
energy”; Glasersfeld 1995, p. 115; Riegler
2005) says that neural activity encodes quan-
titative information, not external reality. This
is a negative statement about mental struc-
tures, which still have to be created by a sub-
ject. In positive terms: during dreaming,
mental structures, including their meanings,
are activated centrally rather than by periph-
eral input (Ceccato, quoted by von Glasers-
feld 1995 pp.97–98); the same applies for free
associations, and pathological functions such
as hallucinations.
Systems in cybernetics and physics
The objective study of goal-directedness is the
topic of cybernetics, the work of Norbert
Wiener in physics, and of Heinz von Foerster
in psycho-physiology, and their collabora-
tors. Von Glasersfeld remarks (1995, p. 148)
that cybernetics understands reality as an
interaction between observer and observed.
“Cybernetics of cybernetics” (or second-
order cybernetics), wants to introduce the
subject (mind) as an autonomous agent-sys-
tem into cybernetics of biological systems (cf.
Umpleby 1991, 2002). This is clearly an
important aim, but its conceptual aspect pre-
sents difficulties that need discussion.
I as a subject can observe an observing sys-
tem as an object. But what I observe is not the
subjective experience of the (observed)
observing system, whether that refers to an
animal, another person, or even to myself in
the case where I can study my brain function
75
 epistemological
CONCEPTS
as needed while (or after) I have various sub-
jective experiences.7 (In contrast there are
many “autonomous” biological systems,
including bee-hives and ant-colonies, that
can be objectively studied but do not imply
“subjectivity” or “consciousness” in the sense
of the present discussion.)
One may compare these efforts with the
earlier one of John von Neumann (cf. Baggott
2004, p. 243), who found that to understand
the statistical nature of quantum-mechanics
(QM) he had to re-introduce the subject into
QM, in terms of a “system III” (observer or
“consciousness”) in addition to system I, the
object under study, and system II, the measur-
ing device. But system III is not identical with,
nor a part of, system II, and he concluded that
“the probability wave collapses when it inter-
acts with a consciousness.” An opaque con-
clusion of this type may follow if one starts
from naturalistic MIR-belief (that exclusive
objectivity describes “the reality”); but since it
is not comprehensible, it has not made QM
understandable. The word “consciousness”
not withstanding, the “system III” is likely to
be understood in MIR-terms, because sys-
tems are objects of thinking. The difficulties
persist in that field (quite “officially” in
expressions like “quantum weirdness” –
uncertainty, wave-particle duality,
Schrödinger’s cat, etc. – ; cf. for instance Lind-
ley 1996; constructivists might counter that
the weird aspect is the MIR-view; see also the
section on gestalt-tools, below).
The same conceptual difficulty emerges in
second-order cybernetics and might interfere
with its acceptance. Experience is primary,
theories and observations occur within it.
The problem is the incomprehensibility of
MIR-belief (objectivity) itself, which von
Neumann retained because he did not explic-
itly abandon it, and which is also implied in
studies of cybernetic systems.
G. Reliability of
mental tools
With the change from type (ii) to type (i)
epistemology, the questions of reliability and
certainty become prominent, since the pos-
tulated external guarantor dissolves. Ernst
von Glasersfeld has presented descriptions
of how some mental tools are created, and of
their properties. Since mental structures are
76
epistemic structuring of experience
the nuts and bolts of mental function, I will
briefly discuss a few of them here, following
von Glasersfeld’s procedures, with emphasis
on the question of their reliability.
Regularities, laws,
and the method of reason
Outside of religion and politics, certainty
refers mostly to natural laws (“regularities”
in nature), which we experience and struc-
ture, in the same way as object-constancy in
subject-inclusive operations (Glasersfeld
1985a, pp. 31ff; Glasersfeld 1995, p. 128).
Natural laws are reliable, not dependent on
MIR-theistic beliefs, and are commonly
believed to result from type (ii) MIR. But it
turns out that they can be modified when
needed; this shows them to be type (i) as-if-
MIR laws.
After abandoning MIR-ontology, it
remains that “only reason can protect man
from fanaticism and superstition” (Kant).
Reason still means clarification of thinking,
sorting out helpful from unhelpful mental
structures. The reasoning method “de-con-
structs” non-viable structures and makes us
look for better ones. – As von Glasersfeld has
mentioned, Kant himself came close to a
type (i) view in his opus postumum. Related
to this question is von Glasersfeld’s work on
the operational analysis of the basic steps in
mathematics and abstraction.
Arithmetic tools
In a recently “revisited” study, von Glasers-
feld (1995, Ch. 5, Ch. 9; 2006) discussed the
operational foundations of structures in
arithmetic. After structuring the concept of
“plural” (see part B, above), a simple arith-
metical statement like 3 + 4 = 7 can be
“unpacked” into the operations of counting
two collections of items. Then by coordinat-
ing a number-word sequence with them, and
considering the two collections as one, one
arrives at the same result every time.
The mathematical reliability is based on
what von Glasersfeld calls (2006, p. 68) a
“hypothetical trick,” a non-mathematical
procedure that is “abstracted.” “The cer-
tainty of the results […] springs on the one
hand from the fact that one operates in a
hypothetical mode and therefore obliges
oneself not to question what one has hypoth-
esized; and on the other hand, on implicit
faith in one’s memory of meanings attrib-
uted, of operations carried out, and of results
they produced.”
This analysis shows the operational origin
of arithmetic procedures and other algo-
rithms, and consequent reliabilities that one
tends to take for granted; it also epitomizes
the RC-method. The “hypothetical trick” can
be taken as a prototype of type (ii) MIR-pos-
tulates and beliefs, as well as of their type (i)
“working” equivalents.
Geometric tools
Von Glasersfeld (2006, pp. 66–67) also offers
an operational basis for geometric concepts
such as point (“the center of attention”), line
(“drawing”), or plane (“moving a line side-
ways”).
Like numbers, the geometric entities are
not found; they are human mind-and-world
working-tools structured and used for deal-
ing with experience, and for stabilization.
The mentioned reasoning for “point” in par-
ticular is of the mental-operation type and
does not even involve motor action; in theory
a point “has zero dimensions.” They are ele-
ments of the gestalt-operation in geometry.
(However, if one physically draws a point, a
line, or a plane, the result always has proper-
ties that in principle require treatment as
three-dimensional objects, though the addi-
tional ones are usually “neglected”; Glasers-
feld 1995, p. 185; drawings are imperfect,
though still effective, means to communicate
mental structures, which are implied to be
the same for all.)
But then, how real are points, or lines?
They are in the mind, like all mathematical
structures (cf. Lakoff & Núñez 2000); objec-
tive aspects are their working derivatives that
can for many purposes be handled as-if they
were MIR units. The visual system has objec-
tive mechanisms to detect objective points,
lines, and edges.8 They are the physiological
basis for the corresponding mind-and-
world-tools of the structuring subject, ele-
ments of gestalt-formations. With points and
lines, one can draw a tree, a house, or a
human face; but these objects are not made of
points or lines, nor of gestalt entities; even
less of the underlying physiology. Extrapolat-
ing from here, one can draw triangles, circles,
cubes, asymptotes, etc., tools for exploratory
tasks in structuring and handling visual
experience, together with other visual tools
such as color, or tactile ones such as solidity,
Constructivist Foundations
 epistemological
CONCEPTS
etc. The tools are elements of subject-inclu-
sive working-reality, just as numbers or
working-metaphysics (and indeed all mind-
and-world structures) are.
Gestalt-tools and MIR-reference
Our notion of the world is predominantly
visual. Visual gestalt formations have a qual-
ity of permanence and definition that is lack-
ing in probabilistic reliability. With the
gestalt-tools we can package experience into
items suitable for handling and communica-
tion. When words are attached to them, they
can become metaphysical entities, because
words, as communication tools, have a built-
in supra-individual aspect: the word-gestalt
concepts lend themselves to a mis-interpreta-
tion of universality and absoluteness, if
desired. In that way, type (i) statistical reli-
ability can give way to a leap to type (ii) cer-
tainty of MIR-knowledge. The Pythagoreans
not withstanding, numbers are less likely
than gestalt-formations to be considered
identical to or referring to a fictitious MIR-
world.
But evidently the reliability of gestalt-
tools is limited: on TV a forward moving car
may show its wheels turning backward. How-
ever, we see what we know (“it isn’t so”), and
that corrects the problem. Gestalt-tools are
also used in trying to interpret the double-slit
experiment of QM (cf. Baggott 2004; Lindley
1996). One may ask whether macroscopic
gestalt-notions such as “corpuscle” and
“wave” are valid (viable) here (and mutually
exclusive). Physicists tell us that QM has reli-
able mathematical procedures, but is difficult
or impossible “to understand” (presumably
in visual gestalt terms). In using a visual
image of reality, one needs to remain aware of
the limitations of visual gestalt tools.
H. Probabilistic
reliability versus leaps of
faith to certainty, and
the question of
relativism
The procedures are more reliable for counting
than elsewhere: the operations of arithmetic
are simple (“digital,” even if you do not count
on your fingers) and can be repeated by any-
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
epistemic structuring of experience
one, with identical results if procedural mis-
takes are avoided. But, as von Glasersfeld has
shown (see above), in mathematics too there
is a difference between reliability of procedure
and certainty of faith. Certainties are derived
from posited and certified (MIR-) structures
that are no longer scrutinized and may even
be out of awareness. That can facilitate life
much, at variable risk.
One posits an ad-hoc working-hypothesis
(or accepts an intuition, revelation or, most
commonly, an authority’s opinion or com-
mand at face value), certifies it as reliable
(true, real) by leap of faith, and/or by aban-
doning critical thinking, and in turn derives
certainty from the certified – and often exter-
nalized – structure. The certainty procedure
involves forgetting and/or excluding from
awareness (1) the circularity of the operation,
(2) the MI-step, and often also (3) the leap-
of-faith. These steps mark the difference
between reliability of procedures and cer-
tainty.
Knowledge is probabilistic except for such
leaps of faith; numbers can sometimes make
the probability more precise. In contrast, cer-
tified structures are the only available source
of persistent certainty, including in mathe-
matics. They are results of human postulates,
leaps of faith, circular reasoning, and forget-
ting. In some instances, the name of the trick
ought to be self-deception. The constructiv-
ist insight undoes the forgetting; thereafter
certainty retains awareness of its risk (i.e.,
doubt).
For certainty, type (ii) knowledge (leap to
MIR-belief) is effective, but it may interfere
with critical thinking; for all other purposes
type (i) knowledge (such as constructivism)
is more helpful.
The rejection of MIR-belief may evoke a
fear of relativism – that reality and truth
depend on arbitrary opinions. But working-
structures cannot remain arbitrary, since
they can be maintained only if they are viable.
Social structures can be more varied, but
depend on consensus, such as concerning
expected effectiveness. For instance, United
Nations decisions may at times be inade-
quate, but they are probably not arbitrary;
another example is the confidentiality of pro-
fessionals toward their clients, an expectation
and standard that is documented in rules of
conduct, but does not have to imply MIR-
belief.
I. Automata and
inversion of agency
The use of automata is closely related to the
leap of faith to an MIR-view.
Von Glasersfeld quotes Gottlob Frege
(who triggered the development of analytic
philosophy) on mathematical abstractions
(2006, p. 65): “the things that we number
must be distinguishable, whereas the
[abstract] units of arithmetic are not.”
Since the subject is omitted, this statement
(“are not”) omits the operational aspect.
Frege appears to have seen the result of “abs-
tracting” (= “taking away” from the events
that gave rise to it) as pre-structured, not
operational. It would then not only be extrap-
olated from a specific procedure and general-
ized (a “placeholder” with some flexibility of
concept-images, Glasersfeld 1995, pp. 91ff),
but also be mind-independently automated,
taken away from the subject’s activity.
If the acts of counting are considered one
at a time, the arithmetic units are not identi-
cal. Each can be made distinguishable by pay-
ing attention to it, but they are usually treated
as identical. The operational question is: how
much can and should we distinguish? Treat-
ing numbers and numerical relations as iden-
tical, as mind-independent and trustworthy
algorithms or automata, can be our (the sub-
jects”) view, deliberately or by default. Com-
puters are used on that basis: the subject s’ act
is delegated to trusted automata (Glasersfeld
2006, note 15). The automation can have
ramifications that, even in mathematics, are
at first unexpected, such as infinity, imaginary
numbers, or negative probabilities. But the
subject-agent remains, in principle, a constit-
uent part of the process (Glasersfeld 1995,
pp. 96ff).
Implied (mind-independent) automatism
of logical-mathematical symbols, with
implied completeness-in-themselves, seems
to be a feature of analytic philosophy in its
pursuit of truth. This aspect disappears when
it is acknowledged that the mind encom-
passes these tool-structures; then the com-
pleteness is in the mind, but its center cannot
be structured (see part J, below).
Delegation of responsibility to automata of
various kinds (including airplanes, the postal
service, governments, but also to some we
have not invented, like the functions of our
own bodies) is inevitable: because we have no
77
 epistemological
CONCEPTS
choice, for instance, and/or because our atten-
tion has limits. But this trust and inversion of
agency may become counter-productive if the
automata fail or develop unexpected func-
tions and place us in the position of a sorcerer’s
apprentice, who tries to re-gain control.
In view of the ever-increasing amount of
objective (actually how-to) information, it is
perhaps the most difficult aspect of the con-
structivist view to remain aware of the pri-
macy of ongoing (subjective) experience. In
practice we can delegate agency (and respon-
sibility) on a temporary (or as-if) basis, but
simultaneously acknowledge that in principle
we remain responsible throughout.9
J. Holistic structures
Belief systems are also used for certainty by
trying to structure experience as a whole, with
the help of postulated overall structures.
Indeed, if the whole is not included in some
way (at least in principle) the view is incom-
plete.
Mystery, rationalism,
and the unstructured center
Holistic structures include the subjective cen-
ter of ongoing experience, which cannot
become structured; that would require an
impossible objectivity and packaging of sub-
jective experience. Positive holistic structures
are consequently inevitably paradoxical or
mystical, but may be adopted by means of
absolute belief, in order to obtain overall
meaning and stability via a leap of faith
(“credo quia absurdum,” Tertullian). The par-
adoxes may, however, prevent some people
from accepting theism and other positive
holistic beliefs. But constructivism can
accommodate holism, and may offer a way to
dissolve the paradoxes.
For one, constructivism can back up posi-
tive holistic structures (which are put on
hold). This consideration does not make mys-
ticism rational (cf. Glasersfeld 1995 pp. 24ff),
and does not justify irrational behaviour, but
it provides a rational understanding of the
presence and irrational function of mysti-
cism. Namely, that the irrationality is a conse-
quence of the unstructured origin within
which all rational thinking takes place.
And secondly, holism and the objective
method can both be tools in experience with
78
epistemic structuring of experience
a negative center. Non-theistic (and non-
positive) stability practices are used success-
fully in some cultures, with the help of med-
itation. They have an unstructured (nega-
tive) center-point such as nirvana (which is
free of paradoxes). Seen from there, positive
theistic structures appear as imperfect pre-
liminary tools, a temporary convenience on
the way to the goal of dealing more directly
with the unstructured center (cf. Percheron
1958, pp. 38–40).
The reliable rational logical (language)
and mathematical (counting) methods on
the other hand cannot offer the overall
coherence of a holistic view with inclusion of
subjective experience, nor can the objective
method (which usually implies the gestalt =
reality view) do this. The ex-positivist Paul
Feyerabend wrote (1999, pp. 32–33) “[i]f
discourse is defined as a sequence of clear
and distinct propositions […] then dis-
course has a very short breath indeed, […] If
the history of thought depended on a dis-
course of this kind, then it would consist of
an ocean of irrationality interrupted, briefly,
by mutually incommensurable islands of
sense.” But just that is the start-point of con-
structivism: we do not try to find sense
ready-made, we have to make sense within
the unstructured.10
K. Conclusion:
Constructivism in the
history of epistemology
Constructivism restores to epistemology the
unstructured origin of thinking, and the sub-
ject(s) as agent(s) of all structure-formation
and -use. The pre-structured reality view is
then no longer an end-point for epistemology
(Whitehead had suggested that all occidental
philosophy is a footnote to Plato), instead it
has been a long-term but nevertheless tempo-
rary means for obtaining certainty from pos-
tulated (mostly mind-external) authorities:
the viability concept of Ernst von Glasers-
feld’s Radical Constructivism is a step beyond
this stage. Rather than maintaining MIR-
belief for certainty, it helps to de-construct
ontology; one can then use viable experience-
structures and achieve stability of stance and
reliability of grasp by operational (and co-
operational) means.
In this way, constructivism can offer a
complete view (of “life,” of “reality”).
Many conceptual aspects of constructivism
(some of which have been briefly discussed in
this paper) will need further scrutiny. Exam-
ples are, among others, the relation of struc-
turing to inventing; of constructivism and
phenomenology to cybernetics; the relevance
of constructivism for science and teaching; the
operational basis of basic concepts; reliability
of mental tools versus certainty by circular rea-
soning plus forgetting where it comes from;
the differences between “Anglo-American”
and “Continental” opinions on the need to
include ongoing experience; agnosticism ver-
sus redundancy of ontology; the back-up
function of constructivism. One would, of
course, also want to consider the work of other
constructivists, and of non-constructivists, in
theory formation. These are important –
though not easy – questions; but dealing with
them could, besides increasing responsibility,
also make life more interesting.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Herbert F. J. Müller, born 1924 in Cologne,
studied medicine at the University of
Cologne (Dr. med., 1951). Medical intern-
ship and postgraduate training (psychiatry,
neurology, electroencephalography) in
New Jersey, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Düs-
seldorf, and at McGill University in Montreal
(Associate Prof. of Psychiatry). Now retired
from clinical work at Douglas Hospital,
Montreal. – Studying the mind-brain rela-
tion, it became clear to me in 1994 that to
access this question the notion of pre-struc-
tured mind-independent reality must be
abandoned. As this requires a more general
review of concept use and epistemological
questions, I started editing the Karl Jaspers
Forum http://www.kjf.ca/ in 1997. In 1999 I
became aware of radical constructivism
(chiefly the work of Ernst von Glasersfeld),
which has many features in common with
my present work. A symposium on the
mind-brain relation, in which von Glasers-
feld participated, took place at the Douglas
Hospital (McGill University) in September
2001. My present work concerns the con-
ceptual basis of this point of view – which I
label “structuring with zero-derivation” or
“zero-reference” – and its relation to other
areas.
Constructivist Foundations
 epistemological
CONCEPTS
Notes
1. A recent description of my position of
zero-derivation (0-D) of mind-and-world
structures and of the inversion of thinking
(i.e., relegation of agency to outside the
subject) can be found in Müller (2005). As
mentioned in various contexts in the
present paper, it differs in some respects
from von Glasersfeld’s opinion, and I
hope this can be understood as a contribu-
tion to discussion rather than criticism.
2. I employ the term “entity” or “structure”
here as a general expression for mental
tools, for instance concepts, theories, but
also more basic ones such as words, num-
bers, gestalt-formations, objects, and in-
cluding qualia as well.
3. In case they are understood as working
structures, the two possibilities interact
and complement each other. – Similar is
the Chinese distinction (3rd century BC)
between (i) the dark weak force (Yin), and
(ii) the bright strong force (Yang), and
their interaction.
4. Empiricists, positivists, and realists have
tended to continue using traditional type
(ii) metaphysics-ontology (“every idea is
the idea of a being,” wrote Hume – proba-
bly a mind-independent being); but most
also insisted that they did not use meta-
physics, because it had “no meaning.”
Kant claimed that things-in-themselves
are “necessary for reason,” not experi-
enced (as noumena). Phenomenologists
wanted to discover structures without
making ontological assumptions, but fell
back onto ontological positions of one or
another type. Heidegger even declared
that “phenomenology is ontology” (1953,
p. 37); this actually implies that phenom-
ena = noumena, apparently without giv-
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Received: 1 July 2006
Accepted: 2 March 2007
Constructivist Foundations
 anecdotal
OPINION
“Anyone for Tennis?” –
Conversations with Ernst on
Being Sporting about Epistemology
Vincent Kenny A Accademia Costruttivista di Terapia Sistemica (Italy) <kenny@acts-psicologia.it>
W hile I was in New York for the tennis
tournament at Flushing Meadows in
August 2005, as part of my work with tennis
professionals, I decided to take time out to go
up to Amherst to visit Ernst and engage him
in more conversations about how radical con-
structivism can be useful. In this case on how
it might help me in my work with the tennis
players’ usual range of problems with their
performance during the tournament. These
problems include attentional control where
the player needs to be able to manage selective
attention effectively (the ability to keep
focused on what is most important while
screening out all else) and also to manage con-
centration (the ability to sustain focused
attention for long periods of time). Failure to
manage these and to fall into “distraction” of
one type or another results in unforced errors.
One of the main “distractions” is “over-think-
ing.” During the learning process, it is obvi-
ously necessary to consciously analyse new
techniques, new strokes and so on, but the
same kind of cognitive attention in a real
match situation can be fatal to one’s chances
of winning. The correct form of focus in the
tennis game is non-conscious.
I call these problems ones of “self-inter-
ruption” in that the player interferes with
their own performance by allowing their
attention to focus on something which
ought to remain “invisible.” One young
female player was showing an extremely
erratic service; sometimes hitting a series of
aces in her game, sometimes a series of dou-
ble-faults. I thought I noticed something too
“focused” in her way of making the habitual
“test-bouncing” of the ball on the court
before launching it in the air for the service.
When I inquired with her about what she
was so focused on, she admitted, embar-
rassedly, that her five “test-bounces” were
done in such a way that the first four bounces
Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
radical constructivism
of the ball marked the four corners of a per-
fect square. As if this form of “square design-
tion of some passages of the resulting conver-
sations which I recorded on videotape at his
ing” on the floor of the clay court was not bad home.
enough, she explained that the fifth bounce
had to land dead centre in this square. She Vincent Kenny: In a certain sense, what I am
felt that if she managed to bounce the fifth dealing with here is a “mind-body” conflict
ball perfectly centred – a “bull’s eye” – then on the part of the tennis player. His “mind”
she would hit a great service. If not, then she interferes with the otherwise smooth perfor-
would probably make a poor service, or even mance of his “body.” This is what I call “self-
a double-fault. interruption.” What is a sensible view of the
Now it is clear that all of this incredible mind-body issue from the radical construc-
tension and “superstitious behaviour” is no tivism point of view?
way to be planning your service game, but Ernst von Glasersfeld: No less! (laughs) Well, I
nonetheless many players have idiosyncratic have no proper model for that. Because the
“tics” and ritualistic mind in a way is con-
habits embedded in their How much patience does it sciousness, and I accept
game. This is OK until it consciousness as an
reaches the level of self-
take to be a constructivist? experiential fact, but I’ve
interruption that this no idea how it works. I
young player showed. My friend and col- don’t think anyone has. There have been sev-
league Corrado Barazzutti who is a previous eral books written about this in the past 5 or 6
world-class tennis player (who was in the top years – I looked at some of them – they are all
seven at the time when ahead of him were … it’s a playing with metaphors, there is no
Borg, Connors, McEnroe, Vilas, Gerulaitis, handle on it. I’ve always said that to me it is
Edberg, Lendl and other all-time greats) had part of the mystical, and there is nothing I can
his own paralysing experience in a tourna- say about that. Except that I know certain
ment in the 1980s when he was unable to stop ways in which it works – that’s the wrong way
the preliminary ball-bouncing. It was not that of putting it – rather I know certain effects it
he bounced the ball 5, 7 or even 15 times – he can produce, but how it does that I don’t
was simply caught in the preliminary winding know.
up action for the service which had become a So when you ask about mind-body rela-
loop in itself, and he was not able to bring the tion in terms of psychosomatic influences,
preliminary ball-bouncing to a stop. In the well I don’t know how they work. One has to
end he had to serve under-arm as children accept them experientially, as you say with the
have to do at the beginning. tennis players. But if you play golf it is much
So I brought these types of problems to worse, because in golf you have 5 minutes
Ernst, ever insisting that RC shows itself to be between each shot, where you can imagine
useful and not just a model of knowing. With what you want to do, and what you could do
great patience Ernst always agrees to humour that would be bad, so that by the time that you
me in these conversations (many of which will go to hit that ball, if you let that go on, you see
in the end form a part of the book that he and that its not going to work. It is like meditation,
I have been writing over the past three years or you have to let your mind go altogether if you
more) and what follows below is a transcrip- want to play golf.
81
 anecdotal
OPINION
In tennis as well!
EVG: Yes, but in tennis at least it is a constant
thing, you are active all the time. In golf you
are not because the walking in between the
shots doesn’t keep you busy. So I don’t know
what to tell you…
You have written about a radical construc-
tivist frame of mind, where you talk of the
need to rebuild a number of concepts from a
radical constructivism point of view – con-
cepts like “knowledge,” “truth,” “communi-
cation,” “understanding” and so on. That
from a radical constructivism point of view
these have to be redefined. Would you say
something about this task, about this frame
of mind?
EVG: I think that one starting point is the real-
isation that whatever reality is like, we cannot
find out. We can make… – not even hypothet-
ical models because hypothetical models are
models that you think you will be able to verify
at some point –… with reality you cannot do
that, they are fictions. Kant I think had a very
good expression he called “heuristic fictions,”
and that is what reality is. He said that of the
“thing in itself ” which most readers of Kant
don’t take in, that it is a fiction. They think that in prison. So, it is subjective too in that sense until you lie quite flat and nothing moves. If
Kant has anchored himself in reality with the
“thing-as-such” or the “thing-in-itself.” But
this is nonsense, he didn’t. He considered it a
useful heuristic fiction.
So if you start with the notion that you
cannot find out what reality is
like, you automatically have to Who decides what is
modify your concept of truth,
because traditionally truth is
viable? You decide
an exact replica of reality.
What is correct is if it is “like reality.” You can’t criteria. I can decide. It is how I see most
have that anymore. So what is truth? Truth
becomes what I call viability – it is what you
have found to be working, to be successful.
Now how do you establish what is success-
ful? That’s rather complicated because there
are several dimensions on which it can be
successful. It can be successful in that it just
works this time – but you don’t know if it will
work tomorrow again or not. So viability – in
the sense that you apply it to action patterns
or thought patterns – is built up in time. As
they are successful on more than one occa-
sion they become more reliable.
You see that’s the one thing that Popper,
who was a great man, never realised that. He
had such a thing about inductive inference –
82
radical constructivism
that it didn’t give truth – he didn’t see that attention on the ankle. It is part of relaxation.
whatever we do is based on inductive infer- When I was quite young and skiing much
ence. Meaning that we look back and we ask more than I do now, I met a chap who was
ourselves “what has worked,” and in this one of the coaches. There was an avalanche
sense you establish a number of action and accident somewhere fairly close to us. Four
thought patterns that you consider reliable, people were dug out 36 hours later. All alive,
but there again you mustn’t think that they but two of them had very bad frostbite and
are absolutely reliable. The moment may lost toes and whatnot. But the other two
come when they are no didn’t. And the coach
longer reliable. So that It’s very easy I think to pick up said that the two who
does away with truth. the first ideas of constructivism, didn’t have the frost-
bite damage were the
Talking about viabil-
but then to apply them to your two who had prac-
ity… daily thinking that takes a long tised autogenic relax-
EVG: It is very com- time. But they say it takes seven ation – that kept their
plex because viability years to play golf, it takes longer circulation going
also has a subjective while being buried
component. Who to be a constructivist under the snow. That
decides what is viable? impressed all of us
You decide. And I think that becomes very enormously because avalanches were some-
clear if you take the example of people in thing that were very close to us always. So we
prison – some people have been in prison for learned a little bit of that.
years, and manage perfectly well to live. They
may have regretted all sorts of things but they … of the autogenic training?
did not lose their sanity, they didn’t become EVG: Yes. It is very primitive really, there’s
fundamentally damaged by it. Whereas oth- nothing mysterious to it. You just learn to
ers can’t manage to find a viable way of living relax bit by bit, your fingers and toes etc,
that it is you who decides what is viable. you do that seriously for 3 or 4 weeks, you
can manage to go asleep whenever you want
There must be a lot of different bases for to, which is an enormous advantage. I don’t
deciding what is viable. One obvious one is know that I would survive an avalanche, but
“bodily sensations.” If I feel good then that’s it serves your purpose when you go to the
good enough. I probably dentist for instance. You just relax com-
don’t have to think too pletely and you take your mind off your
much about it. If I feel bad teeth. It doesn’t kill the pain but it makes it
then I have a choice…. I can much more bearable. I think that’s an impor-
adapt to it, or I can lower my tant thing – it should be given to people
when they are children. This is something
people living, by accepting and adapting to which some of the oriental philosophy
things that they really shouldn’t accept. implies, the Buddhist notion of cutting out
EVG: They have reduced their expectations the self, and all that. That’s a form of freeing
and everything. your attention.
So reducing expectations is one way of It is what I try to do with the tennis players
deciding if something is viable – you “settle – to redirect their attention away from neg-
for less.” There must be several different ative thoughts, from being impatient with
criteria you could specify that people use themselves etc… How much patience does
habitually for deciding viability? it take to be a constructivist?
EVG: Well I’m sure there are many ways of EVG: Well it takes a long time to be consis-
doing it. For me perhaps the most important tent. It’s very easy I think to pick up the first
was learning to focus my attention where I ideas of constructivism, but then to apply
want it to be. That you don’t allow your atten- them to your daily thinking that takes a long
tion to focus on things that you don’t want. If time. But they say it takes seven years to play
you have a twisted ankle, you stop focusing golf, it takes longer to be a constructivist.
Constructivist Foundations
 anecdotal
OPINION
How much longer?
EVG: I think that’s individual. I still find
myself occasionally saying things – (laughs) I
laugh at the moment I say them (“how could
you say that?” I ask myself) – well that’s after
40 years! I remember Ceccato who had been
at it for a long time in his own way – he didn’t
call it constructivism – but taking the notion
that you can’t talk about “reality,” he some-
times after a lecture came and said “how
could I have said that” (having talked of “real-
ity”). Because you see the habits of speech,
the habits of expression that you have grown
into before you ever thought of epistemology
or anything like that, they are very strong. You
deal with tennis players, if you tell a player
who is fairly good but not good enough to
change the grip on his racket, how long does
it take for him to really get into that, to do it
automatically?
A long time.
EVG: With tennis I would say at least several
weeks.
Oh yeah. This is a good example because in
the last few years I have seen a number of
players who have had to try to change their
service because their way of serving was not
effective, with too low a percentage of first
service balls effectively in play. What he has
to do is to unlearn all those habits of serv-
ing…
EVG: (interrupts) excuse me, but what he has
to do is to undo connections that are auto-
matic, they are not conscious … and that’s the
difficulty.
ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER
Vincent Kenny was born in Ireland and
studied for degrees in philosophy and psy-
chology at Trinity College Dublin in the
1960s. Since the 1970s he has worked
applying constructivist ideas in the very dif-
ferent fields of psychotherapy, consulting to
organisations, and to tennis psychology –
working with professionals in the ATP and
WTA tours. His main current position is as
director of the “Accademia Costruttivista di
Terapia Sistemica” in Rome, which is a new
center for training in radical constructivist
psychotherapy approaches.
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
radical constructivism
Yes, and that’s a big suffering – to undo non- Then there is the other problem that one
conscious habits. And the immediate conse- can’t do change on your own – you need
quence is that his game gets much worse. So judicious feedback from others. For example,
he plays much worse because he now has no the tennis player needs to see himself on
service game at all. In order to change his video…
service, the player has to re-learn the new EVG: … and when he sees himself he is horri-
service in the real game context – in the fied! When I saw the first movie of myself ski-
actual tournament situation. This means ing I was absolutely horrified. You do a lot of
that the player has to turn up in the various things that you aren’t aware of.
countries following the ATP programme to
sign up for the tournament knowing that he But in more general terms of human learning
cannot win it. He also has to see himself and communications, what other ingredients
drop in the world rankings – losing his ATP apart from feedback and disintegration of
points and so on. A lot of players get too ner- performance habits are needed to make an
vous, watching their rankings slip, watching effective constructivist communication net-
the sponsors get nervous about renewing work? One with reflexive criticism etc. What
contracts etc. Many players never manage to other constructivist ingredients would we
stick it out long enough to develop the new need to make it work, … to make a research
service game. They freeze when they see they project work constructively? …
are getting worse, that their game is disinte- EVG: In order to make it work, and I speak
grating, and there is little sign of the light at from a certain amount of experience because
the end of the tunnel. I’ve run a research project you know, you need
So here we have a very general question an enormous amount of patience, and the
about human learning. How do you change knowledge that it is very difficult to change
your human living in your own ways of see-
some way – and be You have something that works ing. If you don’t, you
able to sustain the get irritable and that
disintegration of per-
for you very reliably, and of doesn’t help. In one
formance that must course you think that that is the research project we had
necessarily be lived. way things really are a computer program-
All learning has this mer who was a genius,
problem. but to get on with him I had to learn that you
EVG: Well … all learning except for the very know, and it wasn’t easy at all. He was brilliant
young. The very young have very little habit- and accepted the constructivist notion abso-
ual acting. So it is easy. But that’s why children lutely, but when we came to something that I
can be taught a sport much more easily than thought was worth doing but he didn’t, then it
adults. was very difficult to phrase that in some way
My mother grew up with telemark and so that was compatible. But in the end I succeeded
did I. Then at the end of the 1920’s she starting with a lot of patience, of rewording, different
seeing the other style and she wanted to do examples, …. and above all never thinking
that because it was much faster, much better. that he was stupid! Because he wasn’t you see.
She literally broke down and cried because You had to accept that this was an intelligent
she couldn’t do it. It took her years longer than person’s reaction, and cope with it. Which is
me, but I could adapt to the new style without difficult.
too much difficulty. But with her, it was much
harder – every movement on skis has got to be Because the first thing that people react with
automatic you know. She fell you know, fall- is that the other is “stupid.” It is clear that get-
ing for a good skier is just the end you know, ting irritated with children is the wrong thing
you feel like giving up. It is very real tangible to do. We often hear exasperated parents say-
suffering. ing “Are you stupid or something..?” It’s the
most common reaction to someone who
How old was she when she tried to make that doesn’t share your point of view – why
change? should this be the case?
EVG: She must have been in her late 30s. And EVG: Because you have something that works
she was very good you see. for you very reliably, and of course you think
83
 anecdotal
OPINION
that that is the way things really are. We
should remember what Montessori said
about children so many years ago: “Help them
to do what they want to do, but don’t force
them to do what you do.” She said that over
100 years ago.
Unfortunately one often goes back to a
non reflexive way of acting. This is a very dif-
ficult problem. Ultimately, what it boils down
to is that it is all very well to be aware that you
are operating within constraints and the
models that you make are only the ones that
84
fit into the constraints. But if the constraints
get very tight it is very difficult to maintain
that notion – the notion that it is you who
constructs your world.
A person does not consciously construct
the world in which his wife gets a terrible dis-
ease. So is that his construction? Of course
not. But it is his construction in the sense that
he is operating within extremely tight con-
straints. It is like being in prison if you like.
Your constraints have suddenly shrunk. And
you begin to blame the constraints.
radical constructivism
Is that reasonable?
EVG: It’s the only thing you can blame. You
don’t know why, you don’t know where they
come from; you don’t know what’s going on.
In your experience there is extremely little to
work with. And that’s very hard. I find myself
getting irritated sometimes … so how can I
blame other people?
Received: 18 October 2006
Accepted: 5 February 2007
Constructivist Foundations
 educational radical constructivism
OPINION

To Find a Daisy in December

Impressions of Ernst von Glasersfeld
and an Interview with Him about Constructivism and Education
Reinhard Voß A University of Koblenz (Germany) <voss@uni-koblenz.de>

In the eyes of many, Ernst von Glasersfeld is
a man and scientist quite different from
others. This is particularly important in our
postmodern times,
which celebrate outer
appearance and public The systemic-constructivist
efficiency – pretence approach describes an attitude
over being. characterized by the
In the first place, it
was the man Ernst von
recognition of autonomy,
Glasersfeld who respect, appreciation, empathic from
impressed me. Later, I curiosity, responsibility and
recognized that it was a the quest for viable
special Haltung (atti-
tude) that had shaped developments and solutions
and pervaded his whole
person, thinking and acting, his scientific
work, his appearance in public and private
contexts. It was that whole attitude – which is
obviously more than the sum of its parts – that
appealed to me as a model for my own theo-
retical reflections and ways of acting in the
field of systemic-constructivist education.
“The systemic-constructivist approach
describes a Haltung (attitude) characterized
by the recognition of autonomy, respect,
appreciation, empathic curiosity, responsibil-
ity and the quest for viable developments and
solutions.” (Voß 2005, p. 53)
First encounter in
Sulitjelma (1988)
Sulitjelma is an old mining town in the moun-
tains of Norway above the arctic circle. When
in June 1988 some 170 clinicians and scientists
from several countries met there, this sleepy
village awoke to new life for a couple of days.
Indeed, it was like joining a “Greek kitchen,” as positions in a precise way. He did not pretend
the invitation from the Norwegian family
therapists had announced: a cosy place of inti-
mate, personal and in-depth conversation.
The aim of the conference was to bring
together experts in epistemology and clinical
therapy to discuss the question of how to relate
second-order cybernetics to daily therapeutic
practice. Among the
participants of this
meeting were Heinz
von Foerster, Ernst von
Glasersfeld, Humberto
Maturana, Lynn Hoff-
man, the clinical teams
Galveston
(Anderson, Goolish-
ian), Milano (Boscolo,
Cecchin) and Tromsö
(Andersen, Flam), and
others.
The first joint dinner was meant to bring
people together in a pleasant and relaxed
atmosphere to become acquainted with one
another. Places at the table were allocated by
drawing lots. Next to me was an older man, tall
and athletic, his hair turning gray. He almost
seemed aristocratic to me; a very nice and
friendly man, polite, reserved, nearly shy,
modest and careful. I conversed with a man
who turned to me with great empathy and
interest. Unlike the usual behavior of the
majority of scientists, his did not show any
attempt of self-promotion. We talked about
the place of the meeting, which evoked many
memories of my childhood in a German min-
ing town.
The next morning in the plenary, Ernst von
Glasersfeld gave me the impression of a calm-
ing influence between the “wizard and enter-
tainer” Heinz von Foerster and the rather
intellectually reserved appearance of Hum-
berto Maturana. In an upright posture (both
physically and mentally) he presented his
to proclaim certain knowledge, but his whole
presentation was marked by his characteristic
modesty, with which he created a unique
atmosphere.
First Heidelberg
conference on systemic-
constructivist school
education (1996)
On the occasion of my first nationwide con-
ference on systemic-constructivist school
education, organized in cooperation with
the International Society of Systemic Ther-
apy, I found myself together with Ernst von
Glasersfeld in a small pub in the historic part
of Heidelberg. He recounted stories from his
life which gave me the impression that con-
structivism had been important to him since
his early childhood days.
“I grew up in-between three languages,
without a mother tongue so to speak.
Under such conditions you quickly recog-
nize how different the worlds are that
you’re speaking of … And gradually I real-
ized that one has to construct a different
Wirklichkeit (reality) in each language.”
(Glasersfeld in: Foerster & Glasersfeld
1999, pp. 192, 195).
Born in Munich to Austrian parents,
Ernst von Glasersfeld grew up in Switzerland
and Austria. After only three semesters at
universities in Zurich and Vienna, he emi-
grated to Australia, where he worked as a ski-
instructor. Later, he was a farmer in Ireland
for several years. In 1946, he moved to Italy,
where he worked as a journalist and as a
cooperator at the Ceccato’s Scuola Operativa
Italiana. He was already in his 50s when he
entered the Scientific Community without a
formal qualification such as a PhD. From a
German perspective, this seems almost
incredible. From 1970 onwards, he taught
cognitive psychology at the University of
Georgia, Athens (em. 1987). Later he became
an Associate Member of the Scientific Rea-
soning Research Institute at the University of
Massachussets, Amherst.

Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3 85

http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
 educational
OPINION
“Well, of course, if you have the feeling that
you can do it, that’s fine and you won’t stop
learning.” (Glasersfeld in: Foester & Gla-
sersfeld 1999, p. 41)
Lecture at the
University of Koblenz
(2001)
On the occasion of a brief visit to Ernst von
Glasersfeld’s house in Amherst, I invited him
to give a lecture at the University of Koblenz.
He did so in December 2001. Waiting for the
start of his lecture, he took a walk along the
Rhine. On his return, I witnessed an enthu-
siastic Ernst, beaming all over his face. He
presented a tiny flower that he had found,
exclaiming: “A daisy in December!”
After his impressive lecture, we sat
together in a little wine-cellar by the Moselle
(i.e., the river that meets the Rhine in
Koblenz). In a relaxed atmosphere, drinking
wine and eating dainties, I discovered yet
another side of the man who only minutes
ago had cast a spell over his audience with his
scientific talk. Bright and appreciative, boy-
ish and full of humor, he enjoyed the simple,
country-style food. The variety of German
bread especially filled him with enthusiasm,
evoking memories of his Austrian years,
which contributed to a lively conversation.
Some time later, a fire accident destroyed
Ernst von Glasersfeld’s house in Amherst,
which he had built with his own hands. His
entire private and scientific property fell vic-
tim to the flames … and, far in his 80s, he
reconstructed
the building
himself.
© Reinhard Voß
86
“The trouble is that the word ‘viable’ says
too much. The only thing that matters is to
get by.” (Glasersfeld in: Foester & Glasers-
feld 1999, p. 129)
Ernst von Glasersfeld has succeeded in
finding a viable fit between the man and the
scientist and in embodying a Haltung (atti-
tude) that represents constructivism. He was
prepared to get involved with a “different
way of thinking” and to deal with a matter
that is often “demanding and uncomfort-
able” for those affected. Ernst von Glasers-
feld, in an interview with me on questions of
constructivism and school:1
Dealing with an
uncomfortable matter –
An interview with Ernst
von Glasersfeld
There are so many images of, opinions about
and prejudices against radical constructiv-
ism. Could you please explain to a freshman
or to a teacher who is interested in construc-
tivism, because he or she is looking for new,
helpful perspectives to put into practice,
what radical constructivism means for you?
EVG: I believe that this is not difficult. First I
would say that constructivism cannot be con-
sidered as a form of metaphysics. Construc-
tivism is not a reflection of the world, but sim-
ply a way of thinking. I think that
constructivism offers a possibility to put our
system of experi-
ences into a certain
radical constructivism
order and in my opinion this is the most
important thing. What distinguishes con-
structivism from other theories of cognition
is above all the relation between what we call
knowledge and the so-called reality, that is a
world as it may be before we know and cap-
ture it. In the conventional theory of cogni-
tion, this relation has always been conceived
as a copy or representation of something or
whatever you would like to call it. Construc-
tivism abandons these ideas completely and
believes that what we construct as an imagi-
nation of the world has to fit into reality. This
fitting is a very simple term, more simple than
the kind of fitting we are talking about when
we are buying a pair of shoes. First, the shoes
have to be big enough for our feet to fit into,
but not so big that we get blisters when we
walk. The kind of fitting in the theory of cog-
nition is only the first part: there is no ‘too big.’
In other words, everything works that passes
the conditions of the real world. That is a rad-
ical difference. Indeed, the expression ‘radi-
cal’ came from this realization. This, of
course, has considerable consequences on
education.
There are many forms of constructivism
such as social constructivism, radical con-
structivism and methodical constructivism.
This often confuses teachers and students
who want to approach constructivism. Do
you believe that these different ways of
approach have something in common
beyond epistemological and philosophical
differences?
EVG: Yes, sure, otherwise people could hardly
speak of constructivism. One thing they have
in common is, for sure, the realization that
what we call knowledge has to be built up by
children, pupils, students and all learners. It
cannot be adopted as a whole. They have to
build it up step by step. From my point of
view, this is a trivial form of constructivism.
As a second condition I would add, and most
constructivists agree with this to a certain
extent, that we no longer see knowledge as a
representation of one reality, but as a possible
way of behavior within a world that we cannot
describe properly. These are the two things on
which, I believe, all constructivists agree more
or less.
Would you content yourself with these basic
consensual tenets or would you rather sug-
Constructivist Foundations
 educational radical constructivism
OPINION

gest that it is equally important to recognize tion. Here, we do not work against instincts, before they found the solution themselves,
the differences between specific constructiv- but very often against the fact that no terms this objection, to my mind, is exaggerated. It
ist approaches? exist at all. But when you can lead pupils into is not true. Once a pupil has found out that he
EVG: Yes, sure, because there will be confu- a situation in which it is possible or even prob- or she can find answers, it often goes quickly.
sions if one does not pay attention to the dif- able that they will develop certain chains of And when pupils have learned how to find
ferences. The people in America who call thought, maybe they will develop the right answers themselves, it is possible to give them
themselves “social constructionists” assume thoughts. And if they have developed the right answers from time to time by telling them:
that language and society exist a priori. To my thoughts, first the pupils will realize that they “Try it yourselves.” They will transfer it right
mind, this is an unprov- did it themselves, that it away into their own way of thinking and
able assumption. I cannot was their own produc- behaving and try it out. In this case it will be
agree with it, because “The trouble is that the tion, and second, that it something self-made and nothing they had to
from my point of view at word ‘viable’ says too worked. With this, one take over from someone.
first every child has to much. The only thing that can build up motivation
build up language by to face new problems I very well understand what you are saying
themselves from pieces of
matters is to get by” without being told how it because I have had the same experience. Do
their own experience. has to be done. you have an explanation for why teachers so
This experience cannot be given to a child. often say: “Children cannot do this.” Why is
They have to build up their own understand- Right now I have to smile a bit, because I this point of view so popular even among
ing of society, before they can recognize social noticed that you said “right.” In fact, you do committed educators?
phenomena as what they are. These are con- not use this term often. You never say: The EVG: There are certainly a number of reasons,
siderable differences. “right” movement, the “right” behavior. But but one of the main reasons is the fact that
you use “pushing,” and maybe we should teachers traditionally consider themselves as
You were a ski-instructor in Australia. Later keep that in mind for everyday practices in the keepers of knowledge and still have the
you worked as a university professor for education. idea that they pass it on piece by piece. And
many years. You have been a teacher in fact. EVG: Yes, “right” is always relative. It is how very often teachers still have the illusion that
With your constructivist way of thinking, the teacher wants to appear. concepts can be transmitted through lan-
did you behave differently from other teach- guage. In my opinion, this all an illusion. By
ers who had not been engaged in construc- You have clearly influenced a part of Ameri- means of language one can only, as Humberto
tivism? can education, first of all in mathematics and Maturana says, orientate, but one can never
EVG: Those were two different things. As a natural sciences. How would you, from a transmit. One can never send ideas from one
ski-instructor, I definitely did not think about temporal distance of 15 years, if I am right, person to another like in a postal package.
constructivism. But my experience as a ski- describe the importance
instructor became very important to me later and the usefulness of radical “Very often teachers On our study trip across the
on when I built up constructivism. When you constructivism for schools United States, we met many
teach people skiing, the main difficulty is that and teaching? Could you
still have the illusion teachers who did not refer to
almost all the movements a skier has to make make the differences with that concepts can be radical constructivism but to
are directed against their instinctive behavior. the traditional way of teach- transmitted through Dewey, Piaget, Vygotzky or
When you go downhill, for example, and it ing a bit more explicit? If language” even only to secondary liter-
gets steeper and steeper, your instinct tells you the two of us were visiting a ature on constructivism.
to lean backward. But then your skies run school class now, how would you be able to How do you assess the chances and dangers
away from you. You have to do the exact oppo- tell whether the style of teaching was more of a pragmatic, if that is what you want to
site: when it gets steeper, do something like a constructivist or traditional? call it, or trivialized constructivism?
header. That is very difficult because the EVG: I think you can see that very easily. EVG: Differently, I would say. Dewey never
whole automatic system of the body works When you find the teachers explaining how called himself a “constructivist.” But he wrote
against it. How can you finally get a beginner something has to be, as a matter of fact, when a lot and had many good ideas that are abso-
to try to behave like that? In this case, we as you find them giving the answers to the pupils lutely compatible with constructivism. The
ski-instructors learn quickly to let the begin- themselves, they are no constructivists for whole pragmatism – I have said that before in
ner go through something like a wave in the sure. Because one of the main characteristics my writings – is very close to constructivism.
ground which is pushing him forward. This of the constructivist way is to have the pupils The difference, the main difference which I
way he leans to the front and cannot move find the answers themselves. The answers see, is that the pragmatists have always pro-
backwards. If that happens once or twice, the should not be given to them. All you can give claimed that instead of taking over truth, they
beginner realizes that it works and so he can is an orientation to think in the right direc- would take over the functioning of ideas. But
bring his instinctive reactions under control. tion. That is a radical difference. When the at the same time they have spent little time on
I think this is very important, although it opponents of constructivism say that this finding out how this practice is built up. But
works a bit differently, in the field of educa- sounds all nice but that it would take years this is exactly what constructivism wants. And

2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3 87

 educational radical constructivism
OPINION

this links constructivism to Piaget, who actu- while if the problem is complicated. But when tude) which works. It is a question of values
ally was the main constructivist in the past they get closer to a solution, they will realize and anthropology, of responsibility and tol-
century. He brought constructivism back to that they have to do everything themselves and erance. Can you agree with this?
the agenda again. In his cognitive psychology, that it does not help at all to have the solution EVG: This is a very delicate question. As for
he tried to explain the building-up of knowl- given to them. This solution they could repeat, tolerance, I’d say “yes!” Being a constructivist,
edge schematically. And in my opinion, this is learn by heart and so on, but that would not you must be tolerant for the very reason that
the main task of constructivism. mean that they had understood anything. To it is a main principal of constructivist think-
understand it, they have to construct it them- ing to consider no model, no matter how well
On this campus (University of Koblenz) for selves. I believe their own experience with this it works, as the only model. One has to apply
example, many students are interested in process is the best method that straight away to con-
Maria Montessori, and I believe there is a to convince them to orga- “The conventional theory, structivism, and I’d say
certain affinity. I would not go as far as call- nize their own teaching too, could not do anything constructivism certainly
ing her a constructivist, but a lot of what she this way. is not the only way to be
says could be brought in relation to con-
against Hitler” happy. There are others.
structivism. What do you think? But, as a consequence, Where ethics, in the sense
EVG: I would say that every person who has this means we also need a different practice of values and general ideas about values, is
dealt with Montessori and comes to construc- of teacher training and of university educa- concerned, I always say: “Constructivism is a
tivism must realize that constructivism is the tion. It should give students the opportunity theory of rational thinking.” In my opinion
fundament. Maria Montessori developed the to learn not only from theories, but also ethics is a non-rational matter. Ethics, as well
practice brilliantly and almost everything she from practices and from meta-reflections on as aesthetics, lie outside the rational and can-
said can be directly taken over to the construc- theories and practices. not be realized rationally. This is my point of
tivist way of thinking. But she was not inter- EVG: Yes, sure, but this is impossible by means view, with which you can be satisfied or not,
ested in theory. She did not formulate a basic of lectures alone. but this is how I see it.
theory. That is no disadvantage; she just did
not need it. My last question: at a dinner in Heidelberg Is there maybe a correlation with your per-
we talked about the influence and the mean- sonality, with your modesty, that you live
I personally experienced constructivist posi- ing of constructivism in the future. You everything in your own person and do not
tions as effective, helpful and useful, at the sounded a bit pessimistic then. Has your pay too much attention to it as a subject?
beginning in the field of therapy and later in opinion changed over the past few years? EVG: I agree with Heinz von Foerster, who
education and teaching. The 1996 “school EVG: I was pessimistic insofar as I did not made the wonderful remark: “Ethics tell me
conference” in Heidelberg was an attempt to believe that constructivism would turn out to how to behave myself, morals let me preach
create a platform for systemic-constructivist be a common attitude. In this point nothing how others should behave.” Therefore I plead
thinking in school education. What can we has changed, I think. I believe this will take a for ethics and not for morals. Tolerance – that
do to give teachers an understanding of con- long time, for reasons I have talked about is an attitude which often gets attacked. People
structivism? Or, in the words of Fritz Simon, numerous times before. Starting to think con- have told me, in more than one situation, that
how can we “infect” them with constructiv- structivistically, one realizes that one has to even constructivism could not do anything
ism the same way people get infected with a change radically everything one has thought against Hitler. But I can only answer: “The
flu virus? How would you explain the useful- before. There are almost no former opinions conventional theory of cognition, too, could
ness of constructivism in educational prac- one can hold on to. And this is a hard and very not do anything against Hitler.” One cannot
tice to experienced teachers who are looking unpleasant thing to do. Most people are afraid claim that any theory of thinking, of rational
for a new orientation? to do it and therefore they rather push con- thinking, can influence ethics in any way.
EVG: This is a difficult question. I think the structivism aside. I do not know if that will be
main opportunity to convince teachers of con- a common opinion after some time. If you But with regard to practices and a practical
structivism is to get them remember what happened understanding of theories, I would like to
involved in situations in “Starting to think to Vico, who was the first take a different point of view. I think it is
which they themselves constructivist, it does not important to touch these issues in a world of
have to learn something constructivistically, one look very promising. less and less tolerance? Don’t you think that
and to stimulate them to realizes that one has to this emphasis would underline the relevance
reflect on their own change radically everything Maybe one more ques- of constructivism in our time?
learning. That means to tion for me personally. I EVG: Yes, I absolutely agree with you on the
give them a problem
one has thought before” have found the useful- point about tolerance. A number of times I
they have no idea of and ness of constructivism in have written that the concept of viability in
let them write a journal for themselves about practical experience. Therefore, I have come constructivism – the term for the constructs,
what they think, how they think and how they to the conclusion that the main thing is a the theories, the conceptions and so on which
progress with the problem. That can take a form of ethics. That it is a Haltung (an atti- are accepted as functioning – that this concept

88 Constructivist Foundations
 educational
OPINION
consists of at least two levels. The first level
refers to the observation that I recognize some-
thing as useful to my own experience. The sec-
ond level, which is a higher level, refers to the
observation that I can interpret others in the
sense that they use the same or at least analo-
gous principles. In this case these principles
would be more viable at exactly this level. To
build up a viable reality, I do need the others.
To some extent I need the acknowledgement of
others, although this acknowledgement is
always a result of my own interpretation of
other people. But my interpretation must be
possible, after all, and sometimes it is not. This
is not a question of arbitrariness. In this sense
I agree with the point of tolerance. But toler-
ance is only a beginning of ethical principles.
If this is the beginning, what comes next?
EVG: There would be questions which Heinz
von Foerster calls the undecidable questions.
I am always responsible for deciding on them
myself.
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
Therefore responsibility is important in any
case.
EVG: Yes. When you construct your own
Wirklichkeit (reality), the one in which you
live, you are responsible. That is unavoidable,
and it is one reason why constructivism seems
to be an uncomfortable matter for many peo-
ple. If you were a biologist for example, you
could say that this is because of your genes and
that you cannot help it. If you were a behav-
iorist, you could say that the environment is
just what it is and that you cannot do anything
about it. As a constructivist you cannot do
this.
Thank you very much.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Reinhard Voß, teacher, family therapist, is a
professor for school education at the Uni-
versity of Koblenz in Germany.
radical constructivism
Bibliography
Foerster, H. von & Glasersfeld E. von (1999)
Wie wir uns erfunden haben. Carl Auer:
Heidelberg.
Voß, R. (ed.) (2005) Unterricht aus kon-
struktivistischer Sicht. Beltz: Weinheim &
Basel.
Note
The interview was originally published in
German under the title “Sich auf eine
ungemütliche Sache einlassen” in Voß (2005).
The paper was translated by B. Grusenick
(University of Leipzip), S. Neubert (Univer-
sity of Cologne), and C. Punstein (University
of Koblenz)
Received: 22 August 2006
Accepted: 5 February 2007
89
 educational radical constructivism
CONCEPTS

On Ernst von Glasersfeld’s

Contribution to Education:
One Interpretation, One Example
Marie Larochelle A Université Laval (Canada) <marie.larochelle@fse.ulaval.ca>
Jacques Désautels A Université Laval (Canada) <jacques.desautels@fse.ulaval.ca>

when only God is looking! Thus, from this

Purpose: According to the constructivist perspective tirelessly promoted by Ernst von perspective, knowledge is said to be opera-
Glasersfeld for more than 40 years now, the world we see is of a piece with our way of tive, as it allows us to operate, act and antici-
understanding and locating ourselves within it; ultimately, whenever we claim to describe pate, just as it can, obviously, lead us into
the world-in-itself, we in fact are describing the product of the mapping process that has dead ends, as is shown in one of the cases nar-
enabled us to make our way in this world and to actualize our projects within it. Obviously, rated by detective Dupin.
this kind of perspective has consequences for the way both educational action and research In “The Purloined Letter,” published circa
on this theme are conceived of and accomplished.That, at least, is what we shall attempt 1845, Dupin comments on the failure of the
to show in this article. Implications: In keeping with the claim that knowledges are con- Paris Prefect of Police to locate a letter of par-
stituted not in reference to reality “itself” but to practices and activities, constructivism amount importance, tying this inability to
advocates examining cognition in action – that is, in terms of how the latter is enacted in the police chief ’s habits of comprehending
the field. Accordingly, constructivism also seeks to prompt teachers to: (1) scrutinize the the world and assessing the capacities of oth-
processes and distinctions by which students chart out the world; (2) and to personally ers – in this instance, the thief, Minister D,
devise, on the basis of this experience, a model – or models, rather – of their students’ who also happened to be a poet. As Dupin
future relationship to the universes of knowledge intended for learning. Likewise, con- informs us, in the Prefect’s view a poet is by
structivism also aims to prompt researchers to perform some very careful detective work definition a fool and a scatterbrain; therefore,
into the ways in which this charting process is played out and thus to opt for a compre- the kind of person who would think to hide
hensive rather than an experimentalist approach. Conclusions: To adopt the constructiv- the letter nowhere else than in some unlikely
ist perspective also means to “de-siloize” knowledge production and to recognize that this spot or other. On the basis of this assumption,
production occurs in all spheres of society. From this point of view, constructivism can the Prefect and his men painstakingly
thus be viewed as a way of challenging the claims of a certain scientific establishment to searched the thief ’s apartment, ripping up the
alone possess the requisite standing for interpreting the world. inlaid pieces of the parquet floor, scrutinizing
Key words: Learning, teaching, research, methodology. the bindings of his entire book collection
beneath a microscope, peering inside the hol-
lows of the chair legs and sinking long needles

In three short stories said to have inaugu-

rated the genre of detective fiction,
Edgar Allan Poe brought to life a character,
Auguste C. Dupin, whose comments in many
ways bring to mind the comments and
thoughts of that other well-known character
of our day and age we know as Ernst von Gla-
sersfeld.1 Auguste C. Dupin and Ernst von
Glasersfeld are alike in holding the view that
we are always arriving too late on the scene to
be able to behold a pure, as-yet un-inter-
preted world. Rather, the world that we are
seeing and experiencing is one that has been
configured according to both the notions that
we entertain about it and the distinctions with
which we have laden it; further, such notions
and distinctions constitute practical means of
our own invention, devised to co-ordinate
and manage our experience of the world (Gla-
sersfeld 1993). Ultimately, whenever we claim
to describe the world-in-itself (or the “onto-
logically preexisting world,” to resort to philo-
sophical parlance), we in fact are describing
the product of the mapping process that has
enabled us to make our way in this world and
to actualize our projects within it (inclusive
even of the “dud” roadmaps – that is, the cog-
nitive itineraries that have proved non-viable
or indeed fatal to our assumptions and
views). In short, we are describing what can be
done in the world and not, to paraphrase
Geertz (1988), seeing the world as it really is
into the chair cushions – all to no avail. Fur-
ther, throughout their searches, they
remained completely oblivious to the letter
that had been placed prominently on display
atop a fireplace mantle!
All of which goes to show – and on this
point Dupin the detective and Glasersfeld the
epistemologist again think alike – the impor-
tance of developing a reflexive understanding
of the world; in other words an understanding
that is conscious of its assumptions and that,
as a result, is conscious of being one manner
of understanding or one “take” among other
possible manners of understanding or “takes.”
By the same token, this does not mean that all
takes or intellectual constructions are equal or

90 Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3

http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
 educational
CONCEPTS
interchangeable. Indeed, the Prefect’s failed
efforts at finding the letter offers a telling illus-
tration of how this is not so. On the other
hand, if he and his men had previously devel-
oped the habit of thinking reflexively, they
might have been able to vary their investiga-
tive approaches somewhat. In addition, they
might well have been able to work up not one
but several composite drawings of the thief
and, as a result, would have multiplied their
potentialities for action, as Glasersfeld would
say.
Now, such a perspective, which holds that
our ways of doing and making things bear a
strong relationship to our ways of under-
standing the world, also comes freighted with
some very strong demands in relation to
teaching and to research in education. That,
at least, is what we shall attempt to demon-
strate in this text, which, inevitably, repre-
sents one interpretation of radical construc-
tivism and, owing to this fact, one example of
what can be accomplished with this theory.
Teaching in a
constructivist mode
If one is to conceive of teaching from a radical
constructivist perspective, one must first be
able to demonstrate reflexivity toward one’s
own beliefs and convictions, one’s own words
and deeds. Just as importantly, one must
demonstrate the same capacity in respect of
what one ascribes to others, including stu-
dents. Thus one must constantly remind one-
self that one’s descriptions are situated and
that, whenever the topic of the conversation
becomes, for example, students’ cognition,
the descriptions, explanations and assess-
ments then being aired are those of an
observer bringing to this exercise his or her
own classifications, connections and projects.
It is not the point of view held by students
concerning their own cognitive activity, as
Glasersfeld (2000) has emphasized:
“Piaget sometimes mentioned the danger
of confusing an observer’s view of an
organism in its observed environment and
observer’s inferences about the view the
organism generates within the domain of
its own experience. In his own writings,
Piaget did not always make this distinction
clear, and I think that we ourselves quite
often do not pay enough attention to it.
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
“Especially in discussing education, we
tend to focus on the child or the student as
we see them, and we may not stress often
enough that what we are talking about is
but our construction of the child, and that
this construction is made on the basis of
our own experience and coloured by our
goals and expectations.” (p. 8)
From this point of view, and though radi-
cal constructivism does not constitute a the-
ory of teaching, as Glasersfeld has repeated
over and over again, this mode of thinking
nevertheless sets out a certain number of con-
straints. On the one hand, there is the require-
ment of coming to grips with the fact that as a
teacher, one acts according to one’s under-
standing of students’ cognition. And, on the
other hand, there is also the requirement of
putting this understanding to the test. Indeed,
if the goal is to aid students in complexifying
their conceptual networks and indeed gener-
ate new ones, then the viability of this under-
standing has to be borne out in a two-way
exchange with students such that there is the
possibility, where necessary, of transforming
one’s constructions and integrating one’s stu-
dents’ viewpoints into it (or at least what one
makes of their viewpoints!). In other words, it
is critical to delve into the processes and dis-
tinctions whereby students configure the
world. It is equally critical to develop, on an
ongoing basis, a model (or, rather, models if
one is to avoid succumbing to the same pitfall
as the Prefect) of students’ manners of con-
ceiving not only the knowledges to which they
are to be given an introduction but also their
“business of being a student” (métier d’élève,
as explicated by Perrenoud 1995).2 Teaching
from a constructivist perspective thus entails
committing oneself to a recursive dialogical
process, a conversation on “problematic sub-
jects,” to borrow from Bateson (1981), and
therefore in a particular form of social com-
munication, encounter or interaction.
Until now, however, as Glasersfeld (2000)
has also noted, radical constructivists have
paid scant attention to this social encounter in
terms of any sustained effort at theorization.
This apparent disinterest of theirs has given
rise to harsh criticism concerning construc-
tivism’s value and relevance for shedding new
light on social interactions3 or providing
insight into encounters of the kind occurring
in a classroom learning situation. For indeed,
as the sociology of education has taught us,
radical constructivism
this type of situation cannot be reduced to a
mere encounter between epistemic subjects
devoid of any projects or sociocognitive his-
tory, on the one hand, and (for example) uni-
versally enjoying a harmonious relationship
with the culture of writing that is a distin-
guishing characteristic of Modern Education
(Vincent, Lahire & Thin 1994). Nor can this
situation be conceived of as though unfolding
in a space devoid of issues of power or control
over meanings, especially in view of the
important role ascribed to the continual
quantification and discipline of performance
(output) and, more generally speaking, of the
individual (Foucault 1975). Furthermore, it
cannot be approached as though the techno-
logical artifacts and devices used in this space
did not also, in a way, shape the way in which
students learn how to learn. For example, a
ruler, a compass, a protractor, a scale or a geo-
graphical map all serve – as is the case with any
technology – to define and delimit a space of
uses and, for this reason, they constitute pow-
erful mediators of cognitive activity (Callon
1989). In short, respecting social interaction,
there is an abundance of research questions,
models and methods that warrant conceptu-
alization and testing if one holds to the objec-
tive of producing a more valuable fit between
radical constructivism and the classroom. At
the same time, it is important to guard against
viewing the classroom as a situation entirely
under the sway of biographical, social or tech-
nical determinisms.
Just so, and therein lies one of the aspects
brought sharply into focus by constructivism,
the learning situation bears a number of fun-
damental uncertainties in respect of its play-
ing out over time.4 What is more, as several
classroom experiments have brilliantly illus-
trated, it is indeed possible to uncover – in real
time – previously undetected sources of lee-
way and to convert the norms, constraints
and agendas framing the classroom encoun-
ter into learning resources. For example,
Wood, Cobb and Yackel (1994), whose
research was based in part on work by Gla-
sersfeld, have showed how it is possible, as
early as primary school, to institute commu-
nities of practice in which the students them-
selves foster mathematical learning and
growth; this the students achieve by engaging
in argument-based discussions on ways not
only of solving a problem but also of defining
it, all the while managing the need for these
91
 educational
CONCEPTS
students to take the same cycle-end examina-
tion as the other children in their school dis-
trict. In the same vein, Aikenhead (1992) has
shown how secondary students (ages 15 to 17)
in a STS (Sciences-Technologies-Societies)
program became well acquainted with the
political, legal and ethical issues surrounding
the various uses made of a technical artifact
(in this instance, a breathalyzer) and were
thus able to develop an informed point of
view on technoscience,5 this they accom-
plished while also demonstrating their ability
to perform as well as the other students on
standardized science examinations. Likewise,
Roth (1998) has shown how the introduction
of a technology – in this case, a glue gun – set
the stage for a dual transformation amongst
primary schoolchildren. To begin with,
thanks to one child’s contribution of a glue
gun to a classroom activity centring on the
construction of various artifacts (bridges,
towers, etc.), the other children were able to
obtain harder, more resistant bonds and, as
well, more solidly structured pieces. The first
outcome was thus to transform the material
and discursive practices enacted in the class-
room. And, in a second outcome, the struc-
ture of interactions between the various
actors also underwent a process of transfor-
mation when, in particular, some of the stu-
dents taught their classmates how to use this
tool. Further still, as the glue gun in question
was an electric model and the classroom was
equipped with only two wall sockets, the stu-
dents had to cluster close to the electric outlets
to do their building work, which immediately
created unforeseen opportunities to share,
negotiate and circulate knowledge.
To sum up, and despite the reservations we
have touched on above, drawing on radical
constructivism for the purposes of conceptu-
alizing and carrying out educational action
opens onto picturing this action in terms of
the multiplication of possibilities for teachers
and students alike.6 Clearly, embracing such
an option is likely to run counter to teachers’
cherished or ingrained classroom habits, for
as long as we teachers continue to situate our-
selves in the capacity of discoverers or as the
mere spokespeople for a preorganized world,
the impact of our discourses and practices will
give little cause for concern. Our interven-
tions amount to driving home such messages
as “that’s the way it is,” “facts are facts,” “the
figures speak for themselves” and so on; fur-
92
ther, any difficulty of comprehension
encountered by students is merely a question
of cognitive immaturity or erroneous concep-
tions that a solid teaching approach, seasoned
with a bit of passion or drive, should be able
to root out (Larochelle 2004; Larochelle &
Bednarz 1998).
On the other hand, once one accepts the
claim that it is not possible to perceive the
objects of the world without also having a the-
ory of the world (Douglas 1999), or the claim
that facts are indeed produced – that is, fabri-
cated (as was stated by Bachelard and, a long
time before him, by Vico) – then it is a whole
other (educational) story that comes into
view and it is an entirely different type of rela-
tionship to knowledge and to others that is
privileged (Désautels, Garrison & Fleury
2002; Larochelle 2000). For, at that point, the
(inevitable) confrontation underlying all
educational action no longer unfolds as
though between a group of subjects (the stu-
dents) versus a world of objects –that is, a set
of knowledges that have emerged out of
nowhere and that, from that point on, afford
no opportunity for negotiation or owner-
ship-taking. Rather, this confrontation stems
from the encounter occurring between groups
of actors, or between groups of “describers of
the world” (students and biologists or geogra-
phers, for example); further, by injecting new
symmetry into the relationships obtaining in
the classroom, a basis is laid not only for the
discussion, negotiation and indeed hybrid-
ization of the descriptions in question, but
also for learning an “appropriate” way of
using the descriptions thus co-developed.
Doing research in a
constructivist mode
Radical constructivism also produces its
share of consequences for the design and
conduct of a research project. For indeed,
with the claim that knowledges are consti-
tuted not in reference to reality “itself ” but to
practices, activities, places and groups or
communities of action (Barnes 2001;
Bichofsberger 2002) comes also an appeal to
examine: the relational and operational char-
acter of these knowledges; their local, situ-
ated character (knowledges embody points
of view, positions, and so forth, in a given
society at a given time); and, finally, their
radical constructivism
potentially controversial character, since they
bring into play experiences of the world and
“ways of worldmaking” (to borrow from
Goodman 1992) that make for potentially
rocky contact and integration, as is shown by
the difficulty encountered in interdiscipli-
nary work of managing to “see what the other
sees” (Petrie 1986; Vinck 2000). In other
words, constructivism urges the researcher to
focus on cognition-in-action and to perform
some very careful detective work into the
ways in which this process is played out and
negotiated in “real life” places and times.
From this position it is possible to distin-
guish at least three major implications for
research:
1. To begin with, and on this point our
views converge with several of the findings
and insights afforded by symbolic interac-
tionism and discursive psychology, construc-
tivism prompts the researcher to examine the
“making and doing” of actors. And, on this
same basis, it also militates in favour of
research designs of investigation that have
more in common, to borrow from the image
contained in a recent article by Cyrulnik
(2003), with a goat path (that is, a winding,
rocky trail cut into the side of a steep hillside)
than with those research superhighways rep-
resented by laboratories or, worse yet, exper-
imental research settings where, as Stengers
(1987) has so aptly noted, more often than
not, the outcome is to shut up the very people
who are being questioned. Thus the perspec-
tive informing the researcher’s investigation
is a comprehensive one – one, moreover that
is consistent with radical constructivism’s
project of developing a model that describes
“how we know what we know” (Glasersfeld
1983) or, in the present case, that describes
how actors know what they know.
2. Secondly, constructivism advocates
opting for a conception of language that
breaks decisively with the representationist
conception currently predominant in the
field of education. According to the latter
conception, the interaction occurring
between speakers is viewed as a mutual
adjusting of their respective mental states –
“as expressed in words” – following a series of
data processing runs by each speaker (Brassac
2004). In other words, it is through a two-
phase process that speakers eventually man-
age to convey their respective meanings to
one another, with the “substance” of their
Constructivist Foundations
 educational
CONCEPTS
verbal exchange being assimilated to a “con-
tent” of the mind.
By contrast with the foregoing, in the con-
structivist model (according to which cogni-
tion is considered to be an activity and a prac-
tice, as was mentioned above), a discursive
production is, in itself, said to constitute a
cognitive activity. As Chauviré (2000) has
emphasized, there is no need to imagine “a
silent mental process forming a lining to the
utterance of a sentence” (p. 54) and unfold-
ing in some mind housed inside a brain. Fur-
thermore, an utterance is posited as being
potentially indeterminate and contextual –
even for the person uttering it, who might be
“surprised by his own words” (Brassac 2004,
p. 11). It therefore follows that interaction
between speakers is not viewed in terms of
adjustment but instead of a joint dialogical
production of meanings that may, moreover,
be re-subjected to negotiation when one of
the speakers next takes his or her turn.7, 8
Against this backdrop, the implications of
Austin’s program of How to Do Things with
Words can be seen more fully – if perhaps in
an unlikely or unfamiliar light.9 Or, as Mat-
urana (2006, p. 96) has summed up: “Lan-
guage is a manner of coexistence in coordina-
tion of doings, not a property or a faculty of
the brain or what we call the ‘mind’.”
Such is the perspective informing the
notion whereby constructivism compels
adopting a conception of language that rec-
ognizes the latter’s constitutive role in orga-
nizing experience and the shaping of things
and events. As Bourdieu (1993, p. 33) noted,
“Words do things because they create a con-
sensus on the existence and meaning of
things.” Words therefore do not merely serve
as the outer garb of thought (Merleau-Ponty
1976, p. 212). Nor has their meaning been
“indexed” once and for all, since meaning
grows out of contexts of usage, not to men-
tion customary ways of reacting and
responding; in short, meaning grows out of
the history of the speakers (Quéré 1994).
3. Finally, by privileging a pragmatic con-
ception of knowledge, radical constructivism
disrupts the social hierarchy of knowledge
and the accompanying “racism of intelli-
gence” (to quote again from Bourdieu 1980)
that consists in ascribing the ability to pro-
duce valid bodies of learning and knowledge
to certain groups only. Constructivism thus
bids researchers to “de-siloize” knowledge
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
production and, on the contrary, to consider
that “the production of knowledge occurs in
all spheres of society” (Darré 1999, p. 45) –
including spaces that are often associated
with the consumption rather the production
of knowledge, such as the world of farmers
(Darré 1999), nurses (Aikenhead 2005) or
teachers (Desgagné 2005). Or, to put it a bit
differently, by adopting this perspective, the
researcher also recognizes the capacity of
those usually referred to as the task perform-
ers “to conceptualize their actions and to pro-
duce and co-produce knowledge” (Darré
1999, p. 46); and, as corollary to the preced-
ing, this knowledge is thus not viewed as a
residue or a debased version of an institu-
tionally legitimated knowledge but indeed as
a form of production in its own right.10
As it so happens, drawing on constructiv-
ism for research purposes may, once again,
throw a wrench into a researcher’s customary
methodological reflexes, all the more so since
there is no escaping the relativization of
viewpoints that is promoted by constructiv-
ism. It is no longer possible to obtain an over-
arching vantage point – a dictum that applies
to all discourses, including those of research-
ers claiming to adhere to constructivism.
There is no way of speaking or acting as
though the phenomena, substances and
events that we are speaking of and that we are
claiming to encode had appeared out of thin
air and existed independently of our ways of
containing the world in our discipline-based
frameworks and projects.
It is critical to be able to specify the place
from which one speaks and to account for the
various assumptions and commitments by
which one configures the world and, as a
result, be able to reintroduce, following the
suggestion of Foerster (1982, 1992), “the
properties of the observer into the descrip-
tion of his or her observations.” The reintro-
duction of such properties represents a major
break with the usual scientific text which
rests, on the contrary, on a rhetoric that tends
to erase all traces of human activity and to
facilitate the “naturalization” of the affirma-
tions in question – that is, to persuade readers
that they are indeed beholding a given fact or
phenomena, and indeed the world, as it really
is (Gross 1990; Larochelle & Désautels
2002).11
Thus, as was the case above concerning
education, with radical constructivism it is a
radical constructivism
whole other (research) story that comes into
view just as it is an entirely different type of
relationship to knowledge and to others that
is privileged.
Concluding remarks
For more than 40 years now, Ernst von Gla-
sersfeld has been urging us to share in the
ceaseless making of this dual narrative
through, notably, numerous seminars and
workshops as well as the hundreds of contri-
butions he has penned in a broad range of
fields (such as psychology, philosophy, lin-
guistics, cybernetics and, of course, educa-
tion) and on themes often assumed to be self-
evident, particularly in mathematics and sci-
ence teaching (such as the notions of truth,
objectivity and the transparency of language).
As is clear from the abundance of publica-
tions being written under the banner of con-
structivism, Glasersfeld’s urging has not gone
unheard, just as, moreover, the range of modes
of appropriating constructivism’s potentiali-
ties for generating, evolving and actualizing
action and research in the field of education
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Marie Larochelle is Full Professor at the Fac-
ulté des sciences de l’éducation of Université
Laval. For many years, she has actively
researched socioepistemological problems
related to the teaching/learning of scientific
knowledge. Her publications have been pri-
marily in the field of science education and
constructivism. Her current research inter-
ests focus on how students and future sci-
ence teachers figure or represent the
tensions, disagreements and socioethical
issues that shape the practice of the techno-
sciences.
Jacques Désautels is Full Professor at the Fac-
ulté des sciences de l’éducation of Université
Laval. For more than 20 years, he has been
concerned with the pedagogical and ideolog-
ical dimensions of science teaching. He has
author or co-authored several works and
articles, written from a socio-constructivist
perspective, in the field of science education.
His current research interests focus on the
type of power/knowledge relationship fos-
tered by the teaching of the technosciences.
93
 educational
CONCEPTS
testifies to the many, varied paths being pur-
sued in Glasersfeld’s multidirectional foot-
steps!12
All things considered, the really astonish-
ing thing would be that no such diversity
should have occurred. As has been pointed
out by Heinz von Foerster, one of Ernst von
Glasersfeld’s long-time friends, with radical
constructivism, we have now resolutely
entered into the “realm of nontrivial
machines.” By this image, Foerster (1997) is
referring to the whole of those machines, sys-
tems and organizations which, once fed a
stimulus A, do not then necessarily produce
B, since their history and projects also mobi-
lize them to do what they do – making a sham-
bles of our expectations and predictions along
the way. They are disobedient machines,
enthusiastically engaging in “venturesome
Notes
1. The introduction to this article is based on
excerpts from the address given by Marie
Larochelle on 18 June 2006 on the occa-
sion of the Université Laval (Québec, Que-
bec) graduation ceremony at which Ernst
von Glasersfeld was awarded the degree of
doctor of education honoris causa. In these
excerpts, Larochelle brought out a similar-
ity between Glasersfeld and Dupin, the
celebrated detective portrayed by Edgar
Allan Poe. She realized only recently, while
re-reading the preface to Glasersfeld’s
1987 book The Construction of Knowledge,
that its author, Heinz von Foerster, had
also noted this very same similarity. In-
deed, some 20 years had gone by since she
had last read this preface, with the result
that in June 2006, she genuinely imagined
that she was working from an association
that had previously gone unnoticed!
2. The fecundity of this perspective in terms
of revisiting certain problems of teaching
and learning science has, moreover, be-
come widely recognized and has, in the last
few decades, generated an extensive pro-
gram of research that has systematically
elicited the views of students of all ages
concerning particular concepts (e.g., that
of particle, ecosystem, revolution, objec-
tivity, and so on) as well as the fields from
94
thinking” (la pensée qui se risque, in Barthes’s
words) – the type of thinking to which the
work of Ernst von Glasersfeld testifies most
convincingly. This non-orthodoxy is, in our
view, really quite wonderful, particularly in
view of the intellectual freedom Ernst von
Glasersfeld has passed on to us, thanks to
which one may devise ways of acting and
making one way forward in the world, includ-
ing the world of education.
However, as with every groundbreaking
contribution, Glasersfeld’s work brings into
play stakes whose importance should by no
means be underestimated. For, above all,
challenging the idea that our knowledge
reflects the ontologically preexisting world
amounts to challenging (to borrow from
Latour 1999, pp. 27–28) “the most fabulous
political capacity ever invented” – namely, the
which such concepts have emerged (What
is science? What is history? etc). By way of
example, see Audigier (1993), Désautels &
Larochelle (1998), Leach, Driver, Scott &
Wood-Robinson (1996).
3. For example, according to Gergen (1995),
radical constructivism involves a dualism
that results in postulating the individual
and society as two independent entities. It
is not possible in this article to examine the
various arguments he brings to bear, but
in our view it would be worthwhile taking
up the solution proposed by Kuhn (1983),
who showed that production of scientific
knowledge is a simultaneously cognitive
and social process. The paradigm (set of
theories, exemplars and standards) is con-
stitutive of the science community that
constructs the paradigm, and the stabiliza-
tion of this paradigm proceeds through
the recruitment, into this community, of
new members who in turn learn to work
within the framework of the paradigm and
pursue the standard task of resolving enig-
mas until such time as new controversies
arise. In other words, paradigm and com-
munity are mutually constitutive, in a cir-
cular manner that recalls the recursive
processes seen stabilizing around eigen-
behaviours, as Foerster (1997) has sug-
gested. In a similar manner, individuals
and societies are mutually constitutive, as
radical constructivism
capacity “to make the mute world speak, to
state the truth in the absence of discussion,
[and] to put an end to interminable debates
via some indisputable authority deriving
from things themselves.” From this perspec-
tive, radical constructivism may also be con-
sidered as a way of engaging in politics other-
wise.
Acknowledgements
This paper was written within the framework
of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada research project. The
authors wish to thank Donald Kellough for
this translation as well as their Faculty’s
administration for its financial contribution
toward translation costs.
part of a process of interpenetration or
overlap; by way of corollary, the emer-
gence of the sovereign individual or the
sovereign society is the result of analytical
distinctions made by observers from a par-
ticular perspective.
4. It is thus possible to model an educational
situation as a complex, dynamic and inde-
terminate system whose future changes
cannot be predicted and which may in-
deed evolve toward a range of different
stable states (attractors, eigen-values, etc.)
or, on the contrary, become chaotic.
5. For example, the students were given a
look into the “interpretive flexibility” ex-
hibited by scientists toward data in situa-
tions requiring them to establish, for
example, the norms governing acceptable
blood alcohol levels. In the process, they
were able to acquire some critical distance
toward the commonly conveyed, idealized
images and opinions of science.
6. In a recent article intended to provide an
overview of the question, Kirschner,
Sweller and Clark (2006) maintain that
various forms of teaching based on con-
structivism (such as discovery teaching,
inquiry teaching or problem-based teach-
ing) have proved to be a failure where
learning is concerned. For several reasons,
their argument does not hold water. To
begin with, from a methodological point
Constructivist Foundations
 educational
CONCEPTS
of view, the authors do not explicate how
they went about constituting the corpus of
research on which they base their verdict.
Nor do they provide much in the way of
specifics relating to the theoretical and
methodological frameworks characteriz-
ing the research work that they examined,
or to the overall context of inquiry in
which the various research projects were
conducted. The authors stick to a “rheto-
ric of outcomes (or effectiveness),” where-
as one would have thought them willing
and able, on the basis of their blanket as-
sessment, to articulate a robust, full-
fledged line of argument. One would have
also expected them to conduct a careful,
comprehensive discussion of constructiv-
ism – which is patently not the case here.
Instead, one is treated to a few definitions
of their own cobbling and that amount to
little more than clichés (e.g., p. 78). In-
deed, one well wonders what these authors
actually understand about constructivism
– they who claim to adhere to a mechanis-
tic and realist theory of cognition (short-
and long-term memory), who approach
learning as though it were some sort of
chest of drawers (in this drawer, working
memory, in that one, long-term memory,
etc.) and who, quite obviously, are unfa-
miliar with the models of self-organiza-
tion bearing on memory, for example
(Clancey 1997). They have, on the other
hand, demonstrated a most surprising
ability to tie constructivism to such things
as permissiveness or the absence of guid-
ance. Only a woeful ignorance of the real-
ity of education, constructivism and the
scientific literature on the subject can ex-
plain their assertion that a teaching ap-
proach drawing on the tenets of
constructivism will reduce education to a
self-guided experience, with teachers no
longer having to “orient” students’ efforts
to construct a conceptual structure, for ex-
ample. Such is clearly not the case, as the
research of Woods et al. or Aikenhead, cit-
ed in the body of this text, has so amply
shown. Likewise, their lumping together
of constructivism and discovery teaching
bespeaks a dismaying degree of misunder-
standing on their part, as it is constructiv-
ism’s claim that knowledges are not,
precisely, an immediately or spontaneous-
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
ly transparent product and thus cannot be
made the end goal of some artless, naïve
process of discovery. In short, there are
grounds for asking oneself whether the au-
thors were taking aim at the wrong target
and whether indeed the real cause for con-
cern is not their own folk conception of
constructivism. Admittedly, exhausting
the list of objections would take quite
some doing, and besides, the space re-
quirements of this footnote would no
doubt make any such attempt here entirely
unfeasible. In another recent publication
of ours, however, we develop a more full-
bodied critique of this kind of writing,
which these times of educational reform
have produced on a scale approaching that
of a glut. (Désautels et al. 2005).
7. Along the lines of the educational situa-
tion referred to above, this model of lin-
guistic interaction would benefit from
being “socialized,” and from ascribing
greater importance to the negotiation of
“positioning relationships” (rapports de
places) that are often brought into play in
this type of interaction – i.e., involving ne-
gotiation of the authority deriving from
such things as social status, institutional
position, gender, age, prestige, experience,
“high marks,” etc. (Kerbrat-Orecchioni
1987).
8. For an illustration of this discursive nego-
tiation process as it is engaged in by sec-
ondary students, see Larochelle &
Désautels (2001).
9. Translator’s note: Certainly one of the
most fruitful models to explore and expli-
cate the “economy of linguistic exchang-
es” in reflexive or constructivist terms is to
be found in Pierre Bourdieu’s seminal Ce
que parler veut dire, 1982, which was
brought out in an English edition by J. B.
Thompson (translated by G. Raymond
and M. Adamson) under the title of Lan-
guage and Symbolic Power by Harvard
University Press: Cambridge MA in 1991.
The French title of Bourdieu’s work –
which, more literally rendered, equates
with What Speaking Means – was intended
as a wink at J. L. Austin’s How to Do Things
with Words, whose title itself contained a
gently mocking allusion to do-it-yourself
manuals (first brought out in 1962 by
Clarendon Press and translated into
radical constructivism
French as Quand dire, c’est faire by Seuil:
Paris in 1970).
10.One outstanding case of this is to be found
in the Association française contre les myo-
pathies. Infantile spinal muscular atrophy,
an incurable neuromuscular disease, was
originally considered to be an orphan dis-
ease. In numerous cases, doctors did not
even know what name to give the disease,
much less what palliative care to suggest.
Eventually, parents were the ones who, as
they gradually formed an association, took
charge of the exceedingly difficult task of
documenting cases, establishing compari-
sons and classifications, providing the ini-
tial descriptions of the developmental
path of children suffering from the disease
and of disease stages. In this regard, one
may say that parents were the ones who
produced the first knowledge about this
terrible disease. See Rabeharisoa & Callon
(1999).
11.It is the imposition of a particular intellec-
tual layout (Introduction, Method and Ma-
terials, Results, Discussion), serving to
bracket off, in steps, the contingencies in-
herent to research (as well as any traces of
the observer) that enables the text to pro-
duce this genuinely political effect. In this
connection, Madigan, Johnson and Lin-
ton (1995) have performed a most instruc-
tive analysis of the American Psychological
Association (APA) style sheet, which in
several fields is considered the sacrosanct
authority on the rules governing the com-
position of articles and research reports.
12.Several works illustrate the diversity of in-
terpretations that have been developed
about this subject, with this diversity con-
stituting – to follow Kuhn (1983) – one of
the conditions for the practice and devel-
opment of knowledge referred to as scien-
tific. For a summary of the debates in
education, see, in particular: Glasersfeld
(1991), Jenkins (2002), Larochelle, Bed-
narz and Garrison (1998), Phillips (2000),
Steffe and Gale (1995), Steffe and Thomp-
son (2000), and Tobin (1993). For an
overview in other fields, see Volume 23 of
Social Studies of Science (1993); see also is-
sues 18 and 19 of Cahiers critiques de
thérapie familiale et de pratiques de réseaux
(1997, 1998) and issue 17 of La Revue du
MAUSS (2001).
95
 educational
CONCEPTS
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2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3 97

 educational radical constructivism
CONCEPTS

Coming to Our Senses:

From Constructivism to
Democratization of Math Education
Ana Pasztor A Florida International University (USA) <pasztora@cis.fiu.edu>

Motivation: Paralleling my own transformation from a Platonist to a radical constructivist, itself, will not only be unable to recognize and
mathematics education has been experiencing for more than a decade a movement that adjust to changes in its perception of reality,
started in theoretical foundations mostly originating in von Glasersfeld’s work, and then but will also be unable to tolerate any other
reached professional organizations, which have been leading extensive efforts to reform representation of reality. I have had first hand
school mathematics according to constructivist principles. However, the theories experience of examples that “go from the
espoused by the researchers are, as yet, too abstract to lend themselves readily to imple- ridiculous to the gruesome” of a totalitarian
mentation in the classroom. Purpose: I define a shared experiential language (SEL) for the regime’s “paradoxical, recursive logic” that
constructivist teacher to embody in order to transform her practice congruently according typically characterizes paranoia: “It is inher-
to constructivist principles. While SEL is comprised of Neuro-Linguistic Programming ent to the concept of paranoia that it rests on
(NLP) subjective experience distinctions, what “makes it tick” is the constructivist epistemol- a fundamental assumption that is held to be
ogy with its insight that for consistent understanding to happen, new knowledge has to absolutely true. Because this fundamental
attach to prior experiences in a process of co-construction. Throughout the paper, I elab- assumption is axiomatic, it cannot and need
orate and validate this insight by numerous examples. Practical implications: Utilizing not demonstrate its own veracity. Strict logi-
SEL allows understanding of mathematics to be rooted in each student’s individual sensory cal deductions are then made from this fun-
experiences, thus shifting the responsibility for success in mathematics from the students damental premise and create a reality in
back to those who guide them in co-constructing knowledge. This, in turn, should allow which any failures and inconsistencies of the
everybody access to understanding and so it should no longer be socially acceptable to fail system are attributed to the deduction, but
in mathematics. Key words: Radical constructivism, math education, Neuro-Linguistic Pro- never to the original premise itself ” (ibid., pp.
gramming, sensory experience, behavioral cues, democratization. 223–224). Whoever criticizes the premises of
the system is therefore declared to be an
enemy and will not be tolerated.
The child cannot conceive of tasks, the way to of models of subjective experience created for Ten years later, my then therapist and now
solve them and the solutions in terms other than the purpose of making explicit and emulating co-author and friend, Mary Hale-Haniff,
those that are available at the particular moment in oneself and others strategies of excellence introduced me to constructivist therapies.
in his or her conceptual development. The child (Dilts et al. 1980). Its primary tenet (formu- What a shake-up I had when I read in Lynn
must make meaning of the task and try to con- lated originally by A. Korzybski) is “The map Hoffman’s (1990) paper an account of Heinz
struct a solution by using material she already is not the territory,” which, in the words of von Foerster criticizing NLP’s tenet, “The
has. That material cannot be anything but the Watzlawick (1984), means that “the name is map is not the territory,” and confronting it
conceptual building blocks and operations that not what it names; an interpretation of reality with his own view that “The map is the terri-
the child has assembled in his or her own prior is only an interpretation and not reality itself. tory”! Once again, I embarked on a “Learning
experience. — Glasersfeld (1987, p. 12) Only a schizophrenic eats the menu instead of III” experience, and it all fell into place when
the foods listed on the menu” (p. 215). I I read von Glasersfeld’s (1984) introduction
embraced this tenet, and as a consequence a to radical constructivism. It clicked. It fit per-
Introduction shift in my world view occurred that turned fectly with most aspects of my life – some con-
my life around: I moved from the modernist’s scious, some unconscious. It fit with my dis-
Having been trained in the Platonism of tra- belief in an objective reality accessible by rea- satisfaction with the hierarchical teacher–
ditional mathematics, my first “Learning III” son and observation to the postmodernist’s student, physician–patient, therapist–client
experience that Bateson defined as one in belief in subjectivity (Pasztor & Slater 2000). and other similar relationships, and my deep
which “there is a profound reorganization of Having grown up in a communist country, distrust of statistics and other quantitative
character” (Bateson 1972, p. 301) occurred in Watzlawick’s (1984) words struck a chord research methodologies. I came to under-
the late 80s when I started studying Neuro- with me: any system that denies that it oper- stand that NLP’s epistemology was incongru-
Linguistic Programming (NLP). NLP is a set ates on a map of reality, rather than on reality ent with its overall intents. Its map-territory

98 Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3

http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
 educational
CONCEPTS
distinction presupposed the existence of a
reality that preexists the observer and from
which information is filtered onto our indi-
vidual maps (Hale-Haniff 2004). NLP models
were designed to “force” the client to change
limitations in her map. Thus, the therapist–
client relationship once again became a hier-
archical and coercive one.
I was suddenly able to observe that numer-
ous fields such as education, science, psycho-
therapy, linguistics, organizational studies,
etc., were undergoing a paradigm shift from
positivism to constructivism, to a world view
in which adherence to authority and external
control is replaced by reliance and trust in
subjective experience. This, in turn, would
necessarily lead to a democratization of the
respective field, since knowledge or expertise
is not the privilege of a small “talented” elite,
but can be constructed by each person
according to their previous experience.
Hardest to understand in the shift to radi-
cal constructivism – even to the theorist – is
the distinction between its tenets and state-
ments such as ‘there exists an external reality,
but we do not have direct, unmediated access
to it’ or ‘there exists no independent reality.’ In
my contribution, I will illustrate the practical
impact of such a distinction on mathematics
education. In particular, I will focus on the
democratization of mathematics (cf. Pasztor
2004a) – the shift away from the “transmis-
sion” model of education towards a theory of
knowledge and a new methodology, in which
the process of understanding or coming to
know is a matter of constructing, from ele-
ments available in the student’s own experi-
ence, conceptual structures that lead to “a via-
ble path of action, a viable solution to an
experiential problem, or a viable interpreta-
tion of a piece of language,” and “there is never
any reason to believe that this construction is
the only one possible” (Glasersfeld 1987,
p. 10).
Von Glasersfeld’s writings are among the
very few academic ones that have deeply
affected my personal life as well (as if there
was a non-personal life …) Sometimes, when
I ask my husband to, say, put the garbage out
and he fails to do so and later I question him
about it, he may reply, “But you didn’t tell me
to do so.” In such a case, I respond, “You can-
not say that I didn’t tell you, the only thing you
can say is that you didn’t hear me tell you.”
Thus, von Glasersfeld entered our marital life.
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
The traditional
approach to
mathematics education
The traditional, positivist approach to
instruction has been referred to as “the Age of
the Sage on the Stage” (Davis & Maher 1997,
p. 93), due to its “transmission” model of
teaching, where teaching means “getting
knowledge into the heads” of the students
(Glasersfeld 1987, p. 3), that is, transmitting
knowledge from the teacher to the student.
The underlying philosophy is that knowledge
is out there, independent of the knower, ready
to be discovered and be transferred into peo-
ple’s heads. It is “a commodity that can be
communicated” (Glasersfeld 1987, p. 6). The
ontology presupposed in this view is that there
is one true reality out there, which exists inde-
pendently of the observer. Furthermore, we
have access to this reality, and we can frag-
ment, study, predict and control it (Lincoln &
Guba 1985; Hale-Haniff & Pasztor 1999).
However, as von Glasersfeld (1987, p. 4)
points out, while trying to access reality, we
have been caught in an age-old dilemma: If
truth is defined as “the perfect match, the
flawless representation” of reality, who is to
judge “the perfect match with reality”?
To answer this question, Western philoso-
phy has taken a route in which, given the right
tools, pure reason is believed to be able to
transcend all social and cultural constraints
and the confines of the human body, includ-
ing those of perception and emotion. Mathe-
matical reasoning has been seen as the purest
example of reason: “purely abstract, transcen-
dental, culture-free, unemotional, universal,
decontextualized, disembodied, and hence
formal” (Lakoff & Nuñez 1997, p. 22; for
more “fine-tuned” criticism cf. Lakatos
1976). The traditional scientist, mathemati-
cian, or, in general, researcher, is out to find
objective truth. In doing so, she is trained to
be value-neutral in order to be able to objec-
tively judge “the perfect match” with reality.
She is a “cool, detached, solitary genius, the
one who has the answers that others don’t
have, as if the truth could be owned” (Pert
1997, p. 315).
In practice, however, there is a direct “rela-
tionship between claims to truth and the dis-
tribution of power in society” (Gergen 1991,
p. 95). Those at the top of the educational sys-
radical constructivism
tem hierarchy are the “objective” experts of
knowledge; they determine teaching goals
and criteria of assessment. Accordingly, the
traditional teacher–student relationship is a
hierarchical, authoritarian relationship.
The constructivist view
of knowledge and its
implications for
mathematics education
In contrast to positivist philosophy, construc-
tivist philosophies have adopted a concept of
knowledge that is not based on any belief in an
accessible objective reality. In the radical con-
structivist view, knowing is not matching
reality, but rather finding a fit with observa-
tions. Constructivist knowledge “is knowl-
edge that human reason derives from experi-
ence. It does not represent a picture of the
‘real’ world but provides structure and orga-
nization to experience. As such it has an all-
important function: It enables us to solve
experiential problems” (Glasersfeld 1987,
p. 5). With this theory of knowledge, the
experiencing human turns “from an explorer
who is condemned to seek ‘structural proper-
ties’ of an inaccessible reality … into a builder
of cognitive structures intended to solve such
problems as the organism perceives or con-
ceives” (ibid.).
Now, let us look at the two views that are
so often confused with the tenets of radical
constructivism (Pasztor 2004a): 1. there exists
a mind-independent reality (MIR), albeit
only indirectly accessible, and 2. there exists
no MIR. The first view is close to the positivist
ontology, except now we do not have the pos-
sibility of a “perfect match,” but only that of a
mediated match. Still, who is going to judge the
“better” match?
A constructivist view is inconsistent with
both of these ontological views. As von
Glasersfeld (2004a, [2]) states, the construc-
tivist holds “that all coordination and, there-
fore, all structure is of the organism’s own
making,” and therefore he has no way of
knowing anything about the ontological real-
ity of these constructs. In fact, he has no way
of knowing anything about an MIR. Further-
more, as soon as we posit the existence or non-
existence of an MIR, we have caused a split
between the knower and the known. The one
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CONCEPTS
who knows whether an MIR exists or does not
exist becomes the expert, the authority. In the
constructivist view, a third person has no way
of knowing anything about my or your own
experience. As von Glasersfeld (2004b, [4])
says, “‘someone else’ is always my construc-
tion.” The only expert of your experience is
you. This view, as I will show, can make a tre-
mendous difference in math education.
For more than a decade now, mathematics
education in the US has been experiencing a
top-down reform movement that started with
the theoretical foundations of mathematics
education that mostly originated in von Gla-
sersfeld’s work, and then moved to the profes-
sional organizations, which then started and
have since been leading extensive efforts to
reform school mathematics according to con-
structivist principles (NCTM 2000). So far,
however, the reform has been moving only
very slowly into the mathematics classroom
practices. Besides complex political reasons
(Alacaci & Pasztor 2002), one of the reasons
for this is that the theories espoused by the
researchers to implement constructivist prin-
ciples are, as yet, too abstract to readily lend
themselves to implementation. One of the
goals of my own research efforts in math edu-
cation has been to help translate the language
of these theories into the experiential lan-
guage of students.
Abstract mathematical concepts are meta-
phorical and are built from people’s sensory
experiences (Lakoff & Nuñez 1997; Lakoff &
Johnson 1999). The constructivist teacher’s
role is to make sure that they fit the students’
individual experience. Frustration and confu-
sion ensue if the teacher’s metaphorical map-
ping is rooted in an a-priori construction,
rather than in the student’s own experience.
English (1997) provides a very good example
of what happens in such a case. It concerns the
use of a line metaphor to represent our num-
ber system, whereby numbers are considered
as points on a line. The “number line” is used
to convey the notion of positive and negative
number, and to visualize relationships
between numbers. It turns out that students
frequently have difficulty in abstracting
mathematical ideas that are linked to the
number line (Dufour-Janvier, Bednarz &
Belanger 1987, quoted in English 1997, p. 8).
“There is a tendency for students to see the
number line as a series of ‘stepping stones,’
with each step conceived of as a rock with a
100
hole between each two successive rocks. This
may explain why so many students say that
there are no numbers, or at the most, one,
between two whole numbers.”
While students are often able to reorganize
their experience in a way that makes it fit the
constraints of the problem at hand, often
times the teacher needs to provide for the stu-
dents “precisely those experiences that will be
most useful for further development or revi-
sion of the mental structures that are being
built” (Davis & Maher 1997, p. 94). This idea
is wonderfully demonstrated by Machtinger
(1965) (quoted in Davis & Maher, 1997, pp.
94–95) who taught kindergarten kids to con-
jecture and prove several theorems about
numbers, including even + even = even,
even + odd = odd, and odd + odd = even.
She did so by defining a number n as “even” if
a group of n children could be organized into
pairs for walking along the corridor and as
“odd” if such a group had one child left over
when organized into pairs. Since walking
along the corridor in pairs was a daily experi-
ence for the kids, learning the new informa-
tion became a matter of just expanding or
reorganizing their existing knowledge.
But this is not always possible. In particular
it is not possible when the teacher uses incom-
patible metaphors to explain mathematical
ideas. I was shocked and saddened by the
great regret with which the 86-year-old Carl
Jung remembered in his 1962 memoirs the
terror that he experienced in math classes.
While his teacher gave the impression that
algebra was very natural, the young Jung
failed to understand what numbers actually
were. He knew they were not flowers, nor ani-
mals, nor fossils – they were nothing he could
imagine. They were just amounts that
resulted from counting. To his greatest confu-
sion, these amounts were replaced by letters
the meaning of which was a sound. His
teacher tried hard to explain the purpose of
this strange operation of replacing under-
standable amounts by sounds, but to no avail.
This, what seemed to Jung to be a random
expression of numbers through sounds such
as “a,” “b,” “c,” or “x,” did not explain anything
about the nature of numbers. His frustration
peaked with the axiom, “if a = b and b = c,
then a = c,” since by definition it was clear that
“a” denoted something different from “b,”
and so could not be equaled with “b,” let alone
with “c.” He was outraged. An equality could
radical constructivism
be “a = a,” but “a = b” was a lie and deceit. His
intellectual morality resisted such incongru-
ities that blocked his access to the understand-
ing of mathematics. To his old age Jung had
the uncorrectable feeling that if he could have
accepted the possibility of “a = b,” that is, of
“sun = moon, dog = cat, etc.,” then mathe-
matics would have infinitely absorbed him.
Instead, he came to doubt the morality of
mathematics for his entire life. Like so many
others, he came to doubt his own self-worth,
which, back then, prevented him from asking
questions in class (Jung 1962).
In practice, “[f]or too many people, math-
ematics stopped making sense somewhere
along the way. Either slowly or dramatically,
they gave up on the field as hopelessly baffling
and difficult, and they grew up to be adults
who – confident that others share their expe-
rience – nonchalantly announce, ‘Math was
just not for me’ or ‘I was never good at it.’”
(Askey 1999). Ruth McNeill shares her story
of how she came to quit math: “What did me
in was the idea that a negative number times
a negative number comes out to a positive
number. This seemed (and still seems) inher-
ently unlikely – counterintuitive, as mathe-
maticians say. I … could not overcome my
strong sense that multiplying intensifies
something, and thus two negative numbers
multiplied together should properly produce
a very negative result” (McNeill 1988, quoted
in Askey 1999).
Most mathematical concepts being meta-
phorical and understanding a metaphor
meaning successfully mapping concepts from
our individual experience onto new domains,
teaching the metaphorical structure of math-
ematics becomes indispensable. It shifts the
definition of “mathematical understanding”
from a goal that only a few “talented” or
“gifted” people can reach, to a process rooted
in all people’s individual experience.
Is 2 + 2 still 4?
If objectivity of mathematics is just a myth,
what happens to basic facts such as
“2 + 2 = 4?” Are we denying them? The ques-
tion is very nicely answered in a dialogue
between von Foerster and von Glaserfeld in
their (1999) book. The following is an excerpt
from the book (translated from German by
myself).
Constructivist Foundations
 educational
CONCEPTS
von Glasersfeld: “Mathematics is of course
a free invention, but very often this is misun-
derstood, because people say, ‘Well, if it is
freely invented, why is 2 × 2 always 4?’ … The
free invention of course doesn’t mean that
once you have assumed certain rules, you may
intentionally break these rules. It is just like in
chess, where you assume that the chess figures
move in a certain way. The situations that you
then construct, and the moves that are then
possible, arise as consequences of applying
the accepted rules. As I see it, this is the same
in math. There one creates certain rules, and
the first rules concern numbers. Counting
rests on more complicated rules than most
people are aware of. They can count, but are
not always clear about everything they do
while counting. … To count, you must first
have the concept of unit. Then you must per-
ceive units, that is, you must be able to con-
struct them according to your perception.
You have to be able see them, or show them,
or push them on a table, or shift them on a rod
on the abacus. And with each unit that you
shift, you have to utter one of the numerals of
a fixed sequence of numerals. You must not
alter the sequence. If you follow these rules
then it is no magic that 2 + 2 is always 4. You
could only get a different result if you sud-
denly started counting, ‘1, 2, 7, 6’ instead of
the normal order, thus breaking an accepted
rule. In that case 2 + 2 would be 6.”
von Foerster: “That would be like playing
chess and moving the threatened king two
squares instead of one. Then you would be
stepping out of the game.”
von Glasersfeld: “Yes – and if my opponent
explained why this is so, then I would discover
that I broke a rule. This also shows that it is the
rules that determine when my king is in
check-mate. We don’t invent this during the
game ….”
von Foerster: “In mathematics this is of
course the same – here the rules imply a vari-
ety of things that one could not easily have
predicted.”
von Glasersfeld: “Piaget has this nice exam-
ple where a child first finds out that it makes
no difference whether he counts eight mar-
bles placed in a circle clockwise or counter-
clockwise. It always amounts to 8. And Piaget
puts it very nicely that this 8 is not a perceived
fact, but the result of rule-based actions. As
long as we perform these actions according to
the rules, we come to the result determined by
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
these rules. And with the action of counting
the directions plays no role, but according to
the rules, we may count each unit only once.
This is the number constancy” (Foerster &
Glasersfeld 1999, pp. 133–134).
So, while mathematics is a human con-
struction, it is not an arbitrary creation. It is
“not a mere historically contingent social
construction. What makes mathematics non-
arbitrary is that it uses the basic conceptual
mechanisms of the embodied human mind…
Mathematics is a product of the neural capac-
ities of our brains, the nature of our bodies,
our evolution, our environment, and our long
social and cultural history” (Lakoff & Nuñez
2000, p. 9).
Operative learning and
learning states
In constructivism, the meaning of learning
has shifted from the student’s “correct” repli-
cation of what the teacher does to “the stu-
dent’s conscious understanding of what he or
she is doing and why it is being done” (Gla-
sersfeld 1987, p. 12). “Mathematical knowl-
edge cannot be reduced to a stock of retriev-
able ‘facts’ but concerns the ability to compute
new results. To use Piaget’s terms, it is opera-
tive rather than figurative. It is the product of
reflection – and whereas reflection as such is
not observable, its product may be inferred
from observable responses” (Glasersfeld
1987, p. 10). Operative knowledge is con-
structive. “It is not the particular response
that matters but the way in which it was
arrived at” (Glasersfeld 1987, p. 11).
But how is the student to attain such oper-
ative knowledge in mathematics, when the
“structure of mathematical concepts is still
largely obscure” (Glasersfeld 1987, p. 13)?
Most definitions in mathematics are formal
rather than conceptual. In mathematics, defi-
nitions “merely substitute other signs or sym-
bols for the definiendum. Rarely, if ever, is
there a hint, let alone an indication, of what
one must do in order to build up the concep-
tual structures that are to be associated with
the symbols. Yet, that is of course what a stu-
dent has to find out if he or she is to acquire a
new concept” (Glasersfeld 1987, p. 14).
To illustrate this point, let us look at an
example. While talking about my research to
J, a doctoral student in Computer Science in
radical constructivism
his mid thirties, I asked him to solve a word
problem. “Word problem? I hate word prob-
lems!” was J’s response even before he knew
what the word problem was. The word prob-
lem was this: “Joey has a new puppy. His sister,
Jenna, has a big dog. Jenna’s dog weighs eight
times as much as the puppy. Both pets
together weigh 54 pounds. How much does
Joey’s puppy weigh?” J listened to the prob-
lem, and then asked me to repeat it. As I did
so, J made the following notes, turning his
back to me:
puppy: x
big dog: 8x
x + 8x = 54
9x = 54
Then he stopped and said he didn’t know
his multiplication table. “So anyway, what is
the answer?” I asked. J blushed and became
restless. “What do you mean?” he asked. I
replied, “Well, what was the question?” After
Jeff repeated the problem’s question, I asked
again, “So, how much does the puppy weigh?”
Again, J didn’t answer but became instead
more and more insecure. “Why, did I do
something wrong? I must have screwed up
somewhere.” “No,” I replied. “All I have in
mind is how do you get that x?”
J was so fixed on getting the exact number
as a result, that it never occurred to him to
say something like “The puppy weighs 54
divided by 9, whatever that is.” Instead, he
questioned his whole approach thinking he
had “screwed up somewhere.” I asked him
why he hated word problems. He replied,
“Because they make me feel stupid.” How? I
inquired. “Well, if I don’t get an immediate
answer, I feel stupid. It is stuff I should know.
It is expected of me.” Jeff went on to talk
about the time when he came to hate word
problems. He never understood what the
teacher did in class – he failed to see any pat-
tern in these word problems. The teacher
had them solve word problems either under
time pressure or at the board, in front of the
entire class. He felt threatened and never
actually got over it.
There is a general agreement across the
constructivist research in mathematics edu-
cation that for consistent understanding to
happen, new knowledge has to attach to stu-
dents’ prior experiences. But just what kind of
prior experiences? Which ones are optimal for
new learning? How can a teacher behave in a
way as to resurrect those experiences? What
101
 educational
CONCEPTS
are resource states of learning? How are atten-
tional units of those states configured? How
can a teacher know when she is eliciting an
un-useful experience? Even though people’s
subjective experiences are private, can stu-
dents and teachers come to share a language
of experience? How?
Making sense of math –
literally!
These and similar questions have guided my
work in the last two decades, helping me set
research goals such as exploring the relation-
ship between mathematical knowledge and
the subjective experience it gets attached to in
the process we call understanding.
While holding a constructivist epistemol-
ogy, I have been able to facilitate successful
mathematics understanding in my students
by using a shared experiential language (SEL)
that allows a direct, two-way communication
between the teachers and students. SEL is
based on NLP models and comprises catego-
ries of subjective experience such as sensory
(see-hear-feel) modalities, submodalities,
sensory strategies, and behavioral cues, as
well as ways for the teachers to separate stu-
dent’s meanings from their own (Hale-Haniff
& Pasztor 1999; Hale-Haniff 2004; Pasztor
2004b).
Sensory modalities:The
see/hear/feel building
blocks of our experience
According to Damasio (1994), at each
moment in time our subjective experience is
manifested in what he calls an “image”: a
visual image, that is, an internal picture; an
auditory image, that is, sounds – discrete or
analog; a kinesthetic image, that is, a feeling or
an internal smell or taste; or a combination of
these. For example, while J’s representation of
“even number” is manifested in a fuzzy visual
image of the number two, accompanied by “a
feeling of 2ness,” and my own representation
is a sharp visual image of “2n,” written in
white on a blackboard and situated right in
front of me, my friend Mary represents “even
number” by hearing the actual definition of
“even number.”
102
Many people argue that they do not think
in images, but rather in words or abstract sym-
bols. But “most of the words we use in our
inner speech, before speaking or writing a sen-
tence, exist as auditory or visual images in our
consciousness. If they did not become images,
however fleetingly, they would not be any-
thing we could know” (Damasio 1994, p. 106).
Damasio (1994) goes as far as to require as
an essential condition for having a mind the
ability to form internal (visual, auditory,
kinesthetic) images, and to order them in the
process we call thought. His view is that “hav-
ing a mind means that an organism forms
neural representations which can become
images, be manipulated in a process called
thought, and eventually influence behavior
by helping predict the future, plan accord-
ingly, and choose the next action” (p. 90).
Sensory images are often referred to as
“mental representations” – a term that, as von
Glasersfeld (1987) explains, can be quite mis-
leading: “In the constructivist view, ‘concepts,’
‘mental representation,’ ‘memories,’ ‘images,’
and so on, must not be thought of as static but
always as dynamic; that is to say, they are not
conceived as postcards that can be retrieved
from some file, but rather as relatively self-
contained programs or production routines
that can be called up and run (cf. Damasio’s
1994 dispositional representations). Concep-
tions, then, are produced internally. They are
replayed, shelved, or discarded according to
their usefulness and applicability in experien-
tial contexts. The more often they turn out to
be viable, the more solid and reliable they
seem. But no amount of usefulness or reliabil-
ity can alter their internal, conceptual origin.
They are not replicas of external originals,
simply because no cognitive organism can
have access to ‘things-in-themselves’ and thus
there are no models to be copied” (p. 219).
How constructivism
honors other ways of
knowing and
communicating
Positivist methodology privileges auditory-
verbal communication, often to the exclusion
of other modalities. Thus we teach the ver-
bally oriented conscious mind, and often
ignore visual and kinesthetic aspects of expe-
radical constructivism
rience. However, if we intend to communicate
in a holistic manner engaging all of our senses,
we need to also honor other ways of knowing.
“For the constructivist teacher – much like the
psychoanalyst – ‘telling’ is usually not an
effective tool. In this role, the teacher is much
less a lecturer, and much more of a coach (as
in learning tennis, or in learning to play the
piano). A recent slogan describes this by say-
ing ‘the Sage on the Stage has been replaced by
the Guide on the Side.’ It is the student who is
doing the work of building or revising [… his
or her] personal representations. The student
builds up the ideas in his or her own head, and
the teacher has at best a limited role in shaping
the student’s personal mental representa-
tions. The experiences that the teacher pro-
vides are grist to the mill, but the student is the
miller” (Davis & Maher 1997, p. 94).
The holistic, constructivist view presup-
poses that the teacher should have the poten-
tial to attend to all aspects of sensory experi-
ence and communication both in herself and
in the student’s system. In addition to audi-
tory-verbal aspects, visual and kinesthetic
experience may also be privileged, with both
unconscious (tacit) and conscious communi-
cation and perception considered. When
teachers are (implicitly) trained to ignore
communications related to intra-personal,
emotional, and unconscious experience, we
are imparting positivist principles. Most of us
have been socialized largely according to pos-
itivist thinking, conceptualizing emotions as
sudden and intense experiences that come
and go at certain times; something that a sane
or balanced person learns to keep under con-
trol so that rational thinking and control can
prevail. On the other hand, the holistic, con-
structivist view depicts emotional experience
as ongoing, simultaneous with and support-
ive of, the rest of experience.
Kinesthetic experience is ever-present
(although not always consciously accessible)
in form of “body images.” “By dint of juxtapo-
sition, body images give to other images a
quality of goodness or badness, of pleasure or
pain. I see feelings as having a truly privileged
status… [F]eelings have a say on how the rest
of the brain and cognition go about their
business” (Damasio 1994, pp. 159–160).
It is important to note that experience that
is kinesthetic to one person (e.g., the student)
is accessible primarily visually to the other
(e.g., the teacher). For example, as the student
Constructivist Foundations
 educational
CONCEPTS
feels his or her face get hot, the teacher might
notice him blush. Or, as the student feels a
sense of pride welling up in him, the teacher
might notice him taking a deep breath as he
squares his shoulders. Thus learning to detect
new categories of sensory experience in one-
self and others involves enhancing perception
of new categories of both kinesthetic and
visual experience. Becoming more con-
sciously aware of categories of sensory experi-
ence other than auditory-verbal, the teacher
enhances her ability to accommodate to the
students’ experiences.
Submodalities:
Refining the see/hear/
feel building blocks
Each sensory modality is designed to ‘per-
ceive’ certain basic qualities called submodal-
ities, of the experience it represents (Bandler
& MacDonald 1988; Pasztor 1998; Hale-Han-
iff & Pasztor 1999). Visual submodalities refer
to qualities such as: location in space, relative
size, hues of color or black and white, pres-
ence or absence of movement, rhythm, degree
of illumination, degree of clarity or focus, flat
or three-dimensional; associated or dissoci-
ated (seeing oneself in the image, or viewing
from a fully associated position). Auditory
submodalities refer to qualities such as loca-
tion, rhythm, relative pitch, relative volume,
content: voice, music, noise. Kinesthetic sub-
modalities include such qualities as: location
of sensations, presence or absence of move-
ment (and if moving, the physical locations of
sequential sensations), the type of sensations:
temperature, pressure, density, duration,
moisture, pervasiveness of body area
involved, sense of movement and accelera-
tion, changes in direction and rotation.
Submodalities are distinctions that sepa-
rate experiences from one another. As such,
their significance comes to bear only when we
contrast submodalities of images that repre-
sent different experiences. To illustrate this,
let us look at the submodalities of different
experiences of my husband, specifically at
how different contexts are manifested in com-
pletely different sets of submodalities. My
husband is an architect and he is quite profi-
cient in geometry. First, here is what he
reports regarding his experience of abstrac-
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
tion: “As part of a math problem involving tri-
angles, an abstract triangle occurs first as a
fuzzy shape without any material ‘body.’ It
doesn’t have a surface; not even a clear bound-
ary. Its size is also changing between a couple
of inches to one or two feet. It is quite far from
my face and its distance is unspecific but it is
still in the room. As a consequence, its shape,
size, and location can easily be manipulated.
As it is manipulated, such as made equilateral
or rotated, these parameters change rapidly.
The boundary becomes more defined, the size
concrete, and the distance fixed. It still
remains, however, a line-drawing without a
body or surface. It is always a colorless figure,
either gray or black and white.” In contrast,
for my husband imagining an emergency tri-
angle on the road propped up behind a car “is
a vivid picture with concrete shape, thickness,
material, etc. It is red with white edges in flu-
orescent colors set against the gray asphalt
background. I see it at a distance of 10 feet in
life size, that is, the same size I would probably
see it driving by and looking at it from this
same distance. I feel some anxiety in my stom-
ach as I probably connect this picture uncon-
sciously with a car break-down or an acci-
dent.”
Sensory strategies:
sequences of see/hear/
feel blocks leading to a
particular outcome
Our thought processes are organized in
sequences of images that have become consol-
idated into functional units of behavior lead-
ing to a particular outcome and often exe-
cuted below the threshold of consciousness.
They are called sensory strategies (Dilts et al.
1980) Each image triggers another image or a
sequence of images. For example, you hear X’s
name, this triggers your remembering X’s
face, close up, somewhat distorted, and pink-
ish red, which, in turn, triggers a negative feel-
ing. Over time, each image or sequence of
images comes to serve as a stimulus that auto-
matically triggers other portions of the per-
ceptual or recalled experience it represents.
The creation of such triggers happens
through learning and depends on various
complex subjective, social, cultural and other
factors. I will illustrate the idea of sensory
radical constructivism
strategy with a few examples from a pilot
project I conducted in the academic year
1999–2000 with a class of fourth graders with
the aim of teaching them SEL and through it,
awareness of their mental processes while
solving math problems.
Ramon chose the following problem to
solve: Which measure is the best estimate to
describe the length of the salamander below
(picture followed text)? Circle the best estimate:
3 inches 3miles 3 pounds.
Here is what he reported: “What I did was
picture a huge ruler in front of my face and I
saw the numbers 1,2,3,4,5,… I looked at the
picture [in the book] and compared it with 3
inch and it was right. Besides, pounds is
weight and miles is larger than inch.”
Kevin’s strategy for implementing a pat-
tern is also quite remarkable. I asked the class
to multiply 1 × 1 (= 1), 11 × 11 (= 121), 111 ×
111 (= 12321), and 1111 × 1111 (= 1234321).
Then I asked them to continue the pattern.
Kevin reported the following for calculating
11111 × 11111: “First I looked, then [knock-
ing with his left hand on his head just above
his left ear] I heard ‘tap, tap-tap, tap-tap-tap,
tap-tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap-tap-tap, and
then back down tap-tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap,
tap-tap, tap.” He followed this by writing
123454321.
We each have our strategies in terms of
what we see, hear, or feel, of getting out of bed
in the morning, multiplying two numbers,
deciding when to buy gas, or knowing that
something is right. For example, Melanie in
my pilot project repeatedly demonstrated a
distinct problem solving strategy that lets her
know that the result “is right.” Let us look, for
example, how she solved the following multi-
ple choice problem: Alana entered the county
spelling bee. She spelled 47 words correctly
before she made a mistake. If she had spelled
three more words correctly, she would have
spelled twice as many words as last year. How
many words did she spell correctly last year? A.
25 B. 27 C. 32 D. 35
Here is how Melanie explained her solu-
tion (in terms of what she saw, heard or felt)
in her homework: “I added each number to
itself and 25 + 25 = 50. The problem says 47
then + 3 = 50. I did not feel anything but in
my head I saw 47 + 3 = 50. I also saw that 50
was really gold and yellow and it was blinking
and heard it beep. Beep, beep, beep, beep it
sounded really fast and loud. My head was
103
 educational
CONCEPTS
here [smiley face] and the numbers were here
[smiley face below the first smiley face, shifted
to the right, suggesting that she saw them in
front, somewhat to the side]. The numbers
were that big. The other numbers were black
besides 50. The numbers were very clear. I saw
the numbers for about a minute. I saw the
numbers after the question. I saw the num-
bers in numbers not letters. The same thing
happened with 25 + 25 = 50.”
In my pilot project, I often asked the kids
to “try on” each other’s sensory strategies. By
doing so, they were by comparison able to
gain more awareness of their own strategies. I
was amazed at the ease with which the kids
adopted Melanie’s decision strategy of seeing
the correct answers blink.
Tools for separating the
teacher/investigator’s
meaning from that of
the student
Just as cognitive organisms can never match
their conceptual and sensory organizations of
experience with the structure of an indepen-
dent objective reality because they simply do
not have access to any such reality, so can we,
teachers, never match the model we have con-
structed of the students’ conceptualizations
and sensory strategies with what actually goes
on in their head. The best we can do is apply
von Glasersfeld’s principle of fit by constantly
calibrating information and feeding it back to
the students to test for accuracy and recogni-
tion, and accordingly adjusting our models.
How can we do this? How can we make sure
that we separate our own meanings from
those of the students?
For one, while attending to the students,
we, as teachers, can pay attention to the com-
munication process, not just the content.
While content generally refers to what is
talked about, or why it is talked about, process
refers to the how of the way problems and
solutions are communicated. Process, or pat-
tern-based distinctions occur at different log-
ical levels of communication than content-
based distinctions do (Bateson 1972). Attend-
ing only to content makes it far more likely
that the teacher will associate elements of the
student’s communications with her own pri-
vate meanings rather than with the student’s.
104
By also attending to process rather than only
to content, the teacher can detect order or pat-
tern, using other ways of knowing besides
rational logic, such as attending to physiolog-
ical and language cues.
Although sensory experience is simulta-
neously available to all senses, people attend
to various aspects of see-hear-feel experience
at different times, which is manifested in their
language. For example, let us take the case of
two children trying to work together on a
mathematics problem. One child does “not
see” what they are supposed to do, while the
other states she doesn’t get “a feel” for what
they are supposed to do. In this scenario,
communication flow is obstructed because
each child is attending to a different sense sys-
tem, or logical level of experience (Bateson
1972). By noticing this, the teacher can help
the children translate their experience so it
can be shared and attention can again flow
freely. Sensory system mismatches often take
place between teachers and children. For
example, if a child says, “Your explanation is
somewhat foggy,” the teacher’s response of
matching the visual system by asking “What
would it take to make it clearer?” might be a
better fit than the kinesthetic mismatch of “So
you feel confused?”
People’s sensory strategies are processes
that cause “changes in body state – those in
skin color, body posture, and facial expres-
sion, for instance – [which] are actually per-
ceptible to and external observer.” (Damasio
1994, p. 139). These physical reactions are
important cues for the external observation
and confirmation of people’s sensory strate-
gies. The primary behavioral elements
involved are: language patterns, body posture,
accessing cues, gestures, and eye movements
(Dilts et al. 1980; Pasztor 1998; Hale-Haniff &
Pasztor 1999).
Attending to the sense system presup-
posed in people’s language is based on the
assumption, derived from constructivist ther-
apy case studies and literature, that sensory
experience or “the report of the senses”
reflects the interaction between body and
mind, and that one can attend to communi-
cation behavior as a simultaneous manifesta-
tion of sensory experience. For example, con-
structivist therapies are particularly
successful in using linguistic metaphors such
as “That’s a murky argument,” “Things were
blown out of proportion” or “Shrink the
radical constructivism
problem down to size” (visual); “This is an
unheard of solution,” “It has a nice ring to it”
or “He talks in circles” (auditory); and “It feels
right,” “The solution hit me” or “This is hot
stuff ” (kinesthetic), as an expression of peo-
ple’s sensory experiences (Bandler & Mac-
Donald 1988; Pasztor 2004b).
Most often, we do not need training to
understand the language of behavioral cues.
For example, if a person is using gross body
movements – large motor movements com-
pared to fine motor movements – we instinc-
tively know what the relationship between
level of detail and abstraction in the submo-
dalities of his internal processing is. It would
be really odd for that person to say, “I got the
details, now give me the big picture.” The
more precise the body language, the more
precise the “chunk size” of information the
person is processing. We can also tell the high
degree of detail by the narrowing of the gaze –
it’s almost as if the person was focusing on a
particular area of the fine print as opposed on
a diffused thing, like noticing a page or a com-
puter screen. Duration and intensity of gaze,
coordination of eye and head movements,
head tilt and angle, chin orientation (up,
down and middle) – some of these are access-
ing cues. They might tell us the state that peo-
ple are in, the configuration of their attention,
level of detail, what they are attending to.
Sometimes people lean their head to one side
when they are receiving new information, and
to another side when it is “a rerun.” Noticing
these cues can be very helpful to see that the
person is receptive to what we’re saying or
when their system is closing down a bit. In the
latter case, how can we shift the way we are
presenting information so that they open
back up again?
Let us say a person wanted to learn the sub-
ject area and we noticed their physiology
starting to shut out new information. Being
able to map the precise point where they shut
down and to figure out what was going on that
caused them shut down can be helpful to
facilitate their getting back in state.
Awareness of behavioral cues also has the
benefit of dispelling misconceptions that par-
ents and teachers often have about the chil-
dren’s behavior. You have probably heard par-
ents or teachers say to their children, “The
answer is not on the ceiling!” while forcing
them to look down on their notebooks when
doing their homework or taking a test. In
Constructivist Foundations
 educational
CONCEPTS
doing so they inadvertently keep the children
from accessing information visually and
instead lock them into the kinesthetic modal-
ity. This is of particular significance in math-
ematics, where visualization is often the key to
solving a problem. You have probably also
heard parents or teachers say to their children
“look at me when I talk to you.” When people
listen, they have a natural tendency to turn
their ear toward the sound source, so facing it
will not come naturally to them. Sometimes
we force our children to look at us while we
talk, and then we complain that “you haven’t
heard a word of what I said, have you?” You
have also probably heard parents or teachers
say to their children, “Stand still when I talk to
you!” While I do not have much room here to
discuss behavioral cues in much detail, I want
to emphasize that being able to recognize
their correlation to internal processing might
be a critical tool for helping someone access
optimal learning states. It may also be all it
takes to categorize a child as “gifted,” as
opposed to “at risk.”
Democratization of
math education:
Utilizing SEL
The premise for utilizing SEL is that if the
teacher embodies the distinctions of subjective
experience that encompass SEL in her neurol-
ogy and mindfully reflects them in her com-
munication with the students, then she is able
to share the students’ experiences at a deep
sensory level and thus she is able to literally
“make more sense” of her students. A some-
what humorous incident exemplifies this. I
presented to my pilot project class the follow-
ing problem: “Imagine a five by five by five
cube [made of unit cubes]. Paint is poured
down over the top and the four sides. How
many [unit] cubes would
have paint on them?” While
some kids said, “All,”
some others felt real con-
fused. Upon eliciting
their see-hear-feel expe-
riences using the distinc-
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
tions of SEL, I was able to understand that the
kids who had said, “All,” had imagined a thin-
ner paint that got underneath the cube and
into the cracks between the unit cubes, while
the ones who felt confused, imagined the
paint “too” thick and concluded that it my not
cover the cube evenly enough to have whole
unit cubes covered. Ultimately, I was able to
separate students’ images of the paint from
mine, and thus realize that I had actually spec-
ified the problem poorly.
The key to utilizing SEL is to model stu-
dents’ subjective experience to help them
amplify successful learning states by bringing
them into consciousness, and, if necessary, to
help them shift un-resourceful learning states
so that they become resourceful.. The premise
is that experiences are like a series of domi-
noes: the more dominoes are falling, the more
difficult it is to break un-useful learning pat-
terns. If we can find the first domino or what
has knocked down the first domino, so to
speak, then the person has much more choice
than when his negative response – be it anger,
frustration, or helplessness – is real high. It is
much more likely that a student has choice
while his response to a negative state of learn-
ing is still small, and it gives him a sense of
control to be able to change it. Through the
process of modeling students’ experiences we
can slow down their processing so they are
able to gain conscious control over their sen-
sory strategies and thus gain conscious math-
ematical competence.
By rooting mathematics understanding
in each student’s indi-
vidual sensory
experi-
ences, we
are shift-
ing the
responsibil-
ity for success in
radical constructivism
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ana Pasztor is Professor of Computer Sci-
ence at Florida International University in
Miami. She earned her doctorate in mathe-
matics at Darmstadt University, Germany.
Presently, she teaches classes in logic, com-
puter ethics, and cognitive science. She has
numerous refereed publications in a wide
range of areas such as abstract algebra, log-
ics of programming, artificial intelligence,
requirement engineering, design, and more
recently, the structure of subjective experi-
ence, cognitive alignment in women in math
and science, and cognitive issues in mathe-
matics education. Her most recent research
concerns constructivism as it relates to con-
sciousness studies in cognitive science and
pragmatics, as well as the implementation of
constructivist principles in the school math-
ematics classroom. Ana Pasztor is also a
Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic
Programming (NLP). She has worked on re-
defining NLP within the constructivist para-
digm in a way that allows her to embody
and apply its models in a congruent and
consistent way.
mathematics from the students back to those
who guide and lead the process of co-con-
structing knowledge. This, in turn, should
radically change prevailing beliefs about
who should be studying mathematics and
who should be successful at it: everybody has
access to understanding, not just those who
possess the “math gene” – it should not be
socially acceptable anymore to fail in mathe-
matics.
Acknowledgements
I gratefully acknowledge the support of the
National Science Foundation grant CNS-
0454211 with the CATE Center at Flor-
ida International University. I would
also like to thank Mary Hale-Haniff for
having accompanied and
often guided me on my
voyage through para-
digms.
105
 educational
CONCEPTS
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Received: 24 August 2006
Accepted: 2 December 2006
Constructivist Foundations
 educational radical constructivism
CONCEPTS

The Epistemic Relativism of Radical

Constructivism: Some Implications
for Teaching the Natural Sciences
Andreas Quale A University of Oslo (Norway) <andreas.quale@ils.uio.no>

word here is “cognitive”: many of the objec-

Purpose:The relativism inherent in radical constructivism is discussed.The epistemic tions raised against RC arise from a failure to
positions of realism and relativism are contrasted, particularly their different approaches distinguish between cognitive and non-cog-
to the concept of truth, denoted (respectively) as “truth by correspondence” and “truth by nitive knowledge.
context.” I argue that the latter is the relevant one in the domain of science. Thus, the notions of cognition, and of cog-
Findings: Radical constructivism asserts that all knowledge must be constructed by the nitive vs. non-cognitive knowledge, need to be
individual knower.This has implications for teaching, here imagined as a sharing of knowl- clarified. The Oxford English Dictionary
edge between teacher and students: it should be done, not by “reporting the true facts” (1996) defines cognition, rather tersely, as
of whatever is being taught, but rather by “telling a story” about it. An explicit distinction “…knowing, perceiving or conceiving, as an
is made between the notions of cognitive and non-cognitive knowledge. It is argued that act or faculty distinct from emotion and voli-
cognitive knowledge (such as in mathematics and science) is characterised by rules that tion.” Let us expand on this:
can be unambiguously agreed on by actors who choose to “play the game”; and hence such First, to avoid any misunderstanding it
knowledge is directly communicable from the teacher to the students. should be emphasised that the terms “cogni-
Implications: In telling the story of science, the teacher can verify that the students “have tion” and “experience,” as used in this paper,
got it right,” even though they are all constructing their knowledge individually. In contrast, have quite different meanings. Any and all per-
for non-cognitive knowledge (emotion, preferences, belief, …) there are no such unam- ceptions (of outside stimuli) and reflections (on
biguous rules to agree on, and therefore it is not communicable in this way: in telling this such stimuli) would classify as instances of
story, the teacher has no way of verifying that the same knowledge is actually being shared. experience, in this very general sense. The term
Conclusion: Science teaching should be carried out in the mode of story-telling; it does cognition, on the other hand, refers to the
not need an epistemology of realism. mental faculty that we use to construct cogni-
Key words: Relativism, truth, scientific epistemology, science education. tive knowledge out of such experiences. In
other words, we need to distinguish between
our experiential world (the totality of all that
Epistemology Note that these propositions make explicit we experience, at any one moment) and the
reference to cognitive knowledge, and to cog- knowledge that we construct on the basis of our
vs. ontology: nition as the procedure for gaining such experiences: this knowledge can then be of the
knowledge. cognitive kind (of which science is the prime
The role of cognition Proposition #2 is the problematic one; it is example), or it can be non-cognitive.
The theory of Radical Constructivism (RC) frequently interpreted (by the critics) as Cognitive knowledge is based on reason-
has generated considerable controversy implying that learning cannot give us knowl- ing, using rules and procedures that can be
within the philosophy of science and science edge of the real world! It highlights a distinc- agreed on and communicated. (Prime exam-
education. This is to a large extent due to its tion between issues of epistemology (the ples are, of course, science and mathematics.)
position of epistemic relativism, emerging nature of human knowledge) and ontology On the other hand, non-cognitive – some-
from the two fundamental propositions of (existence, or being). Specifically, it maintains times called “affective” or “emotive” – knowl-
this theory put forward by Ernst von Glasers- that ontological knowledge (e.g., about the edge deals with personal experiences that can-
feld (1995): existence of an objective reality) is based on not be communicated: emotion, volition,
1. Knowledge is not passively received, but is preferred belief, and as such is not within the preferences, beliefs, etc. A simple example,
actively built up by the cognizing subject. scope of cognition. It does not deny the possi- illustrating this difference: I can know (cogni-
2. The function of cognition is adaptive, and bility of an objective reality, existing indepen- tively), and communicate to you, how New-
serves the subject’s organization of his/her dently of all subjects, but asserts that it is in ton’s law of gravity operates, and how it
experiential world, not the discovery of an principle not possible to obtain cognitive describes observable features of the Solar Sys-
objective ontological reality. knowledge of such an entity. The operative tem; and I can know (non-cognitively), but

Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3 107

http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
 educational
CONCEPTS
not communicate to you, how it feels for me
to like a particular piece of music.
Let us be a little more specific, to illustrate
this distinction (between cognitive and non-
cognitive knowledge) in more detail: A per-
son can experience the act of observing and
studying a concrete physical process – say, a
body falling under gravity. But this experience
does not, in itself, constitute cognitive scien-
tific knowledge. Such knowledge must be con-
structed by applying the agreed rules of sci-
ence: here, measuring times and distances of
falling, and establishing quantitative relations
between these. And in addition, this activity
(of studying falling bodies) can also generate
many kinds of non-cognitive knowledge,
such as feelings of satisfaction (on the experi-
ence of understanding the scientific content)
or frustration (at not getting it right).
This raises another question, of impor-
tance for science education. It has been pro-
posed by some authors that non-cognitive
knowledge of this kind is indeed relevant for
the students, and hence should be included
under the heading of science, in the hope of
making it more “relevant” and palatable to
them. Now, this is a matter of educational
strategy – a choice of pedagogical policy, so to
speak – and therefore not arguable in scien-
tific terms. So, let me just state my position on
this issue: Science is an ambitious human
enterprise, where we use our cognitive abilities
to construct knowledge designed to make
sense of certain parts of our experiential
world. Note that this does not disparage the
importance of non-cognitive aspects of
engaging in scientific activity: the sense of
wonder, the feeling of relevance and personal
involvement, the satisfaction of understand-
ing natural processes and using them to make
devices to control our environment, etc.
These aspects surely play a large part in both
scientific research and the learning of science.
But they should not be conflated with science
itself – in very simplistic terms, I am propos-
ing that it is useful and valuable to maintain a
distinction between what is to be learnt and
our various motivations for learning it!
The defining propositions #1 and #2 imply
that the conception of knowledge in RC is
inherently individualistic: each person must
confront her own experiential world, defined
as the totality of her individual perceptions
and reflections, and construct her knowledge
of the world from that. Thus, acquisition of
108
knowledge is a strictly individual enterprise,
and the knowledge obtained will reside in the
knower: i.e., the person who is in possession
of said knowledge. Note, however, that this
individualistic view of knowledge, as con-
structed by and residing in the individual
knower, should not be taken to imply that RC
rejects the social aspects of learning! On the
contrary, it is recognised that the construc-
tion of knowledge by an individual is always
done in a social environment, which will con-
strain the learning process. One might say
that the social experiential world, which
includes other people, provides an ontological
framework for the individual’s construction of
knowledge. This is an important issue in RC,
but it will not be further discussed here; the
present paper will focus on the individualistic
aspects of learning and knowledge, as indi-
cated above.
The question then arises: “How is it possi-
ble to communicate and share such individual
knowledge – say, between teacher and stu-
dent, or between scientific co-workers?” As
we shall see, this is where the cognitive/non-
cognitive distinction becomes important.
Relativism vs. realism:
The notion of truth
RC features an epistemic relativism, rejecting
the idea that cognitive knowledge can have an
ontological underpinning – that it can be
knowledge of an objective reality of some
kind. And, as we know, the word “relativism”
is often used in academic discourse with
strongly negative connotations.
In the present context, the opposing
epistemic positions of realism and relativism
may be described briefly as follows:
[ Realism asserts that there exists an objec-
tive physical reality independently of
human observers, and that science can
attain true knowledge of this reality – i.e.,
discover an objectively true representation
of it.
[ Relativism asserts that it is not cognitively
meaningful to speak of such an objective
reality. Any piece of knowledge is (and
must be) constructed by individuals, for
some specific purpose and in some partic-
ular context; and its truth value can then
only be determined relative to this purpose
and context.
radical constructivism
Note that this distinction makes explicit
reference to the notion of truth. Indeed, much
of the criticism against relativism – and thus
also against RC – arises from a perception that
it, in some sense, “denies truth.” So, let us take
a closer look at this notion.
First, a relativist epistemology does not
deny the possibility of obtaining knowledge
of the world. On the contrary, it allows us to
gain such knowledge – generally consisting of
both cognitive and non-cognitive elements.
The issue here is the truth value of this knowl-
edge: whether it can be said to be true, in some
sense.
Philosophical arguments addressing truth
values are commonly based on the so-called
correspondence theory of truth. This asserts
that a proposition is true if it gives a correct
description of (some aspect of) the real world.
It is then often assumed that knowledge itself
must imply truth: a proposition p that some-
one knows to be true, has to be true. To avoid
tautological reasoning, one introduces the
notion of knowledge as “justified true belief ”:
it is not enough that somebody knows some-
thing – there must also be some justification
for believing this knowledge to be true.
This theory raises difficult questions, espe-
cially when applied to scientific knowledge.
For instance, it tends to continually demote
past true knowledge, as science evolves with
time. Thus, scientists some two centuries ago
believed in the phlogiston theory of fire – in
fact, they knew this theory was true. Nowa-
days, however, it is regarded as false, i.e., as not
describing the nature of fire correctly. So, it
seems that the knowledge (true belief) of that
time was not really justified. But what then of
our present knowledge? Is it true (justified
belief) – or at least more true (more justified)
than previous beliefs were? How can we know
that a given justification, offered in support of
some belief, is in fact good enough? Is scien-
tific knowledge approaching, in some sense,
true knowledge about the universe? How can
we recognise this true knowledge, if and when
we arrive there? How can we even know when
we are “getting closer” to it?
The issue here is: does the notion of true
knowledge make sense, as an objective
descripton of the world we experience? Here
the epistemic positions of realism and relativ-
ism give sharply different answers: realism
says yes, while relativism says no! RC, being a
relativist theory, rejects the correspondence
Constructivist Foundations
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CONCEPTS
theory (with its associated notion of justified
true belief), and its conception of objective
truth. Instead, it adopts the relativist
epistemic position of truth by context. This
states that a proposition cannot be true or
false in itself (i.e., objectively), but only rela-
tive to some given context: a conceptual
scheme, a social group or practice, a personal
conviction, …
Examples of this abound in mathematics
and science. Consider e.g., this proposition:
the interior angles of a triangle add up to 180
degrees. This is true in Euclidean geometry,
i.e., in the context of the Euclidean geometric
axioms, but false in (say) elliptic geometry,
which has a different axiomatic base. Another
example: The universe is many billions of
years old, as agreed by most scientists today,
or only some six thousand years old, as at least
some creationists1 believe. Here both sides
would presumably claim that they know their
position to be the correct one – or, at least, to
be more correct than that of the other. The
point is that, from the viewpoint of RC, the
truth values of the two positions are defined
relative to different contexts; and hence each
of them can lay claim to being true, relative to
its context.
Teaching:
A sharing of knowledge
RC states that each individual learner must
construct her own knowledge, without any
objectively defined guidelines for the “right
way” to do this. Once this is accepted, it is
immediately apparent that one needs to reap-
praise the role of the teacher in the educa-
tional process. One may even ask, rhetori-
cally: Do we really need teachers, in the
traditional sense – i.e., persons with knowl-
edge of some topic, who have the responsibil-
ity of conveying this knowledge to the learn-
ers? Or, should the “constructivist teacher”
just make the relevant material available to
the learners, and surrender to them the
responsibility of learning – in effect, let them
“teach themselves,” by individually construct-
ing their knowledge through a processing of
perceived data (which they will do anyway,
according to RC!) In short: is teaching, in the
classical sense, even possible in RC?
In general, teaching may be defined as:
action by an agent (the teacher) to influence
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
the learning process of a recipient (the
learner). The teacher has an agenda – to con-
vey to the learner a certain body of (cognitive
or non-cognitive) knowledge. Hence, con-
trary to what is often claimed, there is no
requirement in RC of “learner indepen-
dence”: while it is true that learners will con-
struct their own knowledge (since that is how
all learning is done), it is the teacher’s task to
try to guide this process of construction in the
right direction – and it is the teacher who
decides which direction is “right” here! Thus,
the teacher is in possession of a certain body
of knowledge that she wants to share with the
learners.
(Note that it is implicit in this scenario of
teaching that the students also possess a cer-
tain autonomy: they are, in principle, free to
accept or reject the insights that the teacher is
inviting them to share with her. Our obliga-
tion as science teachers is to teach as best we
know how: use our ability to empathise with
the students, present the material in a way
adjusted to their level of preknowledge, striv-
ing for original and “fresh” approaches, etc.
But even so, we may observe that some stu-
dents will indeed “fail,” and drop out, for a
variety of reasons: they find science to be
uninteresting, or even unattractive; they feel
that it is too difficult, and not worth the effort;
they decide that they are more interested in
engaging in something else; etc. And this is
their right; we (the teachers) are not required,
or obliged, to force science onto them, if they
choose not to accept it!)
How can individual knowledge of any kind
be meaningfully shared between knowers?
The answer offered by RC is: by personal
interaction, within the framework of a com-
mon language. Through a continual process of
socialisation into various groups (family
members, work-place colleagues, fellow stu-
dents, etc.), each one of us learns to attach
meanings to particular words, and to expect
that other members of the group will also
attach similar meanings to them. This enables
us to interact, communicate and share knowl-
edge, making the tacit assumption that we are
“talking about the same thing.” However, this
notion of sharing does have limitations: We
may discover, in the course of this interaction,
that we are not “on the same wave length”
after all, contrary to what we had initially
assumed. In the words of von Glasersfeld
(1995): “Two individuals do share their
radical constructivism
knowledge, until (perhaps) something hap-
pens in the interaction between them that
leads them to discover that they do not!”
For this notion of sharing, the distinction
between cognitive and non-cognitive knowl-
edge becomes important. Cognitive knowl-
edge (e.g., of science) is based on rules of rea-
soning, as noted above; hence it can be shared,
in the sense that two individuals can agree to
“play by the same rules.” Non-cognitive
knowledge, on the other hand, derives from
individual experiences: volition, emotions,
preferences, beliefs, etc.; and here there are no
rules of reasoning to agree on! In this case,
there is no direct sharing of experiences; a
person can have no idea whether another has
the same experience as she has. A simple
example: a believer (in a particular religion)
cannot communicate to another person how
it feels to experience this belief. And even
when the two claim to share their faith, they
have no way of checking whether they actually
do: all they can do is to use the same language,
with words describing the faith, and assume
that they both “mean the same thing” by those
words.
Returning to the issue of teaching: If
knowledge (of any kind) is of such an individ-
ual and private character, how can it be
taught, i.e., conveyed by a teacher to her stu-
dents?
The answer, as proposed by RC, will
depend on the type of knowledge in question.
For cognitive knowledge, the teaching will
require demonstrating “the rules of the
game”: the methodology used to deal with the
content matter of this knowledge. The mes-
sage conveyed to the students would then, in
effect, be: “These rules govern the material to
be studied here; if you want to work in this
field, you must learn them, and play by them.”
(A crude analogy: If you want to become pro-
ficient at chess, you must learn the rules of this
game, and practise them by playing often…)
Science, in particular, is an example of cogni-
tive knowledge, defined by a certain method-
ology generally denoted as “scientific”: data,
hypothetic-deductive reasoning, theoretical
models, observational techniques, computa-
tional procedures, etc. In this perspective, the
teaching of science is about demonstrating sci-
entific methodology to the students, and
training them in using it.
Non-cognitive knowledge, on the other
hand, will contain elements that cannot be
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CONCEPTS
conveyed by such demonstrable rules. As a
concrete example, consider a school of the
performing arts, teaching a course in music
appreciation. Here there are indeed some rules
to be demonstrated: structural elements such
as musical scales and schemas of composi-
tion, how to play a given instrument, etc. – all
examples of cognitive knowledge. But these
rules cannot by themselves make evident the
quality of the music that one is invited to
appreciate – the students cannot be taught,
solely through using the rules, to enjoy the
music! The teacher may feel (i.e., know, non-
cognitively) that she enjoys listening to A, but
does not care much for B. However, there is no
way she can communicate the feeling of this
preference to the students: i.e., demonstrate
to them that they should also prefer A to B!
What she can do is tell them about her expe-
rience with the music, invite them to listen to
it, and try to inspire in them an enjoyment
that fits with her description. Now, there is of
course nothing wrong with this; much knowl-
edge is of a non-cognitive character, and
hence must be taught in such an “inspira-
tional mode.” Still, it does illustrate an impor-
tant difference between cognitive and non-
cognitive knowledge, in an educational con-
text.
Concerning the teaching of science, this
can be regarded as the act of demonstrating
the rules of science and inviting the students
to “play the game,” as noted above. However,
it should be emphasised that these rules do
not require the epistemic assumption of sci-
entific realism: that science aspires to find a
true description of the natural world. RC
advocates a pragmatic view, where the rules of
science are presented as chosen by scientists,
for the purpose of constructing knowledge of
certain phenomena observed in the world, to
answer certain questions that scientists like to
ask about these phenomena – and then justi-
fied only by the success of these answers.
Another important point: it is not
assumed that these “rules” are manifest and
clear to the students from the start. On the
contrary, they are an integral part of the sci-
ence that is to be learnt. The students are, in
effect, at the beginning of a long process of
knowledge construction, which will (hope-
fully) lead eventually to a better understand-
ing of the various implications of these rules
– i.e., to an improved mastery of science
itself!
110
It is, of course, possible to adopt – as many
science teachers do – the epistemic position of
realism, that the goal of science is to search for
true knowledge of the world, as a proposition
for the students in a science class. But this is
then non-cognitive knowledge: a personally
preferred belief that the teacher is inviting the
students to share with her. It does not follow
from the methodology of science.
Concerning knowledge, one question that
is often asked in the discussion of relativism
vs. realism is: “What is it knowledge of?” This
is a natural question for a realist: to her,
knowledge must be knowledge of something,
with the implication that this “something”
exists independently of the knower – an exter-
nal reality. But a relativist does not think in
those categories: RC takes knowledge to be
constructed by the knower, as a model of
(some part of) her experiential world – and
that is all there is to it! The notion of an exter-
nal reality, existing independently of human
knowers, simply does not apply!
Thus the relativist position is one of instru-
mentalism: the terms entering into proposi-
tions of knowledge are constructed, with the
goal of obtaining a satisfactory description of
the phenomena that are being studied; but the
question of whether these terms refer to
“existing objects” is not answerable by cogni-
tive argumentation, and is therefore dis-
missed as cognitively irrelevant. One simple
example: it is generally agreed that the con-
cepts of electric and magnetic vector fields, and
the Maxwellian field equations that govern
their behaviour, give a good description of
various physical phenomena commonly des-
ignated as electromagnetic; but it does not fol-
low that these vectors actually “exist out
there,” as objects to be discovered and studied.
For one thing, they can be equally well repre-
sented by other mathematical entities: e.g., by
four-dimensional tensors, as is done in rela-
tivity theory.
RC states that knowledge (of any kind)
must be constructed individually by each
learner. So, the teacher’s dilemma is: how can
she control this learning process such as to
make the learners construct the “right”
knowledge – that which she wants to share
with them? The simple answer is: she cannot
– there is no way for her to ensure with cer-
tainty that the learners have “learnt cor-
rectly”! Knowledge cannot be simply trans-
mitted: i.e., imprinted on the learner, to be
radical constructivism
retrieved in identical form for inspection
later. The question is then: “What is the mean-
ing of “shareable knowledge,” if we cannot
check whether it is really shared?”
The answer, again as proposed by RC, is
that knowledge may be considered to be
shared between two persons only insofar as
they can agree that they share it. In other
words: they share it until something happens
that lets them discover that they do not! To
illustrate, imagine that I am in communica-
tion with another person about some topic of
common interest to us both. It may then
appear to me that the two of us are in com-
plete agreement on our knowledge of this
topic – until the other says (or does) some-
thing that reveals to me that her understand-
ing of the matter is different from mine! Of
course, it may be that this never happens; if so,
I should remain satisfied that the two of us do
indeed share this knowledge. The same may
also hold vice versa, for the situation as seen
from the other’s point of view; and in that
case, we should have a mutual sharing of the
knowledge.
Loosely speaking, then, we share, to the
extent that we think we do! This statement
simply serves to highlight the unavoidable
limitation on our capability, as human beings,
to “know each other’s minds.” In practice, it
does not constitute a problem. For instance,
the practitioners of any given academic disci-
pline will for all practical purposes share (in
this sense) the established knowledge charac-
terising that discipline – indeed, this mutual
sharing may be taken to provide a working
definition of the term “established knowl-
edge.” (For instance, one would not expect
two scientists, both working within the field
of chemistry, to suddenly discover that they
do not have the same understanding of the
periodic table of elements!)
Having established the concept of knowl-
edge sharing as fundamental in education, we
now turn to the issue of how such sharing
can be attained through the act of teaching.
The question is: “Granted that the teacher
cannot control the learning process going on
in the minds of her students, how can she at
least try to influence it – i.e., convey her
knowledge to the learners, to achieve a
mutual sharing of it between her and them?”
This is, of course, just another version of the
age-old question: “What characterises good
teaching?”
Constructivist Foundations
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CONCEPTS
Teaching:Telling a story
The traditional notion of reality, as having an
absolute and demonstrable existence inde-
pendent of human construction, is rejected
by RC – at least, as an ontological basis for
cognitive knowledge. Instead, the theory pre-
fers to speak of “our common experiential
world,” highlighting the basic epistemic
premise of the theory: that it is precisely this
world that we can experience and obtain cog-
nitive knowledge of, not some abstract “real-
ity” hiding behind the scene of our perception
and construction.
So, how do we teach it? In other words,
how can cognitive knowledge be delivered by
a teacher – i.e., conveyed to, and shared with,
a learner? The answer of RC is that it should
be conveyed in a narrative form: the teaching
of any topic is essentially tantamount to tell-
ing a story about it!
It should be remarked that this is not a
new idea: throughout human history the art
of narration has provided the basic tech-
nique for passing on knowledge of all kinds,
whether by word of mouth or in writing.
Thus, for whatever content to be taught, the
teacher will: (i) demonstrate the “rules of the
game” – for instance, a mathematical frame-
work (relevant for many sciences), or the
system of chromatic scales (relevant for
musical composition); and (ii) “tell a story,”2
using these rules to describe and structure
the content that is to be conveyed. In deliver-
ing this narrative, the narrator (teacher)
must then rely on the power of a common
language – imagery, metaphors, cultural
connotations, etc. – and (in a school scena-
rio, at least) on testing the learners, to check
whether shared knowledge seems to have
been generated.
Now, specifically considering science edu-
cation, we ask: How does RC impact on that?
In particular, we address one criticism often
raised against RC in the context of teaching:
“How can we teach science if we leave the
learners free to construct their knowledge of
it in any way they may fancy? Surely, it is the
teacher’s obligation to keep the learners “on
the right track” – to make sure that they learn
science correctly?”
To answer this, we first note that the con-
troversial nature of RC is particularly appar-
ent in the natural sciences. The conception of
teaching as storytelling would probably not
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
be considered very provocative in most
humanistic and social academic disciplines
(see, e.g., Phillips 2000). The difference
derives from the epistemic nature of the
knowledge that is being taught.
On the one hand, it would seem generally
acceptable to say that knowledge within the
humanistic and social disciplines is generated
and disseminated along the lines of RC: i.e., as
knowledge constructed by individuals, inter-
acting in (and socially constrained by) their
common environment. For instance, one will
generally not be offered definitive and
exhaustive answers to questions like: “What
are the true merits of Shakespeare’s play Oth-
ello?” or “What were the true causes of the
First World War?” On the contrary, such
issues would more often be addressed by tell-
ing a story: presenting and arguing the merits
of evidence and viewpoints bearing on the
topic of discussion, or criticizing related work
as presented by others – with no pretension of
having found the “true” or “final” account of
the matter. Differently put: the humanistic
and social disciplines tend to feature an epis-
temology of relativism, where knowledge is
constructed by the learner, with no claim that
it is possible to attain “objectively true knowl-
edge.”
On the other hand, the epistemic position
traditionally adopted in the natural sciences
has been that of realism, with its assumption
that there exists an objective reality indepen-
dent of human cognition – with an underly-
ing assumption that a scientific theory can be
“right,” in the sense of giving a true or correct
description of this reality. It then makes sense
to look for the Final Theory of physics unify-
ing all known interactions (Weinberg 1993);
and to worry that once we have found the
correct theory, the era of interesting scientific
discovery will be over, since we shall then
have reached the End of Science (Horgan
1996).
So, we ask: “How can the teacher provide
for her students to learn science correctly, if
they are free to construct their knowledge
individually, as claimed by RC? Specifically,
how can she share her knowledge of the sub-
ject with them, if her mode of delivery is to be
that of “telling the story of science” – and then
letting them construct from this story what-
ever they may – instead of informing them of
the “correct facts” (laws, observational data,
etc.) that constitute science?”
radical constructivism
Telling the story of
science
Recall that in RC, knowledge is regarded as a
structure that the learner makes (constructs)
and imposes on her experiential world. In par-
ticular, science (as defined by its methodol-
ogy) is seen as a human project to impose
structure on certain aspects of the world, in
order to better understand and/or control
those aspects. As we all know, this project has
been eminently successful: it has given us sta-
ble, useful and reliable knowledge, offering
hitherto unprecedented understanding and
control of our natural environment! How-
ever, RC maintains that this knowledge can-
not legitimately be considered as (actually or
potentially) “true,” in the sense of reporting
the correct constitution of the natural world.
Differently put: scientific knowledge should
not be regarded as a mapping aiming to give a
faithful representation of nature; rather, it is
like a story, composed and written by scien-
tists to describe those aspects of the world that
they are interested in. In this imagery, then,
science teaching is essentially an act of telling
the story of science. (Of course, this notion of
“teaching as story-telling” may be perceived
by many as being a little vague; a more precise
formulation would be “teaching as a presen-
tation of presently viable structures describ-
ing our experiential world.” On the other
hand, the metaphor of story-telling is an
appealing one; it captures well the spirit in
which all teaching should be done – the shar-
ing of knowledge between teacher and stu-
dents, for mutual enjoyment.)
This conception of science, as a story to be
told, does not fit in well with an epistemology
of scientific realism, where one major goal of
science is to find and report the truth. The act
of telling a story may easily be invested with
negative significations, such as “making it all
up,” or even outright “lying”! Thus, many sci-
ence teachers would probably protest strongly
the claim that they are just telling stories:
“…that may be how things are done in the arts
and humanities, but certainly not in science;
our task is to teach the students the facts of the
real world!” In the relativist epistemology of
RC, however, scientific knowledge is not
designed to give a factually true description of
the world, but to provide a successful model of
it. Indeed, it may well be argued that the con-
structivist (relativist) approach to science
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CONCEPTS
teaching is actually more realistic than the tra-
ditional approach of realism; the latter relies
heavily on purported “facts of the real world,”
which are in effect fictitious – i.e., mind-inde-
pendent metaphysical entities not accessible
to cognitive knowledge sharing.
It may be noted that there are many other
stories, constructed to portray various aspects
of the world. Some are of the academic variety
– say, as produced by the humanistic or social
disciplines. Others are told (in different
media) by writers, artists, performers and
preachers. The crucial point here is that sci-
ence is not to be considered as intrinsically
more “true” or “correct” than any of these
alternative stories. In this light, even the so-
called pseudo-sciences, such as astrology or
pyramidology,3 are just different stories
(which we need not accept!) – not being sci-
ences, they cannot and need not be disproved
by scientific arguments, any more than a
fairytale can or needs! (Except, of course,
when they make claims that can be tested by
the methods of science – and even then, we
can only state that the claims are not sup-
ported by scientific testing.)
Let us elaborate on this second item: sup-
pose that the biology teacher, in teaching
about evolution in her class, discovers that
some of her students are believers in creation-
ism. Should she then try to persuade these
students that they are mistaken – that Dar-
winian evolution gives the correct descrip-
tion, and that the Creation story told in the
Bible is wrong? The answer, from the view-
point of RC, is: “No, she should not – and
indeed she cannot with honesty do so, since
the criteria of being right or wrong do not
apply here!” Her obligation as a biology
teacher is to present to the students the story
offered by biological science: the theory of
evolution, with the arguments and evidence
that support it. If, in the end, the students
decide to stay with their belief in the biblical
explanation as more satisfactory – well, that is
their privilege. It is not a teacher’s responsibil-
ity to convert her students to the “true doc-
trine of science.” Or, more succinctly: The
teacher’s job is to teach, not to preach!
Indeed, this example highlights an essen-
tial difference between these two conceptions
of science teaching: the realist “reporting the
true facts of the world” vs. the relativist “tell-
ing a story to describe the world.” Traditional
science teaching tends to be carried out in a
112
somewhat authoritarian fashion, with the
teacher telling the learners what the world is
really like and requiring that they accept this
as the truth. A story-telling scenario, on the
other hand, leaves more room for the learners
to form their own images and metaphors,
develop and present their own ideas, formu-
late their own explanations – in short, to con-
struct their own knowledge. In fact, I would
propose that one mark of a good storyteller is
that she invites her listeners to join in as the
story unfolds – i.e., to use their imagination to
enrich the narrative by giving colour and tex-
ture to its plot and characters – whether the
medium of delivery is by word of mouth or
written text. This applies to any kind of story
that is worth telling: a fairytale, a novel, a play
at the theatre, etc. and I maintain that it also
applies to the teaching of science.
Note that there is no detailed prescription
of how the story is to be told: i.e., whether the
teacher should lecture (or avoid lecturing),
whether she should encourage the students to
work in groups (or engage them in individual
project assignments), etc. RC does not tell
teachers how to teach. It provides a “back-
ground stage,” as it were, for the act of teach-
ing: reminding the teacher that she is telling a
story, and calling on her to use whatever
instruments (lecturing, group assignments,
etc.) she feels are the best suited for “connect-
ing” with her audience. This requires (on the
part of the teacher) not only a thorough
knowledge of the subject, but also the ability
to empathise with the learners. She must take
into account their preknowledge and precon-
ceptions, level of maturity and receptivity,
and attitudes of interest or indifference – and
then use her narrative skills (choice of lan-
guage, metaphors, tone of voice, etc.), invit-
ing them to construct and present their own
knowledge of what she is trying to tell them,
in such a way as to (hopefully) generate a
mutual feeling that this knowledge is shared
between teacher and learners. In a word, a
good teacher must be a good story-teller!
To conclude, RC asserts that science
should not be taught in the mode of “…pre-
viously people thought (erroneously) … but
now we know (correctly) …” In other words,
the advance of scientific knowledge should
not be represented as a “progression towards
the truth”; we can never know if and when our
knowledge has actually reached this state of
truth, or even how close to it we may be at any
radical constructivism
time. Rather, we should present the advance
of scientific knowledge as a progression in the
kind of stories we tell about nature. The only
guideline for this progression is that the
knowledge produced should respect the con-
straints imposed by our experiential world,
and give satisfactory answers to the questions
we ask – i.e., that it must conform to the “rules
of the game” that determine the form of such
questions at the time of asking. Indeed, only
in this (almost tautological) sense is it mean-
ingful to speak of today’s science as being
“more advanced” than yesterday”s: it is better
suited to answer the questions we are asking
of it today!
Finally, it is worth noting that the rejection
of truth as a valid epistemic category applies
not only to theories of “proper” science, e.g.,
physics or biology, but also to theories of epis-
temology, such as RC itself. Thus, RC should
not be regarded as being “right” or “wrong,”
in the sense of giving a correct or incorrect
description of its subject matter. Rather, it is
(like science) a story told to make a point – and
thus successful only to the extent that the lis-
teners actually feel that the point was worth
making!
The position of RC with respect to scien-
tific epistemology, and the teaching of sci-
ence, may be briefly summed up as follows:
[ Science is, in essence, a powerful and evoc-
ative story that we tell about the world.
This story is well able to stand on its own
feet; it does not need an “objective reality”
to support the knowledge that it offers.
[ Teaching science is not intrinsically differ-
ent from teaching other subjects: the goal
is to convey to the learners a body of share-
able knowledge, and the appropriate
method of conveyance is then narration,
i.e., telling a story.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andreas Quale is associate professor at the
department of Teacher Education and
School Development at the University of
Oslo. In 1974, he received a doctoral
degree in theoretical physics from the
University of Oslo. His present research
interests include the epistemology of
science, with particular application to
teaching physics.
Constructivist Foundations
 educational
CONCEPTS
Postscript
An anonymous referee has raised the following
question: “How do the constructivist princi-
ples, as outlined in the present paper, apply to
the teaching of skills involving rote or practical
learning, such as arithmetic, Latin grammar,
driving a car, or piloting an airplane?” This is
an important issue, and an adequate treatment
of it would require a separate
paper. Here is a very
brief outline of the
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
RC position on this issue, with a particular
view to the teaching of science.
In the approach adopted in the present
paper, the primary aim of science teaching is to
generate scientific understanding and knowl-
edge in the students. RC recommends that this
be done through the medium of story-telling.
However, in the course of the teaching the stu-
dents will inevitably discover that they have to
engage in some rote learning, and some acqui-
sition of practical skills: various mathematical
and/or statistical techniques need to be mas-
tered; a lot of factual information (such as e.g.,
the Mendeleyev table of elements, in
chemistry) must be assimilated; some
training in the use of experimental
hardware and software is neces-
sary; etc. Items of this kind con-
stitute, so to speak, the “rules of
the game,” which any student
has to grasp and follow, in order
to attain knowledge in whatever field
that is being taught. The teacher’s task
is then to guide the students in their
learning of these rules. Her mode of
teaching will still be that of story-
telling, but now with an instruc-
tional component: in effect, she
will demonstrate the material to
her students, and then tell them
that “these are the rules, and you
yourselves will have to make the
effort necessary to master them (by
rote and/or by practising), and fol-
low them, if you want to study sci-
ence!”
In fact, RC argues that this applies
to the teaching of any kind of content,
not only science. There will be certain
skills that have to be
learnt; they may
be of an intellec-
radical constructivism
tual nature (e.g., the mastery of grammar, for
language studies), or more physical skills
(e.g., piloting an aircraft). Any such skill may
then be demonstrated by a teacher, but in the
end the students must acquire it themselves,
through personal effort – it cannot be learnt
by demonstration alone.
Notes
1. Creationism: a doctrine which holds that
God created the world, with the species of
life that inhabit it, much along the lines de-
scribed in the book of Genesis.
2. Or, using a related metaphor: “paint a pic-
ture.”
3. The idea that there are messages of wis-
dom to be found in the measures of the
Great Pyramid in Egypt.
References
Glasersfeld, E. von (1995) Radical construc-
tivism: A way of knowing and learning.
Falmer Press: London.
Horgan, J. (1996) The end of science. Addi-
son-Wesley: New York.
Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition
(1996) Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Phillips, D. C. (ed.) (2000) Constructivism in
education. University of Chicago Press:
Chicago.
Weinberg, S. (1993) Dreams of a final theory.
Random House: New York.
Received: 17 April 2006
Accepted: 27 February 2007
113
anecdotal radical constructivism
OPINION

Viability and Crusty Snow

Between the World of Skiing and Academia
Remembering the Wildspitze Tour in 1998
Theo Hug A University of Innsbruck (Austria,) <theo.hug@uibk.ac.at>
 anecdotal
OPINION
W hen Ranulph Glanville and Alexander
Riegler asked for proposals for contri-
butions for this festschrift, they distinguished
between two types of contribution: academic
papers and “more personal items including
biography, reminiscence and anecdote.”1 If
they had invited me ten years ago, the answer
would have been rather easy. I probably
would have proposed a chapter on some
philosophical or didactical aspects of Ernst’s
theory of knowledge. But now, after the expe-
riences we have had
together, the decision
is not so easy any-
more.
Of course, one
might say that the
editors were aware of
Ernst’s distinction
between rational the-
ory and scientific rea-
soning on the one
hand and the worlds
of mysticism and
mystic wisdom on
the other (Glasersfeld
1997): all a contribu-
tor has to do is to
decide whether he or
she is bringing for-
ward rational argu-
ments or telling sto-
ries about cooking,
music, love, moun-
taineering, skiing,
etc. So, what’s the problem?
Well, there is no problem, but there is the
difficulty in allowing for personal items when
focussing on academic interests and in allow-
ing for rational aspects when focussing on
personal items for someone who has had the
chance to get to know Ernst personally. At
least for me the search for apposite words in
English is not easy in view of the successful
interplay between his philosophical ideas, his
handling of everyday problems of life and his
ability to cope with difficult situations. But
let’s give it a try and look back at one of the
most striking experiences we have had
together.2
It was in an academic context that I met
Ernst for the first time. He was invited to our
Institute of Education in Innsbruck where he
gave a seminar and an evening lecture on
2007, vol. 2, no. 2–3
radical constructivism
“Konstruktivismus statt Erkenntnistheorie”
in May 1997 (see Glasersfeld 1998). After the
is the highest summit in Tyrol (3772 m). We
considered a visit to one of the ski-regions,
seminar we had some time for relaxed dis- where on weekends hundreds of people nor-
cussions and I realized that Ernst was also mally spend the day on the slopes and in the
interested in skiing and mountaineering. huts and restaurants around the slopes.
Since all turned out very well, we decided to But the topic was not done. Next day he
plan for another seminar. pulled me aside and asked:
When Ernst came to Innsbruck again in “You didn’t mean what you proposed yes-
spring 1998 we had a little bit more time terday in earnest, did you?”
since there were two seminar parts to com- “Of course, I meant it as a serious pro-
plete. One evening Ernst told us of his skiing posal – not in fun!” I answered.
And I explained
1 2 that 3the “Pitzex-
press”, a funicular
and lifts would bring
us above 3000
meters, where we
would have to go
down 150 meters at
first where we would
then have to put the
skins on our skis.
From there it is less
than two hours to
the summit on an
alpine, but not too
difficult, route
across the glacier.
“Well, in that case
we could try it,” he
said, and we decided
to do so.
After collecting
the equipment
needed, we – Andrea
experiences in Australia and especially those Haller, Eva Hiptmair, Thomas Himmelfre-
in Tyrol. We realized that skiing was an undpointner and I – started the tour to-
important part of his life and that he was able gether with Ernst early in the morning on 9
to give us lots of details about tours and high May 1998.
peaks in the Tyrolean Alps. After a while, I
proposed going for a skiing tour after the Ernst walked the way up as if he had been
seminar, which ended on Friday (8 touring all winter (see Figure 1). It was a
May1998). beautiful day and we had no difficulties in
“Mr. Glasersfeld,” I said, “would you like reaching the ski-depot (see Figures 2–4 and
to go on a skiing tour on Saturday?” cover photo). We were all deeply impressed
“That’d be nice,” he said, “but my physical by the scenery and we were proud that Ernst
condition is not too good and I haven’t been had made it.
skiing a lot recently.” During the break he told us of his experi-
“Well, you know – there are many ences on former tours in the areas we could
options,” I made another effort, “and we see. Needless to say, he knew many more
could even ascend the Wildspitze.” summits than all of us together did.
That was too much for the moment. He After a fine rest period we buckled up our
muttered something between “crazy” and backpacks and started on our way down (see
“kidding” and I thought that I had gone too Figure 5). Ernst enjoyed skiing down with
far, not least because, the Ötztaler Wildspitze wide verves (see Figure 6), sometimes mak-
115
 anecdotal
OPINION
3 A lot of remarkable details and notions
4 have the chance to test the criterion of replica-
ing fun of my “bouncing style.” From time to
time we took short breaks because some of us
got tired (see Figure 7). Obviously, not all of
us made use of the “secret weapon”4 properly
enough.
When we reached the prepared skiing
slopes again we realized that we had to hurry
up in order to catch the last “Pitzexpress”
which would bring us down to the parking
lot. While the others took the normal way
down to the lift Ernst and I decided to take a
short cut. The “short cut” turned out to be a
long way round leading us into a very steep
mogul piste.
Partway, Ernst overturned heavily and
skittered down almost the rest of the scarp.
That was the moment when I cursed my idea
of the Wildspitze tour and was afraid that we
would need a helicopter. But Ernst made an
astonished remark on his downfall and
started strapping his skis again. He said
something like “Jetzt habe ich aber einen
Stern geschlagen!”5
After overcoming some other hurdles we all
arrived back home happily and had pizzas
and some drinks.
Next day, when most of us had sore mus-
cles, Ernst asked who was willing to join him
for skiing (sic!). He and Andrea spent the day
on the Pitztaler slopes while Eva, Thomas
and I needed time out for relaxation.
116
radical constructivism
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
came up when we discussed the Wildspitze
experience. I can recall most vividly Ernst’s Theo Hug is associate professor of
answer when I stated that the fact that he educational sciences at Innsbruck University
coped with the challenges of the tour in such (Austria). His areas of interest include
a bodacious way could be taken as an example media education and media literacy,
of viability. e-education and micro-learning,
“No,” he disagreed vehemently, “If one methodology of qualitative research, theory
manages to go up just one time, it is no exam- of knowledge, and philosophy of science.
ple of viability!”
Well, unfortunately, in this case we did not
tion. If humanity is to find a viable equilibrium
for survival on this planet, both scientists and
The same argument applies to interaction mystics will have to acknowledge that
with snow conditions. One of the most diffi- although the rational coordination of actual
cult types of snow for skiers to deal with is experience and the wisdom gleaned from
called “Bruchharsch” (crusty snow). If one is poetic metaphors are incommensurate, they
able to ski down a hill covered with crusty need not be incompatible. The most urgent
snow just one time without falling down, task seems to be to develop a way of thinking
according to Ernst’s understanding, this does and living that gives proper due to both.”
not count as an example of viability. (Glasersfeld 1997, p. 7)
On the other hand, if one can handle In his writings and even more in his way of
crusty snow effectively and repeatedly, there living, Ernst shows how this can be done. And
are chances that one can deal with difficult sit- when it comes to the point where bridging the
uations and be successful in other areas, too. gap seems impossible or a hurdle cannot be
One year after our Wildspitze experience, overcome, there is a word that might help
Ernst gave an example of such a “transfer of keep the future open: pazienza. Naturally and
competency.” culturally, this refers to another language and
One day, a wheel of the small tractor he another story which may be told on another
uses to transport wood got into a hidden hole occasion.
and the tractor toppled over and began to
burn. Ernst jumped off the tractor as it leaned
over and tried to stop the fire immediately.
Since the wind spread the fire more quickly 5
than he could put it out, he had to call the fire
brigade, which extinguished it quickly.
He took the experience as a proof that one
has to be lucky in order to have really instruc-
tive experiences.
“Of course,” he wrote in an email, “one can
say that ‘there are no fools like old fools.’ But I
say that one has to be familiar with crusty
snow in order to jump off a toppling tractor at
the right moment!”
6
In my view, these examples illustrate that we
need both well-proven procedures and
acquaintanceship with obstacles and special
challenges when we are feeling our way
through interspaces and searching for scopes
of action (cf. Glasersfeld 1996, p. 28). Along
with that, successful ways of combining ratio-
nal efforts and the “worlds of mysticism” are
needed, if we want to enable viability.
Constructivist Foundations
 anecdotal radical constructivism
OPINION

Notes 7
1. The title of this contribution is an attempt
to translate the title of video portrait
“Viabilität und Bruchharsch” (Hug 2000).
2. Needless to say, the descriptions in this
short essay depict selected parts of my ver-
sion of the story. The “Construction of
Memory” (Kumar, Hug & Rusch 2006) is a
complex issue and there are other options
for focussing, foregrounding and version-
ing our Wildspitze tour together with
Ernst.
3. Retrieved from http://www.pitztaler-
gletscher.at/ on 28 August 2006.
4. Of course, I cannot show all pictures and
give away all secrets here. But at this point,
I think it fair to give the Kwizda-Secret away.
Ernst got to know it on the occasion of the
Wildspitze-tour, and he is not the only one
using this wonderful restitutional fluid. Re-
trieved from http://www.kwizda.at/otc/ on
28 August 2006).
5. I do not have a clue as to how this can be
translated aptly. Of course, I know some of
the examples Ernst referred to in his semi-
nars when explaining different uses of the
word “hit.” But I cannot think of something
like “hitting a star” – and “Well, that was a
hard fall!” is not a spot-on translation at all.

References
Glasersfeld, E. von (1996) Grenzen des
Begreifens [Limits of understanding].
Benteli Verlag: Bern.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1997) The incommensu-
rability of scientific and poetic knowledge,
Methodologia 17: 1–7. Retrieved from
http://www.oikos.org/vGknowl.htm on
28 August 2006.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1998) Konstruktivismus
statt Erkenntnistheorie. In: Hug, T. (ed.)
Technologiekritik und Medienpädagogik.
Zur Theorie und Praxis kritisch-reflexiver
Medienkommunikation. Schneider-Ver- http://www.uibk.ac.at/ezwi/research/
lag Hohengehren: Baltmannsweiler, pp. archiv/ezwi1/konstrukt/bestell.html
Copyright
9–21. Kumar, K. J., Hug, T. & Rusch, G. (2006) Con- Photos 3, 4, and 7 by Eva Hiptmair; cover
Hug, T. (ed.) (2000) Viablität & Bruchharsch. struction of memory. In: Volkmer, I. (ed.) photo and photos 1, 2, 5, and 6 by Theo Hug.
Ein Portrait des radikalen Konstruktivis- News in public memory. An international
ten Ernst von Glasersfeld. Innsbruck Lec- study of media memories across genera- Received: 6 October 2006
tures on Constructivism, available at tions. Lang: Frankfurt/M, pp. 211–224. Accepted: 5 February 2007

2007, vol. 2, no. 2–3 117

 cognitive-psychological, sociological radical constructivism
CONCEPTS

Understanding: The Mutual

Regulation of Cognition and Culture
Gebhard Rusch A Siegen University (Germany) <rusch@mefo.uni-siegen.de>

and operations, styles and preferences as it is

Purpose: Demonstrate that cognitive and social approaches towards understanding do
constrained by the cultural environment,
not at all oppose but rather they complement each other. Constructivist concepts of
especially by the partners and counterparts in
understanding paved the way to conceive of understanding as a cognitive-social “mecha-
interactions and communication. The phe-
nism” which mutually regulates processes of social structuration and, at the same time,
nomena of understanding, thus, instance the
cognitive constructions and processing. Findings: Constructivist approaches bridge the
underlying setting of cognitive and social
gap between the cognitive and the social faces of understanding.They demonstrate how
conditions of communicating, acting and
comprehension and cultivation, cognition and cultural reproduction are mutually linked to
interacting. Understanding is the way that
each other by the cognitive-social “mechanism” of understanding. As a consequence, the
cognitive autonomous individuals com-
unavoidable immunisation against communicative demands from others jeopardizes the
mune.
achievements of our communicative culture. Practical implications: Communicators are
even more responsible for success or failure of communication than recipients. Moreover,
as educators they are responsible for both cultural reproduction and the reinforcement of The semantics of
creativity and innovation.This double bind can only be managed with strong and resistant
personal relations.All construction of meaning and all interpretation should be conceived understanding
of as a pro-construction, a hypothetical provisional reading made for the tough going of public
Two dominant meanings of understanding
or scholarly discourse. Original value: Concept of understanding integrating philosophi-
can be observed in ordinary language use:
cal, psychological and sociological approaches within a constructivist theory of communi-
(i) “Understanding” in the sense of compre-
cation and reception. Key words: Understanding, communication, reception, cognition,
hend, access mentally, realize the meaning of
structuration, hermeneutics.
something, have the ability or know how to do
something, have a good command of some-
“Try not to think of understanding as a ‘mental “comprehension” or “information process- thing, have learned something.
process’ at all. – For that is the expression which ing”), the double nature of understanding, This field of meanings characterizes
confuses you.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein (Philosoph- despite more than 2000 years of theorizing, understanding as a psychic process or an
ical Investigations, § 154) still seems to be misunderstood or, eventually, intellectual ability (what the mind does). The
not understood at all. The following reflec- quality of understanding, thus, directly

T helikeconcept of understanding has a Janus-

1
nature. Its shows faces in two differ-
ent, not to say opposite, directions: first, it
offers a psychic or mental face. Understand-
ing appears as a cognitive process or mental
operation ending up with some recognition,
insight, knowledge or discovery. At the same
time, however, the concept of understanding
shows its social and interactional nature when
it comes to learning and to the evaluation of
knowledge, competences or abilities. Some
“authority” – be it mother nature in the case
of the experiments of scientists or a school
teacher in the case of examinations – selects
the viable from all the offered and tested solu-
tions.
As indicated by the history of hermeneu-
tics and by the cognitivist tendency to avoid
the use of “understanding” (and instead say
tions on the semantics of understanding, the
history of hermeneutics and constructivist
concepts of understanding try to demonstrate
that cognitive and social approaches towards
understanding do not at all oppose but rather
they complement each other. Both faces of
understanding match pretty well and together
make up an important part of the big picture
of the mutual regulation of cognition and cul-
ture. The following lines essentially propose
to take understanding as both at the same
time: a special kind of social regulation as it is
constrained by the cognitive autonomy of
actors (i.e., regulation at the social level
through the conditions of cognitive auton-
omy of actors), and as a special kind of cogni-
tive regulation (i.e., regulation at the level of
cognition through social conditions of act-
ing), a social selection of cognitive concepts
depends upon the quality of mental presup-
positions and talents, the quality of cogni-
tions from perception and recognition up to
memory and reasoning.
(ii) “Understanding” in the sense of corre-
spond with someone, congenial thinking and
acting, get along well with someone, have
similar interests or aims, not take something
amiss.
Here, understanding refers to states or
qualities of social relations, a parallel or com-
plementary way of looking at things, a famil-
iarity of reasoning, thinking and acting, a
kind of empathy or closeness originating
from the idea of knowing the points of view,
the motives or the affections of the other.
While the first group of meanings clearly
focuses upon cognitive processes and their
respective qualities the meanings of the sec-

118 Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3

http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
 cognitive-psychological, sociological
CONCEPTS
ond field arrange along the social dimensions
of understanding. Unlike the first set of mean-
ings, which is provided with its own concept,
namely “comprehension,” the second group
crystallizes comparably in a term covering the
range of social meanings of understanding.
This asymmetry, again, may indicate a lack of
attention paid to the social dimension as a
necessary complement. Instead, the social
dimension is subsumed under the cognitive
as a special kind of process or operation,
namely the supposition, imagination or men-
tal simulation of being in the place of the
other, the role-taking (as the interactionists
put it), the change of perspectives or the kind
of mental immersion into the person of the
other (Sich-Hineinversetzen in den anderen).
This is exactly the methodological credo of W.
Dilthey’s hermeneutics. He proposed differ-
entiating the humanities from the sciences,
because nature other than human action, lit-
erature and art, history and politics, etc. does
not follow human intelligence and affection.
The double faces of understanding are no
new achievement. They can already be found
in history. Etymologically, the Grimm Dictio-
nary for older German proves the concept of
understanding (“verstehen”) to have meant
both, “perceive, recognize” and, most inter-
estingly here, “take somebody else’s place,
substitute somebody else” (Grimm & Grimm
1956, Sp. 1660–1701). The Oxford English
Dictionary, too, points to some German roots
of the English “understân” and presents evi-
dence for the meaning of “taking a risk.” Since
the 15th century the common meaning of
“comprehend,” “to be familiar with,” “to
apprehend the character or nature of a per-
son” is accompanied by a social reading,
handed down by a text from the 18th century:
“1745 J. Mason Self-Knowledge I.iii. (1758), 32
Nothing is more common than to say, when a
Person does not behave with due Decency
towards his Superiors, such a one does not
understand himself ” (Oxford English Dictio-
nary, p. 984). “Understanding” is used here in
the sense of “to know one’s place, or how to
conduct oneself properly” (Oxford English
Dictionary, p. 984). The social reading is also
supported by “to give heed, attend to” from
10th to 14th century, and “to stand under,” “to
support or assist; to prop up” from the 12th
up to the 17th century (Oxford English Dic-
tionary, p. 985). Most instructive, however,
with regard to the sociogenetic function of
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
understanding is a meaning from the 16th
century: “to receive intelligence,” and an
example from the 12/13th century: “to be sub-
ject to one” (op.cit., 986).
Summing this up we come to conclude
that the term understanding covers a seem-
ingly inconsistent semantic field including
such different, not to say: contradictory items
as “risk,” “familiarity,” “subordination,”
“apprehension,” “comprehension,” “knowl-
edge,” “support,” “intelligence” or “attention.”
A spotlight at the history of hermeneutics
will show that most of that theorizing con-
tributed to this confusion instead of offering
substantial clarification.
A short history of
hermeneutics as theory
of understanding
Hermeneutics as the theory of understanding
or – in other words – as the art of interpreta-
tion (ars interpretandi) initially originates
from the problem of how to handle written
texts adequately. While in the oral culture the
speaker was the authority who decided on
understanding, the initial source of words and
phrases was no longer present in the case of
writing. The literal culture misses the refer-
ence to some evidence for the assigned mean-
ings usually present in face-to-face communi-
cation in the person of a speaker or author.
Therefore, the ancient ars interpretandi
can be regarded as an immediate reaction to
the rise and distribution of writing, especially
with respect to the asymmetry of the distribu-
tion of literacy among the people: the social
(i.e., religious, political, aesthetical) elites for
centuries kept and cultivated the secret of
writing almost exclusively; they learned to use
writing and scripture to stabilize their power
and govern the illiterate mass of people by
telling and teaching them what was encoded
in the scripture.
The principles of interpretation had been
a matter of debate from the beginning: (i) the
Alexandrine School (e.g., Eratosthenes,
Aristarchos from Samothrake) preferred a
grammatical, rhetorical and etymological
interpretation aiming at the intention of the
author. On the other hand, (ii) the Pergamon
School (e.g., Krates from Mallos) taught an
allegorical interpretation, transferring the lit-
radical constructivism
eral sense of a text into other contexts (i.e., fig-
urative sense).
These two positions were the very first
which – in principle – marked the two possi-
ble poles of the interpretation-debate: (i) The
intentionalist position, which may be charac-
terized as conservative because it sticks to the
principles of oral communication, and (ii)
the allegorist, or “modern” position, taking
the openness or under-determination of the
meaning of written text as a legitimation for a
more creative reading. Both positions, how-
ever, share the view, that writing cannot and
will never be able to stand for itself, but is in
need of interpretation, comment or explana-
tion.
The conflict between these two positions
also dominated the further development of
hermeneutics in the Middle Ages. Most
important are the works of Origines and
Augustine, namely their doctrines of the mul-
tiple senses of the written. Origines distin-
guished three senses of the written: (i) the
somatic – literal, historical-grammatical, (ii)
the psychic – moral, and (iii) the pneumatic –
allegorical, mystical sense. Augustine even
differentiated four senses of the written: (i)
the sensus litteralis, the literal sense, (ii) the
sensus allegorius, the figurative sense, (iii) the
sensus moralis, the moral, ethical sense, and
(iv) the sensus anagogicus, the sense within
the history of salvation. Actually, these doc-
trines were designed to function as strategies
to cope with the increasingly obvious fact of
semantic openness and under-determination
of pragmatically decontextualized writings.
While the number of literate people slowly
increased, the barriers between the tradi-
tional social classes became more and more
fragile, trade and crafts slowly developed the
middle classes, and writing became a social
technique present in all domains of human
action – private and professional. The propo-
nents of the multiple-sense-doctrines – and
that was a kind of trick – at the same time
accepted the semantic openness of writing
and restricted or controlled it by formal crite-
ria. Therefore, the main advantages of these
doctrines were: (i) to harmonize (or neutral-
ize) the extremes of the intentionalist and the
allegorist position by integrating them into a
more abstract position as formal and
methodical principles; (ii) and the most
important aspect: a certain type of relation
between the different senses, namely, congru-
119
 cognitive-psychological, sociological
CONCEPTS
ity, correspondence, accordance, consistency,
etc. represents an abstract, formal, seemingly
logical and controllable criterion for the
appropriateness of interpretations. This step
finally emancipated the ars interpretandi
from the culture of oral communication.
From then on all kinds of interpretations of all
kinds of texts (spoken or written) could be
argued for by formal correctness or adequacy.
The authority of the authors had finally
become totally superfluous. The interpreters,
the commentators, the teachers, etc. – from
then on – presumed this authority.
The doctrine of the consistency of literal,
allegorical, grammatical, etc. dimensions of
readings dominated the hermeneutical the-
ory throughout the Middle Ages. It was prac-
tised as a hermeneutics of problematic pas-
sages of texts, hardly recognizable phrases,
unknown words and terms. It was the so
called hermeneutics of text pieces (Stellen-
hermeneutik).
Actually, this is still the dominating para-
digm of interpretation courses everywhere in
schools and universities – independent from
the changing fashions and so-called methods
of interpretation, e.g., Close Reading, History
of Ideas, Psychoanalysis, Structuralism, New
Criticism, History of Mentalities, Feminism,
Post-Structuralism and Deconstruction.
Despite all their differences all these
approaches set out from the basic assumption
of the coherence of readings of literary texts.
And they must do so, because their plausibil-
ity and persuasive power depends on coher-
ence in the first place. A tour along the lines of
hermeneutical traditions will illustrate this.
At the beginning 19th century Friedrich
Schleiermacher picked up general hermeneu-
tical ideas of the enlightenment period2 and
investigated the problem of understanding
from a philosophical point of view – thereby
strongly influenced by Immanuel Kant’s ide-
alism. In his famous works Hermeneutik und
Kritik (1838) and Über den Begriff der Herme-
neutik, mit Bezug auf F. A. Wolfs Andeutungen
und Asts Lehrbuch (1829) he realised and
emphasized that: (i) understanding written
texts (written language) is not in principle
different from understanding people (spoken
language); (ii) understanding written or spo-
ken text always and unavoidably is a matter of
– as it were – lucky guesses, a matter of hypoth-
eses about the meaning, which in the ongoing
communication or reading process may (or
120
may not) turn out as suitable, consistent,
fruitful or just personally satisfying; Schleier-
macher pointed out that (iii) because one
never knows for sure whether one under-
stands correctly or truly, misunderstanding
has to be taken as the usual (and not as the
exceptional) case; From this he concluded
that, although (iv) working on a text and its
contexts may then reduce the degrees of mis-
understanding, one will never really know
when this work is finished. It is only given up
after some time, mostly for pragmatic rea-
sons.
So, Schleiermacher: (i) generalized
hermeneutics as a theory of understanding of
all kinds of texts; and (ii) universalized mis-
understanding as the natural basis and out-
come of communication.
Almost a hundred years later, Wilhelm
Dilthey elaborated on the psychological
dimensions of understanding. Like Schleier-
macher, he conceptualized the process of
understanding as a reconstructive creation of
the author’s situation, motives, intentions
and actions. Like Schleiermacher, Dilthey
generalized this concept of understanding to
cover all types of communication. But, unlike
Schleiermacher, Dilthey believed in true
understanding among all human beings
across the borders of space, time, history and
culture. This belief, finally, paved the way for
Diltheys most influential – and most disas-
trous – idea: the opposition of the humanities
(Geisteswissenschaften) and the sciences
(Naturwissenschaften). For Dilthey, under-
standing in the sense of going deeply into the
thoughts and actions of the other was the only
adequate way to treat human utterances (ver-
bal or non-verbal). So understanding as the
process of interpretation became the rational
procedure for the explication of human
action, whereas explanation as a kind of syllo-
gistic procedure on the basis of observed reg-
ularities or natural laws (e.g., in the sense of
the Hempel and Oppenheim Scheme)
became the rational tool for explicating all
other natural phenomena.
Martin Heidegger with his existentialist
approach again widened or further universal-
ized the concept of understanding. He
defined “understanding” as a basic and neces-
sary task of human beings in order to realize
her/his own identity as well as the identity of
the environment around him/her. In this
sense, understanding becomes the elementary
radical constructivism
operation one has to perform as a cognitive
being that is thrown into existence. Under-
standing texts, then, is only part of the com-
plex and lifelong process of creating an under-
standing of the world. This view includes all
cognitive activity within the frame of under-
standing. Actually, this is Heidegger’s contri-
bution to universalizing, i.e., existentializing,
the concept of understanding.
Hans Georg Gadamer follows Heidegger
in universalizing hermeneutics. He takes
understanding as a constituent of human social
life. Interpretation, then, has to reflect criti-
cally the historical conditions of understand-
ing and, thereby, has to fuse the intellectual
horizons (Horizontverschmelzung) of
authors and readers across all historical and
cultural borders. This idea is based upon two
– contradictory – assumptions, (i) that histor-
ical conditions of text production are contin-
gent and unique, and (ii) that the interpreter,
who is aware of this, will be able to fully
understand ancient sources by clarifying such
presuppositions. But historical relativism on
the one hand and hermeneutical optimism on
the other hand do not match very well. There-
fore, Gadamer was heavily criticized for this
and other inconsistencies in his work, espe-
cially by Hans Albert.3 Similarly, Albert’s cri-
tique also holds for other conceptions gener-
alizing or universalizing hermeneutics either
as the very basis of the humanities (e.g., Paul
Ricoeur) or as their fundamental method-
ological principle (e.g., Emilio Betti).
The critical-theory approach to under-
standing, as represented by Karl Otto Apel
and Jürgen Habermas (following H. Marcuse
and Th. Adorno), aims at a better, more egal-
itarian and more satisfying social life. One
step to attain this goal is supposed to be a bet-
ter understanding of each other. This, how-
ever, was thought to be achieved by a critical
hermeneutics and symmetrical communica-
tion (i.e., no asymmetry in power, status,
authority etc. among communicants) within
an ideal communicative situation.
The phenomenological and reception-
aesthetics approach in the line of Edmund
Husserl, Roman Ingarden, Wolfgang Iser and
Hans Robert Jauß appears to be a radical
reduction of hermeneutics (i) to the reader’s
or recipient’s perspective and (ii) to the psy-
chological dimension of the reading process.
The author and her/his intentions and mean-
ings are further marginalized. The construc-
Constructivist Foundations
 cognitive-psychological, sociological
CONCEPTS
tion of meaning by readers (in past and
present) becomes the central aspect. But this
approach only seemingly answers the ques-
tion of the proper meaning of texts. Historical
(collections of) documents of reading are,
without any doubt, interesting material. But,
recalling Schleiermacher, we must realize that
these readings are at best lucky guesses. And,
remembering Gadamer, we have to consider
the historical relativity of these readings, too.
Altogether, this means that the basic herme-
neutical problem of understanding another
person or her/his utterances has been compli-
cated even more by reception aesthetics
instead of being solved.
One of the latest developments, decon-
structionism, celebrates a simple sign-theo-
retical insight, namely, that “meaning of a
sign” presupposes the difference between
signs and the difference between sign and des-
ignation. Because of these differences, how-
ever, Jacque Derrida’s sign-philosophy ends
up with the assertion that an understanding
of signs must be absolutely impossible. In this
respect Derrida’s position meets the latest
developments of the German systems-philos-
ophy as it was created by the theoretical soci-
ologist Niklas Luhmann. From his point of
view, successful communication is improba-
ble because of the closure and operational
autonomy of the systems involved (i.e., first
and foremost the difference between con-
sciousness and communication). Positions
like these mark the one pole of a kind of
understanding-possibility scale running from
impossible (e.g., post-modern positions)
along several degrees of probability (e.g.,
hermeneutics, interactionism, cognitive sci-
ence) towards the mostly unreflected evi-
dence of true understanding (e.g., in naive
everyday hermeneutics).
Summing up this brief overview we come
to assume that Schleiermacher was one of
the first who realized the full complexity of
the communicative problem hermeneutics
was once invented to solve. Since then
hermeneutics has developed in different
directions, mainly philosophical, psycholog-
ical and historiographical approaches to
understanding. This also secretly trans-
formed hermeneutics into a philosophy of
ordinary language, psychology of reading
and a history of text-production and –recep-
tion. These frames of thinking paved the way
for a more and more independent develop-
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
ment of the branches in the study of under-
standing, the psychological and linguistic on
the one hand and the philosophical and lit-
erary-historical branch on the other hand.
While the former slowly mutated to cogni-
tion theory and artificial intelligence
research (i.e., the information-processing
paradigm), it not only generated a large
number of models and theories of text pro-
duction, perception and reception but also
produced some new disciplines such as psy-
cholinguistics and cognitive sciences. This
could hardly be explained without the fun-
damental idea of understanding as a mental,
intellectual operation. At the same time, the
divergence of the two worlds of research in
understanding seems to reach its peak at this
stage of development. It must be an irony of
fate that it was Wilhelm Dilthey himself who
promoted this development with his separa-
tion of the humanities and the sciences.
The information-
processing approach to
understanding
The following presents only a very brief char-
acterization of what here is called the “infor-
mation-processing approach.” This is only to
indicate that special frame of thinking and to
recall some of the major representatives and
concepts of this paradigm.
(i) One of the most significant features of
text-processing approaches is – by and large –
the avoidance of the term “understanding.”
Instead, they generally employ the terms
“comprehension” and “processing.” One may
speculate that these concepts are taken as sub-
stitutes for “understanding” because of their
different (i.e., non-hermeneutical) connota-
tions. While “understanding” is supposed to
be an object of thinking for philosophers, phi-
lologists and literary scholars, terms like
“comprehension” and “information process-
ing” promise to designate more serious
objects of inquiry and research as done by
psychologists, linguists, neuroscientists etc.
This terminological demarcation no longer
indicates a sub-differentiation of the concept
of understanding but completely different
approaches or paradigms.
(ii) The tradition most of the proponents
of the comprehension-approaches may feel
radical constructivism
related to directly refers to Immanuel Kant,
the German idealist, who was the first to
introduce – besides his basic categories – the
term “schema” (Schemate) for mental or cog-
nitive structures (scenes) which let the things
appear in our perception (on the stage of con-
sciousness). Then, H. Ebbinghaus introduced
the idea of an active, creative memory. And
F. C. Bartlett investigated the constructive
nature of remembering. G.A. Miller explored
the breadth and functioning of working
memory and reported his findings in his
famous “Magical Number 7”-article. M. Min-
sky, T. Winograd, D. E. Rumelhart, P. H. Lind-
say, D. A. Norman, R. Schank, W. Kintch, T. A.
van Dijk, P. N. Johnson-Laird and many oth-
ers developed models of semantic memory,
the concepts of frames and scripts, proposi-
tional representations of discourse, story-
grammars, the concept of macrostructures,
the theory of mental models etc. This whole
enterprise is to work out theories, models and
machines that conceptualize, represent or
generate what human information processors
do – starting from sensory perceptions and
ending up with related behavioural outputs.
(iii) The present state of affairs may be
summed up as follows: information process-
ing is viewed as an interactive process between
e.g., text and reader. This process is directed
by top-down and bottom-up operations.
Information processing requires an organized
multidimensional knowledge base which is
supposed to be kept in memory (short-term
and long-term memory). As a cognitive pro-
cess, information processing is generative,
constructive and creative, synthetical (as
Ulric Neisser put it) rather than analytical or
reconstructive. Information processing is a
hierarchical and sequential process tending
towards the creation of coherent and subjec-
tively satisfying or appropriate structures and
functioning. At the same time this process
shows some tolerance for ambiguities and
inconsistencies. Information processing,
however, is socially contextualized or embed-
ded. That is to say, there is some impact of
social and situational factors on cognitive
operations. Remarkably, this aspect has been
reinvented by cognitive scholars like Terry
Winograd:
“My current work is moving in the direc-
tion of a fourth domain for understanding
language (besides linguistic structure,
relation of linguistic structure and world,
121
 cognitive-psychological, sociological
CONCEPTS
cognitive processes, G.R.): The domain of
human action and interaction. In this
domain the relevant regularities are in the
network of actions and interactions within
a human society. An utterance is a linguis-
tic act that has consequences for the partic-
ipants, leading to other immediate actions
and to commitments for future action.”
(Winograd 1980, p. 233).
Finally, those insights brought about some
cognitive situation-models. Also, “social cog-
nition” has been investigated in terms of con-
cepts for social partners, social relations and
social institutions. All this, however, only
demonstrates that the dominant view of the
information processing approaches never-
theless by and large remained cognitivistic,
psychological or neuro-physiological.
With this in mind we come to conclude
that from the information processing point of
view understanding is conceptualized only as
a certain type of cognitive operation or pro-
cess associated with conceptual coherence,
problem solving and affective or emotional
effects.
From a constructivist cognitive-social per-
spective – as will be outlined in the next sec-
tions – there is no need to reduce the phenom-
ena of understanding to cognitive activity.
Instead, understanding can be treated in its
full complexity.
Constructivist
approaches to
understanding
Do constructivist approaches to language,
communication and understanding really
enable a more complex view integrating both
the faces of understanding? Turning to the
writings of the most prominent proponents
of the constructivist paradigm, Ernst von
Glasersfeld und Heinz von Forster, we learn
some elementary lessons. Ernst von Glasers-
feld’s concept of understanding may be char-
acterized as the construction of viable inter-
pretations. Heinz von Foerster’s position
seems a bit more systemic and intrinsic in
putting forward a concept of understanding
as the creation of eigen-values of cognitive
systems.
“To put it as simply as possible. To ‘under-
stand’ what someone has said or written
122
implies no less but also no more than to
have built up a conceptual structure from
an exchange of language, and, in the given
context, this structure is deemed to be
compatible with what the speaker appears
to have had in mind. This compatibility,
however, cannot be tested by a direct
comparison – it manifests itself in no
other way than that the speaker subse-
quently says and does nothing that con-
travenes the expectations the listener
derives from his or her interpretation.”
(Glasersfeld 1995, p. 143)
This quote from the chapter “To under-
stand understanding” already shows the
main traits of a constructivist approach.
First, understanding is taken as a cognitive
operation, namely: “building a conceptual
structure.” Second, understanding is taken as
an operation performed by a listener, reader
or observer. Third, the constructed “concep-
tual structure” has to meet certain require-
ments. It has to correspond with future expe-
riences and with expectations the listener has
established with respect to the speaker.
Heinz von Foerster explicated cognition
within the frame of a biological and systemic
approach. He proposed the idea of modelling
the functioning of cognitive systems along
some mathematical metaphors as a complex
process of calculation – if not to say: comput-
ing. The cognitive construction of a reality
(Wirklichkeit) thus becomes a process of cal-
culations within a self-referential, opera-
tionally closed and self-organising neuronal
system. The self-referential mode of operat-
ing, furthermore, implies a self-referential
kind of calculation. This, however, is best
represented by so called eigen-value func-
tions.
“This finding (or solution) helps us to
understand the organism which in a recur-
sive way continually prepares its behaviour
(acting on its own motor activity), namely,
in accordance with restricting conditions
and as long as a stable behaviour is
achieved.” (Foerster 1993, p. 279, my
translation)
This approach, then, allowed for a new
explication of the concept of objects in terms
of cognitive calculation.
“An observer watching the whole process
and having no access to the sensations of
the organism as they are restricting its
movements will recognize that the organ-
radical constructivism
ism has learned to cope successfully with a
certain ‘resistance’, a certain object. The
organism itself may believe that it now
understands that object (or has learned
how to handle it). Because, though, the
organism can only know its own behavior
due to the nervous activity these ‘objects’
strictly speaking are signs for the various
‘eigen-behavior’ of the organism.” (Foer-
ster 1993, p. 279, my translation)
Here, Heinz von Foerster offers a kind of
definition for understanding as construction
of eigen-values or eigen-behavior respec-
tively. For the organism this means to under-
stand in the sense of knowing how to behave or
operate. At first sight, this explication clearly
favours the cognitive process view of under-
standing. And like Glasersfeld, Foerster
emphasises the aspect of – at least a limited –
stability or invariance of the objects or inter-
pretations constructed.
Apparently, this approach so far does not
differ significantly from hermeneutic or cog-
nitivist conceptions in both (i) postulating a
kind of cognitive operation as a basic process
of comprehension or information processing
and (ii) demanding certain qualities for that
process or its results respectively. It differs,
though, in the kind of quality demanded of
the conceptual structure. It is not a formal
condition like the coherence of the listener’s
interpretation or the correspondence of the
multiple senses of the speaker’s words.
Instead, the conceptual structure has to meet
some pragmatic or operational requirements
like the correspondence with future observa-
tions or the coherence of the interpretation of
the speaker’s utterances and the expectations
derived from that. Here, the social and inter-
actional dimension of understanding appears
to be a necessary complement of the cognitive
functioning.
Because there is no direct transfer of
meaning from one head into another (cf. Gla-
sersfeld 1996, p. 230), because of the cognitive
autonomy of the individual, the construction
of subjective readings, meanings or interpre-
tations is the only and unavoidable way to
act.4 Moreover, the interpretations and
expectations of the listener – as conceptual
structures – do share the destiny of and
underlie the same constraints as any other
cognitive construction (process pattern or
structure). They may survive, as long as they
fit into the overall conceptual framework, the
Constructivist Foundations
 cognitive-psychological, sociological
CONCEPTS
situational, discursive and opera-
tional context of an individual’s
acting and communicating (cf.
op.cit., 232). It needs no further explanation
here, that fit does imply neither identity or
equality nor any similarity of the conceptual
structures held by speaker and listener. It does
not imply any accor-
dance of content of
what the speaker has
said and meant and
what the listener has
heard and realised as
her/his interpretation.
Fit does only mean
compatible, reconcil-
able, co-existential
without conflict.
Accordingly, as long as
and in the way interpre-
tations, ascriptions of
meanings and
derived construc-
tions fit or survive
within an ever changing con-
ceptual environment, and as long as and in
the way they prove as viable constructions,
understanding is possible despite the “intrin-
sic uncertainty” of interaction and communi-
cation. To put it more precisely: understand-
ing is the only possible way to cope with this
intrinsic uncertainty. Understanding is possi-
ble because it does not and cannot depend on
the equality or accordance of the content as
expressed by the speaker’s words and as
ascribed to the words perceived by the lis-
tener. Instead, it is grounded upon first the
instantaneous and then the later experiences
of successful and fluent continuation of inter-
action, cooperation or communication which
– if it comes to reasons – itself rests upon
working (sic) hypotheses about the orienta-
tions, attitudes, knowledge or intentions of
the respective other.
We may now question the consequences
Friedrich Schleiermacher drew from his
insights. The unavoidability of guessing
(erraten) what a speaker means, does not in
principle exclude understanding. Misunder-
standing, by far, is not the regular case. We
must, however, realise – and this is implied by
the viability-principle – that the number of
alternative compatible interpretations may be
large. Many variants of understanding of a
speaker’s words may be possible even far
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
beyond all the well known
lexical and contextual ambi-
guities. In addition, we have to
account for the pragmatics
of the evaluation of
everyday interaction
and communication.
While in science, falsi-
fication (sensu Pop-
per) may be or has
been a guiding meth-
odological principle,
the ordinary
practice in everyday interaction and commu-
nication is not after awkward and long-
winded testing of reliability, trustworthiness
or truth. Instead, a kind of hermeneutic good-
will-principle (Prinzip des hermeneutischen
Wohlwollens5) usually governs communica-
tion. It leads people – by and large – to insin-
uate or assume that the other is not wilfully
lying or cheating, is in good order cognitively
and physically, etc. Those insinuations on the
one hand and a lack of opportunity, time and
interest to intensively check for possible
future incompatibility of interpretations on
the other hand make possible that (i) many
alternative interpretations may co-exist, and
(ii) a majority of cases of potential misunder-
standings will never be recognized. But, all
those undetected misunderstandings simply
do not make any difference to anybody.
Understanding may later turn out to be an
illusion. But until then and as long as the
interpretations fit into the syntheses of action
and communication, as long as they show this
operational validity and prove to be viable
they meet all the pragmatic and operational
requirements. There is nothing more to
understand, at that very moment. Under-
standing – we come to conclude – not only
depends on the subjective personal concep-
radical constructivism
tual inventories of interpreters, on contexts
and the proper perceived messages, but also
on time, namely: the future.6
So far, following the major constructivist
authorities, we have taken the perspective of
the recipient as is usually the case in herme-
neutics. But what about the speaker and her/
his view at the communication process?
There is a piece from Ernst von Glasersfeld
on this topic in one of his writings about
teaching and learning:
“Ein Trainer braucht nur das Verhalten sei-
ner Schüler zu beobachten, um festzustel-
len, ob sie das gelernt haben, wofür sie
abgerichtet werden sollten. Ein Lehrer hin-
gegen kann nur erschließen, ob sie verstan-
den haben, was sie verstehen lernen sollten.
Die Schlußfolgerungen des Lehrers sind
darum nicht nur in der Praxis unsicher, sie
sind prinzipiell unsicher, denn die Gedan-
ken und Ideen eines Menschen können nie
unmittelbar mit denen eines anderen ver-
glichen werden. […] Lehrer können daher
annehmen, dass ihre Schüler verstanden
haben, wenn die Weise, in der sie handeln
und reagieren mit dem Verständnis des
Lehrers vereinbar erscheint.” (Glasersfeld
1997, pp. 204f: A trainer just has to observe
the behaviour of his subjects to decide
whether they have learned what they were
trained to do. A teacher, however, can only
derive, whether the students have under-
stood or not, what they should learn to
understand. Therefore, the teacher’s con-
clusions are uncertain not only in practice
but also in principle because the thoughts
and ideas a person holds can never be com-
pared directly with those of any other per-
son. . […] Therefore teachers may suppose
that their students have understood when
the way they act and react seems compati-
ble with their own understanding. My
translation)
Looking at communication from the point
of view of the communicator, i.e., the speaker,
writer or performer, it is obvious that – in
principle – the speaker has to “understand”
the listener’s reactions in a way analogous to
the listener’s interpretation of the speaker’s
words. Naturally, the speaker, like any other
person, has no privileged access to the lis-
tener’s mind. However, and at this point we
lightly touch the field of human semiosis, the
speaker’s intention to work on the recipient in
order to bring about a certain re-action (overt
123
 cognitive-psychological, sociological
CONCEPTS
behaviour or intellectual move) makes all the
difference. As already pointed out by Hum-
berto Maturana in his Biology of Cognition
communicating is essentially the orientation
of others. The speaker, because of his inten-
tion, knows – or at least, to be taken seriously,
should know – what he is after: he expects cer-
tain behaviour of the listener when uttering a
certain phrase. Accordingly, the request to
open a window is accompanied by the expec-
tation to see the addressee go and open a win-
dow. And this expectation7 or wish, the idea of
the expected or desired re-action then serves
as a kind of functional value within the
speaker’s current action and orientation
scheme. The speaker – so to speak – makes best
use of his having moved first, i.e., with his ini-
tial communicative approach he sets the con-
ditions and defines the overall criteria for suc-
cess or failure within that communicative
episode. Therefore, a teacher cannot but eval-
uate his observations of the students’ behav-
iour – as re-action to his own communicative
approaches towards them – in the light of his
own expectations and understanding. Like a
teacher, the speaker has to decide and, more-
over, is in the only position to decide whether
the observed re-action matches his intentions
and expectations.
Picking up Heinz von Foerster’s eigen-
value metaphor, the speaker – with his inten-
tion and as first mover – defines the eigen-
value of the whole communication episode.
He first brings in his communicative aims as a
kind of interactional value or attractor leading
his own action towards the listener. Then, the
listener unavoidably gets involved in that pro-
cess as the addressee or “victim” of external
demands. The more aesthetically seducing,
the more impressive, persuasive, forceful or
lasting the approach towards the recipient, the
less ignorable it is. Less ignorable, however, are
the speaker’s interventions in terms of pertur-
bating, modulating or changing the self-refer-
ential and cognitively autonomous operation
of the listener as a cognitive system, the stron-
ger the impact on his cognition. Moreover, the
speaker’s work on the gradual adjustment or
tuning of the listener to perform the inten-
tionally desired behaviour is also usually
actively reinforced by the listener through his
affective disposition to keep social contact and
not be rejected, to be a good sport, to show
interest in the other and cooperate. It is not by
chance that this reminds us of the hermeneu-
124
tic principle of good will. Usually such a com-
municative episode ends when the speaker has
either succeeded in orienting the other the way
he intended or when he has given up because
of too much negative feedback e.g., no
observed reaction, permanent errors finally
causing aggression or resignation, etc.
Success of communication, though, always
means that the speaker realises his intentions
– at least to some acceptable degree. And it is
in this sense that the speaker’s intention gov-
erns the whole communication as a kind of
episodic eigen-value.
Heinz von Foerster himself suggested the
application of the mathematical model of
bistable functions to the process of interaction
or communication.
“… zwei Subjekte, die miteinander rekur-
siv interagieren, nolens volens stabile Eigen-
verhaltensweisen ausbilden” (Foerster
1993, p. 279; Two subjects interacting
recursively nolens volens each produce sta-
ble eigen-behaviour. My translation).
In this case a bistable function converges
towards two stable eigen-values each generat-
ing the other as output. This kind of correla-
tion, though, seems to come close to pure
functional dependency. Therefore, we have to
question bistable functions as a model for
communication of cognitive, namely, non-
trivial systems. Functional dependency and
non-triviality of systems clearly contradict
each other.
Recalling the question put forward at the
beginning of this paragraph now – after hav-
ing examined the positions of the two most
influential constructivists to some extent –
allows for a first positive but careful answer:
besides the dominant view of understanding
as a cognitive process, constructivist authors
also open a perspective on the interactional
and communicative dimension of under-
standing. They assume a functional role either
as a kind of referential instance or as an ele-
ment in the value range of eigen-value func-
tions as represented by the cognitive operation
of each of the participants. Nevertheless, the
constructivist approach to understanding as
explicated so far still seems to be kind of stuck
in hermeneutic coining. The last chapter,
therefore, tries to further think in the direction
as indicated by von Glasersfeld and von Foer-
ster, but at same time unchain constructivist
thinking from hermeneutic predispositions.
Let’s see what happens.
radical constructivism
Understanding as
cultivation: Cognitive
operation under
social control8
Following the path shown by von Glasersfeld
and von Foerster we may now put the pieces
together.
(i) A communicator (speaker, writer, etc.)
tries to attain her/his goals by performing ver-
bal and non-verbal behaviour respectively.
Vocal or verbal action is successful when the
actor observes the desired or intended effects.
“Translating” this into the semantics of
understanding we may say that the communi-
cator means something with his utterances
only with regard to the related expectations,
wishes or intentions. The meaning of the
utterances, therefore, is nothing else than the
communicative expectations held by the
communicator himself. Only if these expecta-
tions match with the observed effects of
action, the actor/communicator may state
that the recipient or addressee did under-
stand. “Understanding,” we may conclude
from this, means “to meet the expectations of a
communicator.”
(ii) It is most important to realize that the
communicator is the only instance or author-
ity to decide whether the communicative
expectations are met or not. The communica-
tor, however, is not alone able to decide about
the understanding of the partner. Moreover,
he cannot even avoid showing some evalua-
tive reaction (e.g., confirmation, disappoint-
ment, paraphrasing, commenting, explicat-
ing, etc.) in view of the recipient’s behaviour
because this is part of his current action
scheme of orientation. Finally, such feedback
even becomes a kind of social obligation. And
this is the case because the recipient on the
other hand does not have any access to the
communicator’s intentions or expectations.
The recipient learns about the operational
value and the social adequacy or appropriate-
ness of his responses only by observing and
experiencing the action of the speaker. If the
speaker finds his intentions realized through
the responses of the listener this usually in one
way or another is emphasised and confirmed
by either explicitly stating that the other has
understood or by rewarding the communica-
tive success with all kinds reinforcing positive
Constructivist Foundations
 cognitive-psychological, sociological
CONCEPTS
feedback like praise, attention, little gifts,
pleasant affections, etc. In many cases the
recipient – especially as a child – may even be
surprised by experiencing such positive feed-
back and by learning that it was understand-
ing what she/he did. Such positive experi-
ences will easily be connected to the
performed behaviour which in turn, thus,
becomes reinforced and kept in memory
ready to be reproduced in similar situations.
Apparently, and here we think of the god
Janus again, this is at the very beginning of the
cognitive construction of expectations and
expectations of expectations, a process which
basically enables social coordination and
cooperation through the interlocking of
actions and expectations. This, exactly, is
what David Lewis (1975) called convention.9
Understanding, then, turns out to be
something like a state or, better, a quality in a
social relation based upon the ascription or
attribution of understanding to a recipient (a
listener, reader or viewer). Eventually, this is
what Kenneth J. Gergen had in mind when he
wrote:
“Understanding is not contained within
me or within you, but is that which we gen-
erate together in our form of relatedness.
… understanding … is a social achieve-
ment.” (Gergen 1988, pp. 46f).
At this point we also have to recall the
quote from Ludwig Wittgenstein (1963)
which serves as the motto for this article:
“§154. But wait – if ‘Now I understand the
principle’ does not mean the same as ‘the
formula … occurs to me’ (or ‘I say the for-
mula,’ ‘I write it down,’ etc.) -does it follow
from this that I employ the sentence ‘Now
I understand …’ or ‘Now I can go on’ as a
description of a process occurring behind
or side by side with that of saying the for-
mula?
If there has to be anything ‘behind the
utterance of the formula’ it is particular cir-
cumstances, which justify me in saying I can
go on – when the formula occurs to me.
Try not to think of understanding as a
‘mental process’ at all. – For that is the
expression which confuses you. But ask
yourself: in what short case, in what kind of
circumstances, do we say. ‘Now I Know
how to go on,’ when, what it is, the formula
has occurred to me?
In the sense in which there are processes
(including mental processes) which are
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
characteristic of understanding, under-
standing is not a mental process.
(A pain’s growing more or less; the hearing
of a tune or a sentence: these are mental
processes.)” 10
Here, we do not think of understanding as
a mental but as a cognitive-social process.
And from that we learn about the transcate-
gorial logic of understanding. This is a logic of
cognitively autonomous systems interacting
and mutually orientating each other. The
“mechanism” of understanding underlies all
interaction and linguistic exchange from two
sides at the same time: cognition and social
structuring, speaker and listener. At the level
of this cognitive-social interplay we may really
learn what it means to speak and understand a
language. A similar insight might already have
driven John Austin (1962) to come up with his
theory of speech acts. Speaking, for Austin, is
action. And this includes constative as well as
performative utterances. Considering, thus,
Austin’s illocutionary forces, again we meet
the speaker’s intentions as governing and
defining the whole communicative episode,
especially, the relation to the addressee (e.g.,
criteria for success and failure, the actual illo-
cutionary role of an utterance, and, therefore,
the selection of locutionary acts). At this
point, finally, we should also call another
prominent witness and pioneer of radical
constructivism, Paul Watzlawick, to empha-
sise the determining role of the relation aspect.
In the famous “Pragmatics of Human Com-
munication” the second of the “tentative axi-
oms” says: “Every communication has a con-
tent and relationship aspect such that the
latter classifies the former and is therefore a
metacommunication” (Watzlawick, Beavin,
Jackson 1967, p. 54; my italics). However,
from the point of view of the attribution the-
ory of understanding, communication has
more than a “relationship aspect.” Much
more, and essentially, it is or makes up a social
relation which is established in the initial
phase through the approaches of a communi-
cator who, thereby, relates her-/himself to an
addressee.
(iii) The instances of understanding in
human interaction and communication are
both cognitively and socially emphasised.
This is because understanding means success
for both the communicator and the recipient.
The speaker realises her/his communicative
goals while the recipient is rewarded with
radical constructivism
praise, attention or positive emotional feed-
back. The most important effect of this two-
fold and double emphasis is the reinforce-
ment and social coding of the respective
actions. Conventionalization, as a principle of
social coding, self-regulation and self-organ-
isation among cognitively autonomous sub-
jects, is but one result of the intersection of
cognitive and social processes. It brings about
strong rational and emotional ties between
the participants. And this, finally, means cre-
ating a community.
(iv) The interactional logic of understand-
ing also demands that attention is paid to the
role changes of communicator and recipient
during their interaction. As already pointed
out with regard to the interlocking of expec-
tations and effects of communicative inter-
ventions the changing of roles reinforces the
match of a communicator’s intentions and a
recipient’s action. During e.g., language
acquisition, the learner is pushed (if not
urged) to autonomously create or find a way
to perform the requested, desired, appropri-
ate or adequate behaviour. Having learned to
connect auditions with (socially) appropriate
behaviour the student may himself push oth-
ers by vocally reproducing such auditions.
Remembering the third of Paul Watzlawick’s
axioms, this may also be, to some extent, a
matter of punctuation. Anyway, at this point,
the subject – so to speak – emancipates from
“standing under” and (re-)gains its own
social integrity or authority through the
acquisition of linguistic competences. Experi-
ences like these, then, help to establish and
foster knowledge about linguistic action,
about the meaning of (the use of) phrases and
their illocutionary forces. This knowledge,
however, is not only knowledge about how to
push others but knowledge about own mental
and overt operation. Pushes from others,
thus, become pulls or requests. Own (re-)
action becomes dispositional. This also
brings about the competence to pull for com-
municative intervention, to put another per-
son on the spot by addressing her or him com-
municatively, e.g., to begin a dialog and keep
it running.
(v) The attribution of understanding
brings about even more essential conse-
quences. Most important is the fact, that the
ascription of understanding means a social or
cultural selection of cognitive operations. From
the operational point of view of the recipient,
125
 cognitive-psychological, sociological
CONCEPTS
however, there is ex ante no internal criterion
distinguishing cognitions followed by attri-
butions of understanding and others.
Impressed or disturbed by the approaches of
a communicator the recipient goes on to gen-
erate behaviour autonomously following his
own rationality and affections. His cognitions
ex ante do not show any special internal dif-
ference in quality or function as to contribute
to understanding or not. Cognition rather
gains special quality only ex post when under-
standing has been attributed. The ascription
itself together with the correlated feedback
turns the attention of the recipient to the pre-
ceding mental and motor behaviour, and
thereby accentuates and emphasises it.
As mentioned above the etymology of
“understanding” shows a meaning from the
16th century which seems to grasp the point.
Understanding as “reception of intelligence”
comes quite close to understanding as social
selection of cognition. There are two forces
driving this selection: first the reinforcement
of cognitions through understanding, and
second the inhibition of those which are not
followed by understanding attributions. This
is how understanding selects socially and cul-
turally compatible eigen-behaviour of cogni-
tive systems. Incompatible behaviour is
inhibited by negative sanctions. This social
channelling of cognition, i.e., the “mecha-
nism” of understanding, thus, turns out to be
one of the basic principles of social and cultural
reproduction.
(vi) The two dominant ordinary meanings
of understanding as explicated in the first sec-
tion of this article, namely, “Understanding”
in the sense of “comprehend, access mentally,
have the know how to do something, etc. “ and
“Understanding” in the sense of “correspond
with someone, congenial thinking and acting,
etc.” go together with the attribution
approach pretty well. Usually, the attribution
of understanding is associated with the
ascription of intelligence, of intellectual per-
formance and capacity. Someone who under-
stands is considered to be at least as smart as
the one who gave something to understand.
At the same time, the close personal relation
established through the performance of a
desired response and the following positive
feedback and confirmation does indeed pro-
mote the assumption of correspondence,
126
accordance or even congeniality. It is not by
chance that the border between civilization
and barbarism, psychological health and
deviance or illness runs along a line marked
by success and failure of understanding. After
all, the two faces of understanding turn out to
be the two sides of the same coin: social inter-
action under the conditions of cognitive
autonomy.
(vii) The attribution approach to under-
standing also clarifies and reassigns the
responsibilities for success or failure in under-
standing. It can no longer be only a defective,
poor or stupid cognition of a recipient caus-
ing failure but also – and in many cases – it
actually is the incompetence of the communi-
cator in helping the addressee to find her/his
eigen-way to understanding. Understanding
is far from being a matter of course. The com-
municator must try hard to achieve it. Teach-
ers do know about this. It is their profession
to guide and moderate the students’ attempts
to come up with an appropriate, and at best
an excellent response.
(viii) Communicative experiences (active
and passive) gathered over the years of onto-
genetic cognitive development teach people
to employ hypotheses about the communica-
tors’ intentions. Such hypotheses, then, guide
the syntheses of behaviour which may be –
with a certain probability – expected, ade-
quate, appropriate or right. But these hypoth-
eses not only serve to accelerate and improve
understanding. At the same time, they allow
for a self-attribution of understanding. In the
end, and if supported by specific political and
legal conditions (e.g., democracy, powerful
individualism, personal rights, distribution
of power, free expression of opinion, etc.), this
may give rise to immunisations from commu-
nicative demands (in conversation, educa-
tion, interpretation) and, thereby, cause seri-
ous problems for social relations, teaching
and learning. People who immunize them-
selves against communicative demands no
longer feel obliged to listen or try to modify or
extend their cognitive inventory by learning.
The simple self-ascription of understanding
independently of any feedback by a commu-
nicator is substantially supported by the
development of a culture of media reception
as is the case in our societies since the reading
revolution of the 18th century. Here, commu-
radical constructivism
nication and understanding suffer from the
cognitive refinement of their own prerequi-
sites.
Conclusion
Constructivist approaches bridge the gap
between the cognitive and the social faces of
understanding. They demonstrate how com-
prehension and cultivation, cognition and
cultural reproduction are mutually linked to
each other by the cognitive-social “mecha-
nism” of understanding. With Schleierma-
cher, Heidegger and Gadamer, constructivist
approaches share the view that understanding
is a universal basis and tool of social and cul-
tural being. Other than the authorities of
hermeneutics, constructivist positions
emphasise the social and cultural impregna-
tion of cognition and – at the same time – the
cognitive “nature” of culture and society.
Interpretation – to finally come to the
end – in a constructivist hermeneutics cannot
be taken as a kind of re-construction of an
original or true meaning of a text. Instead,
interpretation should be conceived of as a pro-
construction, a hypothetical provisional read-
ing made for the tough going of public or
scholarly discourse. At best those construc-
tions prove to be viable – at least for some
short period of time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gebhard Rusch, born in 1954 in Magde-
burg, Germany; studied linguistics, compar-
ative literature, history and philosophy at
the universities of Bielefeld and Siegen, Pro-
motion in 1985, habilitation in media studies
in 1998, since then guest professorship at
the university of Innsbruck, Austria; since
2004 professor at the institute of media
research at Siegen University. Numerous
publications, books and articles, on commu-
nication and media theory, systems analysis,
organisational communication, epistemol-
ogy, philosophy of science, theory of history
and the dynamics of cultural systems. Co-
editor of the constructivist journal DELFIN
(1983–2001), Co-editor of the media stud-
ies journal SPIEL.
Constructivist Foundations
 cognitive-psychological, sociological
CONCEPTS
Notes
1. “Janus is the Roman god known as the cus-
todian of the universe. He is the god of be-
ginnings and the guardian of gates and
doors … Two heads back to back represent
Janus, each looking in opposite directions
… Janus also represents the transition be-
tween primitive life and civilization, be-
tween rural and urban existence. He also
maintains the balance between peace and
war and youth and old age … He intro-
duced money, cultivation of the fields and
the law. He was considered the protector of
Rome.” (Brinker 2004, my italics).
2. This period gave birth to the hermeneutics
of e.g., Johann Conrad Dannhauer and his
Idea Boni Interpretis (1630) and Herme-
neutica Sacra (1654), Johann Clauberg and
Logica Vetus et Nova (1654), Johann Mar-
tin Chladenius with his Einleitung zur rich-
tigen Auslegung vernünfftiger Reden und
Schriften (1742), Georg Friedrich Meier
and his Versuch einer Allgemeinen Ausle-
gungskunst (1757), Alexander Gottlieb
Baumgarten and his Acroasis Logica (1761)
as well as Johann August Ernesti and his In-
stitutio Interpretis Novi Testamenti (1761).
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Received: 20 September 2006
Accepted: 17 February 2007
Constructivist Foundations
 philosophical-epistemological second-order cybernetics
CONCEPTS

Connecting Radical Constructivism to

Social Transformation and Design
Laurence D. Richards A Indiana University East (USA) <laudrich@indiana.edu>

ing in a special ASC conference in 1988 called

Purpose:This paper intends to connect ideas from the radical constructivist approach to “Texts in Cybernetic Theory.” Rod Donaldson
cognition and learning to ideas from the constraint-theoretic approach to social policy had approached me, as President of the ASC,
formulation. It then extends these ideas to a dialogic approach to social transformation with an idea for inviting three leading theo-
and design. Method:After demonstrating a correspondence between von Glasersfeld’s fit/ rists in cybernetics to prepare papers that
match distinction and my constraint-oriented/goal-oriented distinction with respect to might summarize key aspects of their think-
policy formulation, the paper evaluates the basic assumptions of radical constructivism and ing, and then organize a conference at which
builds from them a framework for thinking and talking about a desirable society and ways the participants would study and discuss
to participate in its realization. Findings:The ideas of von Glasersfeld’s radical construc- those papers. Rod organized the conference
tivism contribute significantly to the development of a conceptual base for applied research and held it in Felton, California. Ernst was
on social activism by raising new questions and stimulating new thinking. selected to prepare one of the three papers,
Practical implications: Social activism in everyday affairs can be a way of living in the along with Humberto Maturana and William
“world.” Conclusion:The work and thought of Ernst von Glasersfeld opens a path toward Powers. That paper, “An Exposition of Radical
a rich array of concepts and ideas with the potential to inform efforts in a wide variety of Constructivism” (1988), is a basic source for
human endeavors. some of my thoughts below.
Key words: Constructivism, cybernetics, language, dialogic process, social activism. Three other events involving Ernst von
Glasersfeld deserve mentioning for their
Introduction at the time, which I had labeled “constraint influence on the ideas in this paper. In 1988,
theory.” My interest was in using concepts Stuart Umpleby organized a team of eight
I first met Ernst von Glasersfeld in 1977 at a from cybernetics to develop a way of thinking American systems scientists to travel to the
joint conference of the Society for General about policy formulation that was radically Soviet Union for a special conference with
Systems Research and the American Associa- different than the way I had learned in my eight Soviet systems scientists. I was honored
tion for the Advancement of Science, in Den- studies of operations research. In particular, I to join Ernst, Donald Campbell, George Klir,
ver, Colorado. He was participating on a panel found the specification of “desire” in policy and others, as a member of this team. For two
chaired by Heinz von Foerster that also models in the form of goals and/or objectives weeks, I had the opportunity to get to know
included Francisco Varela, Margaret Mead, to be inadequate and often dysfunctional; I Ernst not just as an intellectual giant, but as a
Joe Goguen and Kenneth Boulding. This was needed another way to think about values, person. I found him kind, gentle, and
the same conference at which Varela pre- and the notion of constraint offered such an extremely patient, and I couldn’t help think-
sented his calculus for self-reference (1975). alternative. ing that there must be a relationship between
This was also the first academic conference of In 1981, I was asked by Stuart Umpleby of the ideas he formulated and advocated and
any type that I had ever attended, and I was, George Washington University to organize his way of being. I have since realized how the
quite frankly, awestruck. While I do not the program for a conference of the American predominance of the concept of an external,
remember much of the content of the panel, I Society for Cybernetics (ASC) in Washington, independent, absolute “truth,” as carried in
do remember being impressed by how Ernst DC. It was to be the first such conference of the prevailing languages of the world (not just
brought together so many of the disparate that organization since 1974, so I proposed the West), has contributed to the meanness,
ideas I had been studying, and now listening the theme “The New Cybernetics.” One of my impatience, greed, and violence (even war)
to, into what seemed like a coherent and sim- first thoughts was that Ernst von Glasersfeld that we experience in our societies. This con-
ple, yet audacious framework. Sitting across must be invited as a presenter. At this and a cept of truth is antithetical to the tenets of
from him at lunch that day, I came to realize series of subsequent conferences, including radical constructivism. The conference was
this framework as the roots of “radical con- three Gordon Research Conferences, the sec- held in Tallin, Estonia, and it was there that
structivism.” ond co-chaired by Ernst (with Heinz von Foe- remarks by Ernst linked his distinction
My teacher and mentor at the University of rster as chair) and the third chaired by Ernst between “fit” and “match” to my constraint
Pennsylvania, Klaus Krippendorff, encour- (with Paul Pangaro as co-chair), my appreci- theory.
aged me to pursue some of the ideas of radical ation for Ernst’s ideas on a variety of subjects, At an ASC conference in Amherst, Massa-
constructivism in relation to my own research especially language, grew stronger, culminat- chusetts, in 1991, I gave the opening address

Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3 129

http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
 philosophical-epistemological
CONCEPTS
that I had titled “Why I am Not a Cyberneti-
cian” (1993). It was intended as a tribute to
the great minds of cybernetics, those who
demonstrated qualities and insights to which
I could aspire but not yet lay claim, including
Ernst von Glasersfeld. Ernst gave the address
immediately following mine, which he called
“Why I Consider Myself a Cybernetician,”
later published in Cybernetics and Human
Knowing (1992). I found it somewhat ironic,
given the titles of our presentations, that Ernst
cited the cybernetic concept of “constraint” as
one of the more important influences on his
work.
My most recent encounter with Ernst von
Glasersfeld was on the occasion of a visit to
his country home in Amherst, where he and
his lovely and talented wife Charlotte have
lived for a number of years. Judy Lombardi,
Mark Enslin, Carol Huang and I made the
trip in May 2006 to present Ernst with the
Norbert Wiener Medal of the American
Society for Cybernetics. We all had a won-
derful conversation during which we began
to probe some of the assumptions of radical
constructivism. That conversation gave me
the motivation for the direction I have taken
in this paper.
I offer this introduction, in the spirit of a
Festschrift, as a way to understand how the
ideas presented below have evolved. They did
not arise simply by reading books and papers.
They are the result of interactions with Ernst
von Glasersfeld and numerous others over a
period of many years, interactions for which I
am sincerely grateful and humbled. Consis-
tent with the ideas of radical constructivism,
I make no attempt to “match” my ideas with
those of Ernst’s radical constructivism. I do
not even claim a “fit”; my attempt is to find a
fit between my ideas and my own conception
of radical constructivism.
“Fit” and “match”
In describing what makes radical constructiv-
ism radical, von Glasersfeld observes:
“This radical difference concerns the rela-
tion of knowledge and reality. Whereas in
the traditional view of epistemology, as
well as of cognitive psychology, this rela-
tion is always seen as a more or less pic-
turelike (iconic) correspondence or
match, radical constructivism sees it as an
130
adaptation in the functional sense.” (Gla-
sersfeld 1984, p. 20)
The predominant view in Western episte-
mology is that knowledge is a representation
of an external, independent reality, one that
through proper inquiry can be approached
absolutely. An alternative to the concept of
“match” is “fit.”
“A key fits if it opens a lock. The fit
describes a capacity of the key, not of the
lock. Thanks to professional burglars we
know only too well that there are many
keys that are shaped quite differently from
our own but which nevertheless unlock
our doors.” (Glasersfeld 1984, p. 21)
Knowledge arises out of necessity or
desire; if it works for us, we accept it and act
accordingly. When it doesn’t work, it changes,
or adapts, to provide a different fit. That our
knowledge fits our needs/desires temporarily
does not imply that it is the only knowledge
that would fit, nor does it imply that there is
any correspondence to an external, indepen-
dent reality. The idea of an external, indepen-
dent reality is itself a construct, one that often
serves us well. However, application of that
construct to cognitive processes and societal
affairs has created undesirable, even life-
threatening dysfunctions that require a differ-
ent framework.
Constraint theory and
negative reasoning
The concept of “constraint” was central to the
cybernetics of W. Ross Ashby (1956). In par-
ticular, he developed a concept of informa-
tion as a reduction in variety. That is, we say
we have information when the possibilities we
might have to consider become less than
before we had the information; information
constrains the possible explanations, out-
comes or options available. Ashby also real-
ized that systems consisting of only four or
five variables, each of which can take on as few
as four or five states, can be astronomically
complex. Approaching the analysis of such
systems positively by trying to isolate the
causal relations among the variables is impos-
sible. In his paper “Constraint Analysis of
Many-Dimensional Relations” (1964), Ashby
suggests that the rigorous investigation of
relations in complex systems is more effi-
ciently undertaken by taking a negative
second-order cybernetics
approach, i.e., identifying the explanations,
outcomes or options that are prohibited by a
relationship or subset of relationships than by
attempting to determine which outcomes are
permitted by the entire set of relationships in
all their complexity. Sometimes, a simple set
of constraints may be sufficient to provide the
information we need to do what we want to
do; if not, we continue to probe. While we
accept the set of constraints temporarily as
bounding the system observed, they are a set
of distinctions created by an observer, to deal
with a system identified by the observer. They
cannot be assumed to represent the objective
reality of an external system. They simply
work for our purposes.
Gregory Bateson in “Cybernetic Explana-
tion” (1972) uses the term “restraint” instead
of “constraint,” referring to the approach of
cybernetics as “negative explanation” – focus-
ing on what is not possible or desirable, rather
than what is. He challenges the causal theory
of biological evolution, stating that tracking
of a network of causes and effects is a positive
approach to explanation that does not work;
identifying the restraints that prevented evo-
lution from tracking other pathways is a neg-
ative approach. von Glasersfeld picks up on
this when labeling himself a cybernetician:
“From my point of view, then, what Bate-
son remarked about the theory of evolu-
tion is equally applicable to the construc-
tion of knowledge, to our acquisition of
language, and to any interaction that we
might call communication. None of these
developments or activities can be
explained in terms of causes, but we can go
a long way towards explaining them in
terms of constraints. For me, therefore, the
world in which we find ourselves living, is
the world that we have been able to con-
struct and maintain within the constraints
we have so far experienced. –What could
be more cybernetic than this?” (von Gla-
sersfeld, 1992, p. 25)
Constraint theory is a way of thinking
about complex systems. It has been applied in
a number of fields, including managerial
decision making processes (“satisficing,”
“bounded rationality,” Simon 1964), multi-
disciplinary systems research and design
(Friedman, 1976), analysis of systems struc-
ture (Krippendorff 1979), and artificial intel-
ligence (constraint satisfaction, constraint
propagation, Dym & Levitt 1991), to name a
Constructivist Foundations
 philosophical-epistemological
CONCEPTS
few. My interest was in the design of social sys-
tems through policy formulation (Richards
1977, 1978, 1983, 1991, Gupta & Richards
1979). I defined policy formulation broadly as
any action taken, formal or informal, official
or unofficial, with the intent to constrain col-
lective human behavior, whether at a group,
organizational, or societal level. Policy con-
strains behavior, through laws, rules and reg-
ulations at one extreme and slogans, admoni-
tions and expressions of principle at the other,
and a myriad forms in between.
There is an overlap between this use of the
word policy and my use of the word culture;
culture also constrains human behavior.
However, culture encompasses all those con-
straints that emerge with no apparent intent,
including values, attitudes and preferences.
This use of the word culture is not to be con-
fused with the use that refers to the traces left
(i.e., artifacts – art, literature, music, science,
technology, etc.) from interactive processes
operating within the constraints.
It is this overlap between policy and culture
that presented my dilemma. Models in sup-
port of policy formulation had virtually
always dealt with values and desires as either
goals (concrete outcomes in time and space)
or objectives (single or multiple criteria to be
maximized, minimized or otherwise opti-
mized). But, where do these goals and objec-
tives come from, whose are they, and what
happens when they change? This positive
approach to policy formulation (and plan-
ning) has been called the “rationalistic” or
“analytic” approach. Graham Allison (1971)
compared a rational actor model of decision
making with organization process and
bureaucratic politics models in his analysis of
the policies applied during the U.S.–Cuba
missile crisis of 1962, and John Steinbruner
(1974) compared an analytic paradigm with a
cybernetic paradigm in analyzing U.S.–NATO
nuclear sharing policies during the period
1956-64. Both Allison and Steinbruner found
the “rationalistic/analytic” approach to be
inadequate for describing how policies were
actually formulated and applied. However, the
rationalistic approach still dominates the lan-
guage of policy-making and therefore con-
strains the conversations that might otherwise
lead to creative and value-rich policy.
My approach was to treat values and
desires as constraints – i.e., to formulate that
which is not wanted or needed, and to create
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
processes in which these constraints get dis-
cussed and transformed. I called this way of
thinking negative reasoning, and, when
applied specifically to planning exercises, neg-
ative planning, distinguishing a constraint-
oriented approach to policy formulation
from a goal-oriented approach. (The word
negative is used here in the sense of a photo-
graphic negative; systems get defined by what
they cannot do or by what we do not want
them to do, an inversion of the positive.) An
application to the personnel policies of a per-
sonal finance company, where executives had
set high goals for reducing the turnover of
loan officer trainees, demonstrated that the
executives could actually agree on a much
broader range of turnover than they had pre-
viously thought by responding to questions
about what they “did not want” as conse-
quences of the turnover (Richards 1983). In
an application to technology policies of the
U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Admin-
istration (NASA), an approach to analyzing
alternative technologies for a new space trans-
portation system showed that selection of
technologies that kept options open for mul-
tiple systems (as opposed to an “optimal” sys-
tem) in 15–20 years, by focusing on what was
“not acceptable” in the present, could miti-
gate the uncertainty of currently unknown
technologies that might emerge over that
period of time (Richards 1996). (Note: Both
of these examples were made possible by
access given me to conduct research with the
respective organizations. The application of
interest in this paper is much broader –
namely, the facilitation of participation in
social design and transformation by all mem-
bers of a society.)
Ashby’s mathematical formulation of con-
straint analysis provided the basis for depict-
ing data on constraints in spatial diagrams
that could then be manipulated. The form of
the data drove the form of question that could
be asked in collecting the data – namely ques-
tions about what is unacceptable, rather than
what is most preferred. I could then manipu-
late the diagrams to evaluate alternative poli-
cies for their flexibility and robustness. When
I presented some of these constraint diagrams
in Tallin, Estonia (Richards 1988), Ernst
remarked that they reminded him of the key
and lock metaphor. The spaces created by the
set of constraints were analogous to the lock,
within which many possible keys could oper-
second-order cybernetics
ate. This was precisely what I wanted from
these diagrams – a presentation of the range
of possible outcomes or behaviors that could
be accommodated within a set of constraints
and that could change or be changed as a con-
sequence of an action.
Radical constructivism
and its assumptions
Von Glasersfeld (1991) identifies four roots of
radical constructivism. First is the philosoph-
ical root planted by the “skeptics,” that we
cannot know the world separate from our
experience of it. What we say we know is a
consequence of our experience, and we can-
not know how our experience relates to that
which is experienced. Second is the scientific
root planted by the “pragmatists,” that the
conduct of scientific research results in what
works, not what is true in any absolute sense.
That a theory works under certain conditions
does not imply that it is true of the world, nor
even that it is approaching such truth. Third
is the psychological root planted by “cognitive
constructionists,” that the mental operations
we rely on to act in the world arise by acting in
that world, not by developing representations
of that world. We literally create the world we
experience while living it, relying on processes
of adaptation to adjust the mental constructs
that regulate (constrain) our actions. Fourth
is the biological root planted by the “evolu-
tionists,” that the processes of natural selec-
tion and adaptation drive evolutionary
change, not a progressively more accurate
matching of organism or species attributes
with an external environment. These pro-
cesses are analogous to the processes that
drive cognitive development and the con-
struction of knowledge, namely, adaptation
and viability, not a progressive matching of
thoughts, language and knowledge to an
external, ontological reality.
Jean Piaget brought many of these roots
together is his studies of cognitive develop-
ment in children. Neither he, nor anyone
since, has been able to explain the cognitive
construction of “reality” in a child by infer-
ring a progressive matching of language and
concepts with an objective, external, indepen-
dent reality. To the contrary, all observations
of the development of language in children
point to language acquisition as independent
131
 philosophical-epistemological
CONCEPTS
of “meaning” or “understanding” of others;
its initial function is simply to coordinate
actions with other humans in a way that is via-
ble. What we observe as learning in the child
is adaptation through assimilation and
accommodation. Again, von Glasersfeld
identifies the feature of radical constructiv-
ism that makes it radical in this way:
“…one must grasp the idea that adapta-
tion is not an activity, but the result of the
elimination of the non-adapted, the non-
functioning, and that consequently, any-
thing that manages to survive is ‘adapted’
to the environment in which it happens to
find itself living. Once this is understood,
one realizes that what matters is not to
match the world, but to fit into it in spite of
whatever obstacles or traps it might
present. Applied to cognition, this means
that ‘to know’ is not to possess ‘true repre-
sentations’ of reality, but rather to possess
ways and means of acting and thinking that
allow one to attain the goals one happens to
have chosen.” (Glasersfeld 1991, p. 16)
This begs some questions: What goals?
From where do these desires come? Is there a
distinction of significance between desires
consciously chosen and those unself-con-
sciously acted on? Where is choice in the con-
structivist’s framework? These questions are
analogous to the ones I asked with respect to
policy formulation. How can I think and talk
about the desires and values that are both
implicit and explicit in policy alternatives in a
way that accommodates the changing desires
and values of the members of the organiza-
tion or society to which those policies are to
be applied? In short, what is the role of policy
and the policy formulation process in a desir-
able society? Where do the unself-conscious
processes of culture cross paths with the con-
scious processes of social design and activism?
Von Glasersfeld has a response in the form
of assumptions of a radical constructivist
model of cognition:
“It therefore seems legitimate to try and
conceive a model that may show how what
we call knowledge can be ‘constructed’
without reference to anything outside
experiential confines. The notion of
model, however, inevitably contains
assumptions that lie outside the domain
the model may explain. In the case of con-
structivism it is the assumption of a con-
sciousness that is able to remember, to
132
reflect upon experience, and to develop
likes and dislikes. It is the least a model of
cognition must assume.” (Glasersfeld
2005, p. 11)
Language and
conversation theory
“If the constructivist movement has done
anything at all, it has dismantled the image
of language as a means of transferring
thoughts, meanings, knowledge, or ‘infor-
mation’ from one speaker to another. The
interpretation of a piece of language is
always in terms of concepts and concep-
tual structures which the interpreter has
formed out of elements from his or her
own subjective field of experience. Of
course, these concepts and conceptual
structures had to be modified and adapted
throughout the interactions with other
speakers of the language. But adaptation
merely eliminates those discrepancies that
create difficulties in actual interactive situ-
ations – adaptation ceases when there
seems to be a fit. And fit in any situation is
no indication of match. To find a fit simply
means not to notice any discrepancies.”
(Glasersfeld 1991, p. 23)
Central to radical constructivism is the
role of language. In radical constructivism,
the meanings of words, phrases, sentences,
etc., and the uses of language, are constructed
by individuals through experiences that we
call interaction with others. Adaptation of our
language occurs as we experience failures and
successes in meeting our needs and desires
with respect to coordinating our actions with
those of other humans. In this sense, the phe-
nomenon of language is like other phenom-
ena we experience and build into our system
of knowledge, with one major difference:
unlike other phenomena, language is our only
access to these other phenomena, as well as to
the concept of language itself. The recursive
property of language, language about lan-
guage, opens up the possibility for a second-
order coordination of the coordination of
action – i.e., the phenomenon of languaging
(Maturana 2006). For this recursion to be
useful, the language on language must shift
from a language of elements and relations to
a language of dynamics – hence, languaging.
Otherwise, it simply creates logical paradoxes
second-order cybernetics
that frustrate and confuse us, if we pay any
attention to them. This is not a trivial shift,
but one I claim currently necessary to get to
the concept of society and its transformation
and design. Language, as we know it, has the
property of rigidifying concepts, of removing
the dynamics (von Foerster 1976). Forcing
dynamics into language is the job of the poet
and requires awareness, reflection and vigi-
lance.
With a concept of dynamic recursion in
language, and the language of dynamics to go
with it, further recursions become possible
(Maturana 1988). Languaging on languaging
becomes awareness (or observing). Observ-
ing on observing (observing ‘observing’) cre-
ates the concept of the observer. Observing
oneself as an observer observing becomes
self-consciousness. It is important to distin-
guish self-reflection from self-consciousness.
Self-reflection is seeing oneself as an other;
there is a distance between the self projected
and the description reflected. In self-con-
sciousness, there is no distance; projecting
and describing happen simultaneously – in
the moment, so to speak. The assumptions of
a radical constructivist model as presented
above, namely a “consciousness that is able to
remember, to reflect upon experience, and to
develop likes and dislikes,” require both self-
consciousness and self-reflection. It is in self-
consciousness that desires emerge as likes and
dislikes, and that the phenomenon of choice
is experienced. Self-consciousness arises as a
consequence of recursions in language; self-
reflection is an action taken to evaluate one’s
desires as though they were the desires of oth-
ers. With the experience of choice as alterna-
tive paths for action, coupled with a self-
reflection on desires with respect to the con-
sequences of our actions, we have a concept of
social responsibility, and with it a concept of
society emerges. Without a concept of social
responsibility, I would not need a concept of
society – the set of processes out of which
desires and desirability arise.
Another branch of this tree of dynamics
worth mentioning is the conversation theory
of Gordon Pask (1976, 1987). Conversation in
this formulation is manifest among partici-
pants as a particular dynamics of interaction
in language that begins with some form of
asynchronicity, moving toward synchronic-
ity. This dynamics is sustained by the partici-
pants through a preference for recurrent inter-
Constructivist Foundations
 philosophical-epistemological
CONCEPTS
action and will continue until the participants
achieve an adequate synchronicity (e.g.,
agreement or agreement to disagree) or they
get tired or bored and choose not to partici-
pate further. The intensity of this dynamics is
unique to conversation, and provides an ave-
nue for thinking about the processes of soci-
ety – namely, a network of conversations. Par-
ticipants in a society can hold conversation
with themselves (i.e., among one’s roles, per-
spectives, points of view), with other partici-
pants, or with the abstraction we call society.
It is the latter category of conversation that
connects policy and social design, and partic-
ipation therein, to radical constructivism.
Society is a construct, one I need in order to
think and talk about values and desires. Then
the process of policy formulation can be con-
structed as a conversation between a partici-
pant and society, and the actions of the poli-
cymaker constrain the processes of society.
The added importance of language when it
becomes dynamic is that we can no longer say
we live in the world; we live in language.
Everything we know and do, we know and do
in language. It is not sufficient to say that we
cannot know the external world, or even
whether there is one; the concept of an exter-
nal, independent reality as an ontological
curiosity is irrelevant except to the extent that
we create the concept of such a reality in lan-
guage as a way, one way, to coordinate our
actions with others. My language tells me to
act as though there is a reality. The danger of
this language is in the objectification of the
idea of an external reality, with the conse-
quence of forgetting that this is a construct
and not to be trusted. While I continue to use
and rely on this language, I try to keep always
in mind that there are as many realities as
there are potential people, and these realities
can change from one moment to another.
Dialogic process and
dialectical reasoning
The Paskian dialogic provides a way to envi-
sion participation in social transformation
and design from a dynamic point of view, as
opposed to a causal point of view (Richards
1987, 1997, 2001; Richards & Young 1996).
Every conversation is an opportunity to par-
ticipate. The dynamics, once experienced,
cannot be reversed. Events, rhythms, pertur-
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
bations, etc., are set in motion and ripple
through the network of conversations I am
calling society. Social design becomes a dia-
logic process and participation social activ-
ism. Participation cannot be measured by
whether or not the participant “caused” a par-
ticular change, only by whether or not the
participant experienced being in a conversa-
tion. That change occurs as a consequence is
given by the formulation, even if the partici-
pant does not directly experience it. Change
cannot not happen.
If I accept that I participate in social trans-
formation and design whenever I am engaged
in a conversation, how can I think about par-
ticular interactions in the conversation such
that the consequences are socially desirable? If
I think about society as a set of processes – i.e.,
patterns of dynamic relations, I can think
about those patterns that I want to avoid or
prevent. I can then think about the dynamics
that will be triggered by particular interac-
tions in terms of the set of constraints on the
processes or patterns. This constitutes the
“work” of the activist – avoiding or prevent-
ing the undesirable while change is happening
all around. It is the set of constraints on the
processes (what I call knowledge, in a broad
sense) that provides the stability needed to be
able to distinguish the society as a society in
the first place. These constraints are carried in
our language and get tested in every conversa-
tion. Social transformation does not only
happen to a society; it also happens in a soci-
ety, in the network of conversations. This does
not imply that social transformation has to be
a mere “tweaking” of the society. If society is
accepted as a dynamic concept, as opposed to
a static one (e.g., a set of institutions and the
transactions among them), and this dynamic
concept is accepted as desirable, then each
interaction in a conversation has the potential
to trigger major shifts in thinking and action.
Out of conversations come new ideas and
alternatives. Choice and freedom are manifest
in conversation.
How do I think about the “desirable”? As a
starting point, I have no alternative but to
accept that my desires may be different than
those of others. A desirable society could be
one in which all the participants can pursue
their desires unobstructed by the pursuits of
others. This does not fit my experience, even
when I specify my desires as constraints – i.e.,
that which I do not want to happen. Conflicts
second-order cybernetics
in the pursuit of desires are so prevalent in my
experience that I assume this is the experience
of others as well. A way out of this dilemma
might be to think of the dialogic process of
social transformation and design as one that
continually pursues the desirable. That is,
participation in a process of social transfor-
mation and design, through conversation,
that continually seeks the desirable is a first
condition of a desirable society. Social process
becomes a process of “designing,” the design
principles for which include (1) an accep-
tance that any action or interaction will not
dilute the participation of another, and will
preferably enhance it, and (2) an acceptance
that, in conversation, everything can change.
When conflicts arise, desires are explored in
conversation for new alternatives, new ways
of thinking and new desires. Conflicts
between pursuits of desires become desirable
as stimuli for conversation.
While the idea of constraint, and there-
fore of negative reasoning, continues to be
useful in this formulation of social transfor-
mation and design through dialogic process,
the shift in thinking from causality to
dynamics points toward another perspective
on reasoning. If conflicts in the pursuit of
desires are taken as desirable, as an opportu-
nity for creativity, interactions in conversa-
tions can be conceptualized in terms of
dimensions of conflict. I identify two such
dimensions, the compatible/incompatible
dimension and the supportive/oppositional
dimension (Brün 2003, #288). Dialectical
reasoning is realized in conversation when an
idea or alternative is presented along with its
opposing and/or incompatible ideas or alter-
natives. The dialogic process then seeks new
ideas and alternatives, along with their
opposing and/or incompatible ideas and
alternatives, and so on. When compatible
and supportive ideas and alternatives arise
that do not violate the principles of the
design process, they can become, tempo-
rarily at least, a part of the design. Of course,
once a part of the design, they will no longer
be useful as stimuli for conversation until
their presence creates a conflict again. They
will, however, constrain the dynamics in the
network of conversations as these con-
straints have been deemed temporarily
desirable.
In order to make the connection to social
transformation and design, I have strayed
133
 philosophical-epistemological
CONCEPTS
from the original discussion of radical con-
structivism. If I now trace the stream of
thought backwards, the point of departure
occurs when language is transformed into a
dynamic phenomenon. Building on the
assumptions of a radical constructivist model
that von Glasersfeld so carefully specified, the
dynamic view of language led to an extension
of a stream of thought into a particular con-
cept of society and participation therein.
Of course, for those who might adhere to
an elitist view of society (that is, there are
those of us who will dominate and those of us
who will be dominated, and the human mis-
ery that follows is simply “the way things
are”), this stream of thought is not only unac-
ceptable; it is heretical. It is here that radical
constructivism can play an important practi-
cal role. The argument of radical constructiv-
ism is so clear that exposure to it can leave no
doubt that “the way things are” is a fabrica-
tion, leaving no safety net for its believers. The
elitist point of view is an intolerant one that
defends its intolerance by referring to an
external, objective reality as the source of
absolute truth. If we accept that some have
greater access to this external reality by virtue
of their wealth, education, religion, national-
ity, etc., we grant them the power to domi-
nate. This is what radical constructivism can-
not tolerate.
Implications and
concluding remarks
The concept of social transformation and
design that I present here, with a basis in lan-
guage, suggests a social activism in everyday
life, a way of living. We live in language, and
every time we speak or write, or use other
languages (visual, mathematical, gestural,
musical, etc.), we alter our society. We carry
the constraints on the patterns of dynamics
that constitute the processes of society in our
language, and those constraints shift as a
consequence of interacting in that language
– a never ending cycle, yet perhaps desirable.
The concept of a fixed, objectified end state
as the product of social design is not desir-
able because we do not agree on what that
end state should be. If we can agree that we
experience conflict in our pursuit of desires,
then a process that engages us in the genera-
tion of new ideas, new knowledge, new val-
134
ues and desires would be a desirable “prod-
uct” of social design – a design for designing.
Ernst von Glasersfeld’s work and thought
provides a rich source of ideas for initiating
discussion and research on society and its
transformation and design, and other human
endeavors, much of which has yet to be
mined. It raises new questions and stimulates
new thinking. Radical constructivism can
also serve as an anchor for applied research on
social activism and its variations. I hope I
haven’t distorted the ideas to an unacceptable
level by extending them into the domain of
dynamics. If I have, it is certainly not out of
any disrespect or lack of appreciation and
admiration for Ernst. To the contrary, much
of my thinking would not have happened
without, at least, my version of Ernst’s frame-
work for radical constructivism.
I have not yet addressed one of the
assumptions of a radical constructivist model
– the ability to remember. I claim that, despite
all the studies and literature on the subject of
memory, the concept of remembering is still
relatively undeveloped. It is central to our
notions of time and history, and we experi-
ence what we call remembering continually
while we are awake and often while we are
asleep. “Memory” has become objectified in
our language, and we accept it as given, either
as a container for our thoughts over time or as
a mechanism for explaining habitual relation-
ships we no longer need to think about. A
consequence of this objectification is that we
then think about learning and adaptation as
phenomena that take “time” – we experience
a perturbation, a deviation from the norm, we
think about it, and then we attempt an adjust-
ment or correction. When we take the lan-
guage of remembering into the domain of
dynamics, time itself becomes dynamic and
malleable, and concepts like instantaneous
remembering become useful:
“The Art of Instantaneous Remembering:
Try and project an event you care for, while
it happens to you, into an imagined past,
so that you can experience the event simul-
taneously ‘now’ and ‘once upon a time’.”
(Brün 2003, #118)
This is a skill of the performer, and there-
fore of the activist as a performer. Skilled per-
formers experience their surroundings, in the
moment, and make instantaneous adjust-
ments, without time delay. The type of think-
ing that goes into making these adjustments is
second-order cybernetics
not one of means-ends rationality; it has to be
a different way of thinking that does not
require connecting causes to effects. It may
involve imaging the patterns of dynamics and
their potential constraints such that any
adjustment within the constraints is accept-
able – an immersion in the dynamics of the
surroundings. Whatever this way (or ways) of
thinking is, it requires the performer to be
fully aware and self-conscious, without think-
ing through every movement or utterance or
analyzing alternatives before making adjust-
ments. For the social activist, performance
serves to stimulate conversation by generating
perturbations and provocations that serve as
asynchronicities. I leave further development
of the concept of remembering for future con-
structivist and dialectical exploration.
By way of a conclusion, I offer this quote
from Ernst von Glasersfeld:
“…I believe I have come to adopt a cyber-
netic way of thinking… I became aware of
this in the many conversations with stu-
dents who were worrying about their
future and asked for advice. I heard myself
telling them that it was far more important
to know what one did not want to do, than
to have detailed plans of what one did want
to do. One day it dawned on me that this
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Larry Richards is currently Professor of
Management and Vice Chancellor for Aca-
demic Affairs at Indiana University East,
Richmond, Indiana, USA 47374. He previ-
ously held positions as Founding Chair of
the Department of Engineering Manage-
ment at Old Dominion University, Norfolk,
Virginia, and Founding Dean of the School
of Management and Aviation Science at
Bridgewater State College, Massachusetts.
He is a past president of the American Soci-
ety for Cybernetics and the American Soci-
ety for Engineering Management, where he
became a Fellow in 2002. His current
research interests include the integration of
cognitive and computational perspectives
on decision making, the organization and
presentation of information in policy sup-
port systems, the implications of dialectical/
dialogic approaches to social design and
transformation, and the role of “time” in
everyday thought and action.
Constructivist Foundations
 philosophical-epistemological
CONCEPTS
was plain cybernetic advice: It is more use-
ful to specify constraints rather than goals. –
And then I explained it by adding that in
one’s teens or twenties one usually has
already discovered a number of things that
one cannot stand, whereas it is quite
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mind. Ballantine Books: New York, pp.
399–410.
Brün, H. (2003) Irresistable observations.
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(Glasersfeld 1992, p. 25)
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308.
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Richards, L. (1987) Untangling the dilemmas
of social design. Paper presented at the
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ical departure for the practice of model-
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2–5.
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International Journal of General Systems
2: 5–24.
Received: 15 September 2006
Accepted: 5 February 2007
135
 educational radical constructivism
CONCEPTS

Triple-Loop Learning as Foundation

for Profound Change, Individual
Cultivation, and Radical Innovation
Construction Processes beyond Scientific and Rational Knowledge
Markus F. Peschl A University of Vienna (Austria) <franz-markus.peschl@univie.ac.at>

Purpose: Ernst von Glasersfeld’s question concerning the relationship between scientific/ hints on how he sees the relationship between
rational knowledge and the domain of wisdom and how these forms of knowledge come rational/scientific knowledge and wisdom; he
about is the starting point.This article aims at developing an epistemological as well as summarizes this relationship in the following
methodological framework that is capable of explaining how profound change can be quotation.
brought about in various contexts, such as in individual cultivation, in organizations, in “Einigen wenigen Künstler und Dichtern
processes of radical innovation, etc.This framework is based on the triple-loop learning […] gelingt es hier und dort, den Eindruck
strategy and the U-theory approach, which opens up a perspective on how the domains of zu erwecken, als gäbe es keine Schnitt-
scientific/rational knowledge, constructivism, and wisdom could grow together more stelle, keine Grenze zwischen dem Mysti-
closely. Design/Structure:This article develops a strategy which is referred to as “triple- schen und dem Rationalen. Denken Sie
loop learning,” which is not only the basis for processes of profound change, but also brings etwa an das Lächeln der Mona Lisa oder,
about a new dimension in the field of learning and knowledge dynamics: the existential besser noch, an das Lächeln jener archai-
realm and the domain of wisdom. A concrete approach that puts into practice the triple- schen Hermes-Köpfe aus dem frühesten
loop learning strategy is presented.The final section shows, how these concepts can be Griechenland. Da gibt es Momente, wo
interpreted in the context of the constructivist approach and how they might offer some dieses Lächeln uns so bewegt, dass wir
extensions to this paradigm. Findings:The process of learning and change has to be meinen, wir verstünden es. Doch sobald
extended to a domain that concerns existential issues as well as questions of wisdom. wir es zu fassen versuchen, um zu erklären
Profound change can only happen if these domains are taken into consideration.The triple- was uns so viel zu sagen scheint und uns so
loop learning strategy offers a model that fulfills this criterion. It is an “epistemo-existential sehr bewegt, sobald wir es vernunftmäflig
strategy” for profound change on various levels. Conclusions:The (cognitive) processes begreifen wollen, kommt uns die Zuver-
and attitudes of receptivity, suspension, redirecting, openness, deep knowing, as well as sicht abhanden, und wir sagen schliefllich
“profound change/innovation from the interior” turn out to be core concepts in this pro- etwas verlegen, das Lächeln sei zweideutig.
cess.They are compatible with constructivist concepts.Von Glasersfeld’s concept of func- Doch damit vertuschen wir nur die Tatsa-
tional fitness is carried to an extreme in the suggested approach of profound change and che, dass wir keine rationale Deutung
finds an extension in the existential domain. Key words: Double-loop learning, individual haben. Für mich ist das eine der vielen
cultivation, (radical) innovation, knowledge creation, knowledge society, personality devel- Erfahrungen, die mir belegen, dass alles
opment, presencing, profound change, triple-loop learning, U-theory, wisdom. Mystische eben jenseits des rationalen
Begreifens oder der rationalen Schnittstel-
len liegt” (Glasersfeld 1996, p. 29).1
1. Introduction he understood the radical constructivist Now, several years later, there seems to be a
approach as a theory that tries to give an chance of reuniting or at least of bringing
On one occasion when I visited Ernst von explanation of how scientific/rational knowl- closer together these seemingly incompatible
Glasersfeld at his home in Amherst, MA (it edge is produced and spread (see also the quo- domains. Francisco Varela (e.g., Varela,
must have been around 1996) we were talking tation in section 4.1 of this article). Actually, Thompson & Rosch 1991; Varela 2000;
about questions concerning the limits of we did not come to a “solution” or conclusion, Depraz, Varela & Vermersch 2003) plays one of
rational and scientific knowledge (and know- but he gave me a little book with the title Über the key roles in this process, which has been
ing) and its relationship to the notion of wis- die Grenzen des Begreifens [ “On the limits of developed further by many others. In this arti-
dom. I experienced Ernst as an honestly knowing”] (Glasersfeld 1996) – to my knowl- cle I want to give a short overview and develop
searching person, even in these epistemologi- edge, it has not been translated into English. a strategy which I refer to as “triple-loop learn-
cal borderline cases. He explained to me that In his introductory article Ernst gives some ing”; it opens up a perspective on how the

136 Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3

http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
 educational
CONCEPTS
domain of rational knowledge and wisdom/
mystical could grow closer together. It is con-
cerned with the question of profound change
(and [radical] innovation) not only in the
domain of knowledge, but also in the domain
of personality or individual cultivation.
What are the implications of these consid-
erations in a larger context? Looking more
closely at what is at the heart of the modern
knowledge society (e.g., UNESCO 2005,
European Commission (2004), etc.), one can
discover that the focus on knowledge and
knowledge processes has an interesting
implication: whereas during the first and sec-
ond industrial revolution the individual
more or less vanished and was “dissolved” by
automation, the role of the individual (and in
particular of his/her knowledge and personal-
ity) has become more important in a knowl-
edge based society/economy (compare
Levy 1997; Rifkin 2004, Friedman 2006, and
many others). Vibrant knowledge and espe-
cially (creative) development of new knowl-
edge or profound change are domains, which
cannot be automated in most cases. Those
parts of knowledge which can be automated
are on the other side of the spectrum (rang-
ing from highly dynamic and changing
knowledge processes to rigid behavioral pat-
terns or deductive paradigms) – the domain
of knowledge automation (e.g., classical
management and storage of explicit knowl-
edge, classical/first generation knowledge
management paradigms [e.g.,
Holsapple 2003], classical AI (“GOFAI”)
paradigms [Boden 1990], etc.) will be of
minor interest in the context of this paper
(focusing rather on radical change/dynamics
of knowledge), although it is clear that this
kind of knowledge is a conditio sine qua non
for every domain of survival (be it biological,
cultural, social, etc.).
The return of the individual in a knowl-
edge based society implies that we have to
take a closer look at the domain of personal-
ity: the more the focus is on highly sophisti-
cated knowledge, deep understanding, com-
plex contexts, creative minds, profound
change, etc., the less it is possible to simply
replace the person or automate his/her par-
ticular cognitive and personal faculties.
Taking seriously the developments and
goals of knowledge society has crucial impli-
cations and challenges: the more the focus is
on knowledge and knowledge creation, the
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
more important will be the role of the indi-
vidual, of his/her intellectual as well as per-
sonal, ethical, etc. cultivation. Ideally, this
would mean a return of the value of the per-
son and his/her “individual cultivation.” Indi-
vidual cultivation concerns the formation of
personality, values, habitus,2 the “core,” etc.
of a person (compare for instance Senge et
al. 2004). In many cases these issues are
closely related to the domain of wisdom.
However, in most cases only rather simple
and “low” level types of knowledge and
knowledge transfer (e.g., classical (explicit/
fact) knowledge (transfer), know-how, theo-
retical and recipe knowledge, and, in some
rare cases, reflective capabilities) are offered
at today’s schools, colleges, universities, and
educational institutions (compare also
Peschl (2003, 2006a) for a more detailed clas-
sification of knowledge types and processes).
In the domain of individual cultivation the
situation is even worse than in the intellectual
realm.
2. Taking the domain of
wisdom seriously:
From double-loop to
triple-loop learning
What do we mean by individual cultivation?
What is the theoretical background of indi-
vidual cultivation? More advanced forms of
learning try to go beyond the classical trans-
fer model. That is to say, the understanding
of learning as a process of transferring more
or less stable chunks of knowledge from one
brain to another is replaced by a more
dynamic perspective: learning as a continu-
ous and active process of adaptation and con-
struction in which knowledge is developed in
permanent interaction between the cognitive
system and its environment.3 Knowledge is
not passively mapped into the brain, but
actively constructed by perceiving, acting,
and interacting with the environmental
structures – there is a feedback loop between
the realm of knowledge and of the environ-
ment. Hence, knowledge is a process which
functionally fits into the environmental
structures. This understanding of knowledge
has its roots in constructivist concepts (e.g.,
Foerster 1973; Glasersfeld 1984, 1991, 1995;
Maturana 1980, and many others) and in a
radical constructivism
situated perspective of cognition (e.g.,
Clark 1997; Hutchins 1995). This kind of
learning and knowledge acquisition is
referred to as single-loop learning or Kolb-
learning (compare also Kolb 1984; Argyris
and Schön 1996; Scharmer 2000; Senge et
al. 1990, 2004, Peschl 2006a, etc.).
In Peschl (2006a) several limitations of
single-loop learning have been discussed.
The most crucial problem has turned out to
be the limitation that this strategy of learning
does not allow for the construction of para-
digmatically new knowledge and radical
innovation (see Peschl 2006a for details). In
order to overcome some of the limitations of
single loop learning a second feedback loop is
introduced. It puts into practice a kind of
meta-learning strategy. This second feedback
loop takes into consideration that any kind of
knowledge is always based on assumptions,
premises, or a paradigm (Kuhn 1970).
In general, knowledge always has to be
seen as being embedded in and pre-struc-
tured by a particular framework of reference.
Knowledge receives its meaning and struc-
tures from this framework of reference. Nor-
mally, this framework of reference is not
explicitly present in our processes of cogni-
tion, learning, or knowledge construction.
This implies that we do not have a conscious
experience of these premises, assumptions,
etc. on which our thinking and constructing
is implicitly based. It has to be made explicit
by active exploration of one’s own assump-
tions, premises, ideological attitudes, etc.
This can be achieved by introducing a process
of reflection and “stepping out” of one’s nor-
mal way of thinking.
Due to its implicit and relatively inacces-
sible character it appears as if this framework
of reference is stable; due to this constancy it
is a kind of “blind spot” in our thinking, per-
ception, and understanding. Taking a closer
look reveals, however, that this framework of
reference is not as stable as it seems. The dou-
ble-loop learning strategy takes these
changes in the framework of reference into
consideration by introducing a second feed-
back loop. This implies that a completely new
dynamics becomes possible in the whole pro-
cess of learning and knowledge creation: one
starts to change the framework of reference.
Each modification in the set of premises or in
the framework of reference causes a radical
change in the structure, dimensions, dynam-
137
 educational
CONCEPTS
change of knowledge
over time
cognitive/intellectual
domain/level
changes
dentermines
structures
modulates
premises,
paradigm
framework of
reference
changes
dentermines
structures
existential
modulates
domain
Figure 1:Triple-loop learning. The double-loop learning process is embedded in the more
fundamental process of a third loop of change. This loop concerns the existential level.
ics, semantics, etc. of the resulting space of
knowledge. By that process a completely new
space of knowledge opens up and entirely
new and different theories, knowledge, pat-
terns of perception, interpretation patterns,
etc. about reality become possible. The
method being applied in this process is basi-
cally the technique of reflection. It is a process
of radically questioning and consistently
changing the premises and studying their
implications on the body and on the dynam-
ics of knowledge. Double-loop learning has
its roots in cybernetics, learning theory, in
cognitive science (e.g., Peschl 2001), and in
the domain of organizational learning (e.g.,
Senge 1990; Argyris et al. 1996).
2.1 Triple-loop learning
Double-loop learning is focused mainly on
the intellectual and cognitive domain and its
dynamics. However, if one is interested in
profound change a new level, implying a new
dynamics, has to be introduced; profound
change does not only happen in the cognitive
domains, but touches a more fundamental
138
behavior
knowledge
knowledge
knowledge
knowledge
reality
phenomenon…
changes
mismatch
difference
correction
reflection (cognitive)
radical questioning
“presencing”
(Senge et al. 2004
“existential
reflection”
attitudes/habitus
values
being/person
© Constructivist Foundations
level – an existential level that includes the
person and his/her attitudes, values, habitus,
etc. Whereas it is possible to “play games” on
the cognitive/intellectual level (in the sense of
trying out or simulating intellectual posi-
tions without being touched existentially by
them), one can experience that there exists a
level, where “intellectual games” are not pos-
sible any more. We are then confronted with
a level going beyond the domain of cognitive
or intellectual questions touching the self in
the very center.
Similarly to the case of double-loop learn-
ing, we discover that the whole intellectual
framework, the whole domain of knowledge
and representation, our sets of premises,
assumptions, etc. are embedded in a more
fundamental domain (see Figure 1): the
domain which could be described as “the
self ” – that is, the level where I am myself in
an existential sense. Of course, this domain is
a construction as well, but the degrees of free-
dom for the processes of construction are
rather limited. Furthermore, as one can
experience every day, a lot more effort is nec-
radical constructivism
essary to make changes in this domain than
to change one’s intellectual, philosophical,
political, etc. position. Philosophically, one
can refer to this domain as the “person.” It
goes beyond the level of personal skills, com-
petencies, personality, etc. because it tran-
scends the domain of personality traits,
behavioral and cognitive patterns, solely
quantifiable data, etc. It touches the person
on his/her fundamental level of being and, in
many cases, concerns the domain of wisdom
– in most cases it is rather difficult to talk
about it in classical scientific terms. As will be
shown in the sections to come and as has been
discussed excessively by classical philosophy
(starting from the Greeks), the notion of wis-
dom goes far beyond the cognitive and clas-
sical knowledge domain – one of its main
characteristics is that it is concerned with
existential questions which are closely related
to the domain of the self. Wisdom goes
beyond what Polanyi (1966) and the more
recent discussions in the field of knowledge
management (e.g., Krogh et al. 2000; Nonaka
et al. 1995, 2003, and many others) refer to as
tacit knowledge. The introduction of this exis-
tential domain implies a third loop in our
model of learning processes: triple-loop
learning.
2.2 Learning as change on various
levels: An overview
Hence, the goal of learning processes on that
level is profound change. What does that mean
and how can it be realized? While classical
learning strategies focus on changes in the
domain of knowledge and the intellect, the
triple-loop approach also includes changes
on the existential level and in the domain of
the “will/heart”.4 Looking more closely vari-
ous levels of “intensity” of change, the follow-
ing can be identified (compare also
Scharmer 2000 or Senge et al. 2004):
i. Reacting and downloading. The simplest way
of responding to change either arising in the
internal or external environment or that is the
result of the cognitive system’s own activities
(e.g., if one is confronted with or has caused a
problem, change, task, or challenge) is to sim-
ply react. In other words, already existing and
well established behavioral, perceptual, or
cognitive patterns are applied to solve the
problem or the learning/adaptation task. This
is the most convenient and most economical
Constructivist Foundations
 educational
CONCEPTS
way of reacting to change, because it only
requires downloading of already prefabri-
cated solutions, knowledge, etc. The price of
this simple response is quite high: (i) the reac-
tions are highly rigid and (ii) the resulting
solutions or changes do not go very deep and
in most cases do not even scratch the under-
lying issues of the problem. It has to be clear,
however, that all these processes are always
embedded in a feedback loop (see Figure 1) in
which the border between externally trig-
gered changes and produced changes is
blurred. As an implication, it becomes evi-
dent that this mode of learning offers – from
a constructivist and cybernetic perspective –
only very limited possibilities (other than
cycling through already predetermined,
rather rigid, and well established action-reac-
tion feedback-loops).
ii. Redesign and adaptation. Alternatively, it is
possible to not only apply already existing
patterns, but to use these patterns as a blue-
print that is adapted slightly to the current sit-
uation. From a cognitive perspective this is a
highly efficient learning strategy, because it is
not as rigid as level (i) learning processes, but
it can be done with minimal cognitive effort:
namely, to make use of already existing pat-
terns, change them slightly (e.g., changing
values of variables) and apply them to the new
situation, task, etc. From the field of cognitive
(neuro-)science these processes are well
understood – these are the classical learning
and adaptation processes well known from
the domains of connectionism or computa-
tional neuroscience (Bechtel et al. 2002;
Hebb 1949; Peschl 2001; Rumelhart et
al. 1986, and many others). From this per-
spective it becomes clear that these processes
are mathematically equivalent with processes
of optimization, i.e., we search for an opti-
mum in an already pre-structured space (of
solutions). What we do in single-loop learn-
ing is structurally equivalent with these level-
(ii) processes of redesigning and adaptation.
Taking a constructivist and second-order
cybernetic perspective seriously forces us to
go one step further because these processes of
adaptation and redesign are always embedded
in a feedback loop where the results of the
(cognitive/knowledge) adaptations have a
direct influence on the environmental
dynamics, triggering changes in the cognitive
system’s experiences. Hence, a new cognitive
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
dynamics is triggered which forces us to go
one step further.
iii. Reframing. In most cases downloading,
adaptation, and optimization (i.e., level-(i)
and level-(ii) learning/change processes) are
sufficient for mastering everyday problems
and challenges. In a way these solutions are
not very interesting from the perspective of
radical change, because they do not bring
forth fundamentally new knowledge,
insights, or understanding. As has been dis-
cussed in the context of double-loop learning,
fundamental cognitive change is always con-
nected with reflection and stepping out of the
– more or less consciously – chosen frame-
work of reference: i.e., going beyond the
boundaries of the pre-structured space of
knowledge and “reframing” it in the sense of
constructing and establishing new dimen-
sions and new semantic categories. This pro-
cess concerns the level of mental models, pre-
mises, and assumptions and their change.
Here, the notion of the observer and his/her
relationship to the observed systems comes
into play; reframing is about taking the
observer’s position seriously (e.g.,
Maturana 1991; Glasersfeld 1995) in the
sense that one reflectively steps out of his/her
own experiences and tries to look at the situ-
ation as a whole in a reflective act (e.g.,
Glasersfeld 1989). “On the level of reflective
abstraction, however, operative schemes are
instrumental in helping organisms achieve a
coherent conceptual network that reflects the
paths of acting as well as thinking which, at
the organisms’ present point of experience,
have turned out to be viable.” (e.g.,
Glasersfeld 1989). Going one step further,
this process of reflection leads to the con-
struction of alternative conceptual frame-
works enabling the reframing of already well
established cognitive structures.
iv. Profound existential change and “presenc-
ing”. On a more fundamental level, change
goes beyond reframing and no longer con-
cerns only intellectual or cognitive matters.
On that level, questions of finality, purpose,
heart, will, etc. come to the fore. As has been
shown above, that is the domain of the triple-
loop learning strategy. “Why do change initi-
atives based on culture and learning some-
times also fail? One explanation is that the
rhetoric of change was in disconnection to
radical constructivism
what really matters most […] Thus a fifth
approach to coping with change is to focus on
deep intention, purpose, and will. Now the
responses of [previous] levels […] become
part of an even more subtle set of contextual
variables, which are referred to as purpose,
(shared) vision, or common will.”
(Scharmer 2000, p. 9) In this mode, change is
not solely based on cognitive reflection any
more, but more importantly on existential
reflection and learning. In a way, the goal is to
bring the existential level, the person, his/her
will, his/her acting, as well as his/her cognitive
domain into a status of inner unity. What
might sound esoteric is in fact a very old
theme and philosophical issue going back at
least to Aristotle’s (1985) Nicomachian Ethics
and to most Western and Eastern philosophi-
cal and religious traditions. Very often these
questions concern the domain of wisdom.
Due to its existential character Scharmer
(2000) and Senge et al. (2004) refer to this
mode of change/learning as “presencing.”
As can be seen in Figure 1 these modes of
change/learning cannot be seen as being sep-
arated from each other. It is only in the mode
of analysis that these domains have to be dis-
tinguished. In the mode of action these
domains and loops are closely intertwined
and depend on each other. I want to refer to
this perspective of learning which takes into
account all the above levels of change (and
especially the existential level) as “individual
cultivation.”
3. Individual cultivation,
presencing and
U-theory
3.1 An epistemo-existential strategy
for profound change
How can that profound existential change or
learning process be realized? What steps are
necessary to implement this process of indi-
vidual cultivation that is suggested by the tri-
ple-loop learning strategy? There are many
ways of supporting this process of individual
cultivation, ranging from classical upbring-
ing in families and (not only school and uni-
versity) education to the very old classical
concept of the relationship between a master
and his/her student(s) (e.g., in the ancient
139
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CONCEPTS
Greek philosophical schools, in Western and
Eastern religious traditions of monasteries,
etc.). However, taking a closer look at most
modern educational institutions reveals that
they are not capable of offering such an edu-
cational setting any more.
On a more general level, a relatively new
(and at the same time very classical) theoreti-
cal framework capturing this process of indi-
vidual cultivation and profound change has
been developed by C.O.Scharmer (2000,
2001, forthcoming) and Senge et al. (2004); it
is referred to as “U-Theory” or “presencing.”
In the following section I am going to present
a condensed overview of a further develop-
ment and adaptation of this approach in
order to get an idea of which processes are
necessary for profound learning and change
in a constructivist context.
One can describe that process as a U-
shaped curve that is realized in a series of
states: the left branch going down the “U”
focuses on issues of observation, perception,
sensing, discovery of patterns of thought and
cognition, and on how to leave these patterns
behind oneself in order to be cognitively and
emotionally “prepared” for profound change.
At the bottom one finds him-/herself in the
state of presencing: it can be characterized as
a condition of high receptivity and openness
and as a state where radically new knowledge/
change can emerge. The upward branch deals
with issues concerning the realization, proto-
typing, and embodying these changes in the
(external or internal) environment.
3.2 Sensing and seeing radically
different: From downloading to letting
go and presencing
Suspending. A conditio sine qua non for any
form of profound change, learning, or inno-
vation is an attitude of suspension: in order to
achieve the goal of profound change, it is nec-
essary to detach and free oneself from well-
established patterns of perception and
thought. That means that – in the first place –
it is necessary to suspend one’s instant recipes,
judgments, solutions, etc. Being confronted
with a new situation or a complex problem we
are always temped to simply download
already well-proven and well-established
solutions (compare the downloading process
of the level-(i) form of change). From an epis-
temological perspective this means that we
140
are projecting our knowledge, judgments,
patterns, and mental models onto the world.
Both from our experience and from cognitive
neuroscientific as well as constructivist-epis-
temological considerations it is evident that
we will never reach the ideal of “pure recep-
tiveness”; the goal of suspension is not to
claim that this is possible, but to put more
emphasis on this cognitive activity of being
receptive – understood as an “epistemological
attitude or virtue” that can be trained. It turns
out to be extremely helpful for most processes
that strive for profound change and deep
learning. Apart from constructivist claims
that learning primarily consists in eliminating
perturbations induced by interaction
through a process of accommodation (in the
sense of Piaget 1992, cf. Glasersfeld 19895),
the phase of suspending aims at being recep-
tive and open to what happens in the world
and at trying to lower the level of construction
and projection activities. This seems to be a
contradiction but, as will be shown in
sections 4.2ff, both aspects are necessary for
triggering profound change.
Shifting the focus from projecting to
receptiveness does not imply that our cogni-
tive/knowledge structures will become
“images” of our environment in a naïve realist
sense; rather it is a necessary condition for
opening up the view for new perspectives and
for new perceptual and cognitive categories
(compare also Varela, Thompson &
Rosch 1991; Varela 2000; Depraz, Varela, and
Vermersch 2003). As will be shown below, the
goal of the activity of suspending as well as of
letting go and presencing is to establish a
space that enables a process of organic co-
construction of profound change based on
deep understanding. In a social/collective
context this process of suspending is a pre-
condition for a successful process of dialogue
(cf. Bohm 1996; Isaacs 1999; Schein 1993),
which is one methodological means of how
this process can be realized.
Redirecting. In this step one redirects his/her
attention towards the interior: “ […] you
change the direction of attention, which tunes
out the spectacle of the world, so you can
return to the interior world. In other words,
you substitute an apperceptive act for percep-
tion.” (Depraz, Varela, and Vermersch 2003,
p. 31) Metaphorically speaking, one turns
his/her gaze back towards the source of this
radical constructivism
perceptual act and tries to look at and con-
sciously through his/her perceptual patterns.
“It is the idea that normally the habitual thing
is that one should redirect attention outward.
Redirect it to what is emerging as an object, as
a content, which has its own intentionality.
The point about redirection is that you
reverse that. You keep it within, but toward
the source, toward the source of the mental
process rather than the object” (Varela 2000,
p. 6). “Suspension will lead to very early
emerging events, contents, patterns, gestures,
whatever. Then you can actually redirect your
attention to them. That’s where the new is. So
the suspension creates a space, the new comes
up, and then you can redirect. Redirection is a
specific gesture” (Varela 2000, p. 5). This pro-
cess of redirecting goes beyond reflection; it
aims not only at uncovering and questioning
premises and cognitive patterns, but at
exploring the source of these patterns and, by
that, opening up a new space, a space that
enables the emergence of new constructions,
new profound insights, fundamental change,
etc. Here again, the notion of the observer
plays a crucial role, because the person who is
going through that cognitive process of redi-
recting has to explicitly and consciously
acknowledge his/her role as an observer who
is capable of both being inside and “outside”
the system and of constructing a new perspec-
tive or of exploring his/her own experiences
of observation.
Letting go. In order to reach this state of emer-
gence it is – at first – necessary to let go what
one has discovered in this process of redirec-
tion and exploration of one’s own premises,
assumptions, etc. “ […] you have to change
from voluntarily turning your attention from
the exterior to the interior, to simply accept-
ing and listening. In other words, […] you go
from “looking for something” to “letting
something come to you,” to “letting some-
thing be revealed.” What is difficult here is
that you have to get through an empty time, a
time of silence, and not grab onto whatever
data is immediately available, for that’s
already been rendered conscious, and what
you’re after is what is still unconscious at the
start.” (Depraz, Varela, and Vermersch 2003,
p. 31) Of course, this process can cause exis-
tential fear in some cases, because one loses
the (epistemological) ground on which one is
standing and which normally provides a
Constructivist Foundations
 educational
CONCEPTS
rather stable cognitive framework. This is a
well-known state in the constructivist frame-
work (if it is adopted in a reflected manner).
Being in a state of receptivity always means
being in a relatively passive role which brings
about a higher chance of being (epistemolog-
ically and existentially) hurt. However, sur-
rendering into this rather receptive and open
state does not imply that one is completely
passive; rather, the contrary is the case: in a
way one finds oneself in an active state of
extremely high attention towards what is
coming up without trying to project one’s
own expectations, plans, knowledge, etc. It is
a slightly paradoxical situation: on the one
hand one is waiting seemingly passively for
what is going to happen and on the other
hand this is a highly active state concerning
one’s attention and receptiveness. These pro-
cesses of trying to get empty and at the same
time to be attentive towards what is going on
“out there” are well known from art and reli-
gious traditions as well as from Husserl’s phe-
nomenological approach (e.g., the concept of
epoche).
Presencing. In this state one enters into an
“intimate epistemological dance” with reality.
In other words, due to the high level of recep-
tiveness and attention it is possible to “catch
the wave” of the environmental dynamics
and “surf ” it in a process of smooth and inti-
mate interaction between the cognitive and
environmental dynamics. This is E.v.Glasers-
feld’s (1984, 1991, 1995) functional fitness in
its perfect realization; or Maturana’s (1970,
1980) concept of (structural) coupling in its
most sophisticated form. Epistemologically,
this leads to a process of what Rosch (1999)
and others refer to as “deep or primary know-
ing.” In that moment, constructivist and
(weak) realist attitudes come very close and
almost collapse. In this context, a close rela-
tionship and connection between construc-
tivism and weak realism becomes evident.
What is important in our context of the ques-
tion of profound change and learning are the
following points:
[ This is a way of constructing highly
sophisticated and profound knowledge
about an environmental aspect with a
minimum influence of projection. By that
it is possible to achieve a profound under-
standing of the phenomenon under inves-
tigation. This understanding goes beyond
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
a purely cognitive and intellectual pene-
tration; it also includes the existential
dimension in the sense that the person is
related to the phenomenon under investi-
gation.
[ This is a prerequisite for enabling pro-
found change or learning. Having a deep
understanding about a phenomenon
implies that one also knows or “sees” its
potential(-ity); i.e., one comes to see what
could or what wants to emerge out of the
interaction between one’s cognitive activ-
ities and the environmental dynamics.
[ One does not only enter into a “contem-
plative” dance of understanding with real-
ity, but also into an organic process of co-
construction, co-formation, co-design,
co-influencing, co-changing. Thus the
potentials/-ities of both the cognitive sys-
tem and the environment/phenomenon it
is interacting with begin to organically
connect into a joint dynamic in which rad-
ically new structures, processes, dynamics,
knowledge can start to emerge.
[ For these processes to happen, both sys-
tems and their close interaction are neces-
sary; both systems which are involved are
mutually respected in and respecting
their dynamics, possibilities, determina-
tions, and limitations. The goal is not to
project one’s own prefabricated knowl-
edge and mental models on the phenom-
enon and try to change it according to
these ideas. Rather, the goal is to organi-
cally co-evolve and co-develop a dynamic
which brings both partners into a state
where it is possible to enter into a process
of mutual blossoming and realizing more
of one’s finalities.
[ Metaphorically speaking, one can com-
pare this process to the interaction
between a good artist and the material
she/he is working with: both unfold and
blossom in the process of this interaction
by respecting as well as cultivating the
potentials/-ities of the other. In a way, the
stone already has the form of the statue
(in potentia) in itself and the artist brings
forth this form by both being inspired by
that stone and by his own cognitive activ-
ities, mental models, plans, talents, etc.
[ If one took this approach seriously, this
would have an enormous impact on our
understanding, and foremost on our way
of doing science. Bortoft (1996) gives an
radical constructivism
example of what such science could look
like.
What is happening in this downward
branch of the U-theory can be summarized
as follows: “Thus what we’re talking about
here is reversing two of your usual thought
processes, the first of which is the condition
of the second: (i) You have to re-direct your
attention from the exterior to the interior.
(ii) You have to change the quality of your
attention, moving from an active search to an
accepting letting-arrive. This means that
while the first reversal actively moves
between the dueling poles of the exterior and
the interior, the second reversal moves from
activity to a passive and receptive waiting,
thereby doing away with any duality remain-
ing from the first reversal.” (Depraz, Varela,
and Vermersch 2003, p. 31) It is important to
note that these processes are not only intel-
lectually challenging, but also have a deep
impact on the domain of intent/finality, and
on the emotional and existential level,
because they touch the innermost domains
of the person (or organization) who/which is
going through this process. From what has
been said above it is clear that these processes
and their results are highly fragile and it is
very difficult to make them explicit in natural
language. However, they are a conditio sine
qua non that profound change in the sense of
triple-loop learning can happen. It is only
this kind of change that makes a real differ-
ence (compared to classical adaptive or opti-
mization approaches) and may bring about
radically new knowledge, radical innovation,
completely new social, political, or organiza-
tional structures, etc.
3.3 Acting profoundly differently:
from presencing to embodying and
institutionalizing
Letting-come and crystallizing. As a conse-
quence of this state of presencing it is possi-
ble that profoundly new interaction patterns,
knowledge, perspectives, etc. can emerge.
This is not only a form of radical innovation,
but a kind of emergent innovation. It does not
so much arise from an external source which
projects his/her ideas on the phenomenon;
rather, it has its source both inside the cogni-
tive system and in the object/phenomenon to
be changed (and in their interaction). In a
way this new structure crystallizes in an
141
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CONCEPTS
emergent process of letting-come. Of course,
it is not the result of just passively sitting
there and waiting (see above), but it has
something to do with an attitude of being
patient, receptive and epistemologically
humble: i.e., to wait with a high level of atten-
tion, intellectual accuracy, and to get into a
very close and almost intimate relationship
with the phenomenon that one wants to
study and/or change. This process of letting-
come is the other side of the process of let-
ting-go. In other words, one shifts the focus
from surrendering to looking at what wants
to emerge and what is new. This is an episte-
mologically fragile process in which new
ideas and changes emerge and converge
(“crystallize”) towards a specific vision, con-
cept, idea, etc.
Enacting and prototyping. At some point it is
necessary that what has emerged in this pro-
cess of presencing and crystallizing starts to
manifest in some kind of external form – be
it in material form, or in a concrete plan, in
a concrete action, etc. Of course, this very
first externalization can only be a kind of
prototype which gets “tested” in the environ-
ment. The goal of that state is, however, that
what has emerged in the interior gets exter-
nalized so that it can be verified, seen by the
others, discussed by the others, slightly
adapted, etc.
Embodying and institutionalizing. The final
step consists in implementing the adapted
prototype in the daily routines, in estab-
lished practices, in everyday action, in the
repertoire of reaction patterns, etc.
These steps do not have to be seen as recipe
which can be blindly executed to end up with
fundamental change. Rather, it is a frame-
work helping us to orient ourselves in this
rather complex domain. These steps do not
have to be executed in the above order –
rather, it is necessary to introduce loops and
jumps in this order. The instruments used in
order to implement this framework will differ
according to the specific domain in which it is
applied.
Finally, it has to be mentioned that this
way of looking at profound change processes
can not only be applied on an individual level
(“individual cultivation”), but also in the col-
lective domain of organizations, social sys-
tems, etc.
142
4. Implications for
constructivism?
Learning from the
triple-loop learning
strategy and U-Theory
4.1 Going beyond scientific and
rational knowledge?
The radical constructivist theory has chosen
as one of its main goals the development of a
model of how rational knowledge is pro-
duced.
“Will man nun die Unterscheidung zwi-
schen dem wissenschaftlichen Wissen und
der Weisheit […] fester untermauern, so
muss man eine Antwort auf die Frage fin-
den, wie wir zu diesem brauchbaren ratio-
nalen Wissen kommen […] Wir brauchen
also ein allgemeines theoretisches Modell,
das die Produktion des rationalen Wissens
einigermaflen plausibel macht […] Das ist
die eigentliche Aufgabe der konstruktivi-
stischen Theorie” (Glasersfeld 1996,
p. 21).6
From the discussion above, it follows that
this goal leads to an unnecessary narrowing
of the scope of the (radical) constructivist
theory. In fact, constructivism is one of the
leading epistemologies in the fields of psy-
chotherapy, coaching, personality develop-
ment, organizational science, etc. Although
these fields are very often concerned with
topics going far beyond the domain of ratio-
nal knowledge, in most cases the constructiv-
ist approach covers – according to its own
rules – mostly the epistemological, rational,
methodological aspects and/or meta-aspects,
e.g., by using the epistemological/method-
ological authority of constructivism to
explain that we “only” give validity to most of
our fears, perception, etc. of reality by con-
structing them.
The approach presented in the sections
above goes one step further and extends the
notion of knowledge by introducing what has
been referred to as the “existential domain.”
As has been mentioned in the introductory
quotation by Glasersfeld this knowledge is
very difficult to grasp and to make explicit (it
even goes beyond the domain of tacit knowl-
edge, e.g., Polanyi 1966). However, this does
not imply that it is worthless or that it is not
radical constructivism
necessary to consider. On the contrary, as has
become evident in the triple-loop learning
strategy (cf. 2.1) this domain is rather the
foundation on which all the other epistemo-
logical processes are embedded.
Hence, the notion of construction is not
limited to rational knowledge, but also
includes these existential issues. Of course,
they are always reflected in the “rational”
domain, but they concern a domain which
can be referred to as the sphere of wisdom cov-
ering not only questions of (rational) knowl-
edge, but also of the existential dimension of
the person(-ality). This implies that it is nec-
essary not only to extend the notion of knowl-
edge, but also of learning. From that perspec-
tive, learning is not only about knowledge
transfer, knowledge construction, knowledge
processes, reflection, etc., but also includes
the development and change at the more pro-
found level of the person(-ality). How this can
be realized has been shown by the processes
involved in the U-theory/presencing.
4.2 Searching for a new balance
between cognitive activities of
construction and projection on the
one hand and receptivity and
openness on the other hand
Generally speaking, the approach of U-theory
offers an “epistemo-existential framework” of
how the strategy of triple-loop learning can be
realized. From a constructivist perspective it
“plays with fire”: it walks on the borderline
between (weak) realism and constructivism.
Turning this seeming disadvantage from
an epistemological problem into a challenge,
one can start to understand that this approach
of presencing is a chance that could bring
these (seeming opposite) positions closer
together. Of course, it is clear that penetrating
into reality “as it is” remains impossible; how-
ever, this approach offers a suggestion which
not only takes the problem of primacy of pro-
jection (which is a “slight” epistemological
tendency of constructivism) into account but
also tries to actively lower the influence and
predominance of constructive and cognitive
activities. In other words, it gives back some
“epistemological rights” to the world in the
sense of respecting its “active” role in the pro-
cess of knowledge generation. The goal is not
to resurrect realism, but to find and establish a
new balance between the two poles of cogni-
tive activity and projection on the one hand
Constructivist Foundations
 educational
CONCEPTS
and the influence of the dynamics and struc-
ture of the environment (on the constructive
activities) on the other hand – or, even better,
to develop an attitude which implies that
there is an epistemologically vital need for a
permanent struggle and to seek to achieve this
balance between projection and receptivity/
openness. As is suggested by the presencing
approach, it is necessary to cultivate a high
degree of epistemological attention and an
attitude of radical suspension, redirecting,
reflection, letting-go, and openness in order
to overcome these obstacles of projection.
4.3 Carrying the concept of functional
fitness and viability to its extremes
From a constructivist perspective this focus
on receptivity implies that the concept of
functional fitness/viability (Glasersfeld 1984,
1991, 1995, 2000) is carried to its extremes in
this approach: as has been stated above,
almost a kind of “epistemological fusion”
between reality and knowledge/cognition
seems to take place in this process of presenc-
ing. This is not some “esoteric” state, but con-
cerns a philosophically and intellectually
challenging process: namely, the intellectual
effort to profoundly understand (some
aspect of) the environment. From the con-
structivist perspective, the interesting point
is, however, that one does this with the full
awareness that one is the author of this pro-
cess of (constructing) understanding, but
nevertheless tries to decrease this influence as
much as possible. The result is a knowledge
process that is receptive to and “honestly”
respects the dynamics and limits of reality,
and at the same time fully enacts the cognitive
activities of construction. In other words,
both the cognitive system and the environ-
mental structures are fully and actively
involved in this process and enter into a
dynamic of mutual triggering, co-construc-
tion, co-creation, respecting, and mutually
bringing each other into a state of unfolding
and blossoming.
In a sense, the epistemological process of
mutually getting closer carries Glasersfeld’s
concepts of functional fitness and viability to
an extreme: in this dance-like cooperation the
two parties (i.e., the cognitive system and its
knowledge dynamics on the one hand and the
environmental dynamics on the other hand)
arrive at a state of profound understanding. It
can be characterized as an epistemologically
2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
intimate fit, like a key and a lock. The interest-
ing point in the context of the U-theory con-
cerns the fact that it does not suffice to remain
solely in the domain of knowledge, but that it
is necessary to “step down” in the existential
domain in order to end up in such an intimate
relationship with the environment. That is
the point where the epistemological and
ontological seem to collapse and where the
domain of wisdom is touched – in a way the
most concrete and the most abstract are
joined in that moment/domain. It is on the
border between the rational/scientific knowl-
edge and wisdom (cf. Glasersfeld 1996, p. 21).
4.4 “Unlocking” both the environment
and the cognitive system: Extending the
concept of viability by the aspect of
profound change
As has been shown above, one implication of
this intimate epistemological relationship is
the possibility of entering into a process of
profound change – both in the cognitive sys-
tem and/or in the environment. This opens
up the aspect of co-construction in the con-
structivist perspective in a more fundamental
sense: co-construction is no longer limited to
cognitive or physical structures, such as the
interaction between one or more cognitive
systems and (symbolic) artifacts. The concept
is extended in the sense that out of that inti-
mate coupling between cognitive (as well as
existential) and environmental dynamics
(i.e., “deep knowing”), profound change on an
existential level may emerge. Both the envi-
ronmental and the cognitive dynamics may
mutually “unlock” each other’s potentials.
The change does not have its cause from some
external source or influence, but from inside
the participating systems and their potentials
coupling into a joint system. Thus, going
through this process of presencing enables a
“profound change from the interior” as an
emergent process rather than having some
external instance projecting or attributing
his/her own ideas and plans on the entity
which is in this process of change.
In that context the concept of viability is
extended beyond the epistemological point of
functional fitness (e.g., successful predic-
tions). It also means bringing oneself (and
probably the other system[s] involved) into a
state of finality in the following sense: due to
the profound understanding of the systems
involved, which has been gained in the down-
radical constructivism
ward U-process, it is possible to realize their
deepest potentials. From an outside perspec-
tive that process is interpreted as profound
change of the system(s) involved. That is what
the triple-loop learning strategy is about.
4.5 Instead of a conclusion:
Open questions and new perspectives
Interestingly, the classical distinction between
know-how and know-what (see also
Glasersfeld 2000) is called into question in
this approach. Of course, the aspect of change
always has a focus on the know-how (“fac-
ere”); however, due to the existential dimen-
sion the applied know-how cannot be seen as
being completely uncoupled from the “what”
question and, even more importantly, from
the question of finality.
Closely related to this question are the
issues concerning a purely instrumentalist
and/or functionalist understanding of knowl-
edge. From what has been presented above,
the question of the role of “contemplative
knowledge” (in the sense of knowledge that is
not primarily effective) arises. More gener-
ally, it seems that profound change needs a
kind of space of “gratuité” (e.g.,
Peschl 2006b): an “enabling space” which is –
in a first step – free of function, purposes,
goals, etc. The approach of the U-theory pro-
vides one way that such a space could emerge.
Although there seems to be high compatibil-
ity with the constructivist approach, it is
unclear what the role of this “non-instrumen-
tal knowledge” could be in that paradigm.
Finding a good balance between receptiv-
ity and openness on the one hand and con-
struction and projection on the other is a
question almost as old as epistemology. Both
the constructivist approach and the concepts
presented in this paper are in the middle of
this struggle for the “right balance.” While the
constructivist has a slight tendency towards
the active role of cognition (i.e., primacy of
projection) the U-theory approach follows
the more “weak realist” tendency of being as
receptive, unbiased, and open as possible.
Looking at the question of how profound
change or the radical new can emerge in a
constructivist framework one has to admit
that they are more “accidents” in this episte-
mological context – “accidents” because the
tendency of constructivism to project already
existing (interpretation) cognitive patterns
and to apply successful and well-proven
143
 educational
CONCEPTS
(behavioral) strategies has failed and one is
forced to go for alternative strategies of
knowledge construction. The approach
developed in this paper seems to be such an
alternative, which respects both the justified
epistemological constraints of constructivism
and the necessity for openness and receptivity
to the new and unexpected. Both poles are
conditiones quae non for profound change.
Both approaches have their pros and cons and
it remains an open question as to how to find
a good equilibrium and where that equilib-
rium is located. It seems that this is an ongo-
ing struggle and epistemological effort, which
is an opportunity rather than a disadvantage,
because we are forced to keep the level of
alertness and reflection on this question high.
It is a kind of “epistemological thorn in the
flesh” which will not lead to a uniting of con-
structivist and (weak) realist positions, but to
a thoughtful and reflected way of handling
this non-trivial problem of being aware of
one’s own construction and projection activ-
Notes
1. A rough translation for this quotation:
“Some artists manage to give the impres-
sion that there is no clear border between
the mystical and the rational […] Think,
for instance, of the smile of Mona Lisa or
of the smile of the archaic Hermes-statues
in ancient Greece. There exist moments in
which we are so moved by this smile that
we think that we could understand it.
However, as soon as we try to explain or
rationally understand it we lose confi-
dence and finally state, in a rather embar-
rassed way, that it is “ambiguous.” By that
we try to cover the fact that we do not have
a rational interpretation. For me, that is
one of many experiences which prove that
the mystical is beyond the border of the ra-
tional.”
2. The term “habitus” has its roots in Latin
(habere – to have) and is a philosophical
terminus technicus (e.g., Aristotle 1985,
ethics, etc.) referring to a very well estab-
lished (learned/internalized) behavioral
pattern (in most cases used in an ethical
context or in the context of virtues, per-
sonality, etc.).
144
ities and at the same time offering the envi-
ronmental dynamics a high level of possibili-
ties for perturbation.
The triple-loop learning strategy as well as
the presencing approach provides a frame-
work in which these processes of profound
change can emerge. A lot of work has to be
done to implement these concepts and
develop concrete methods for various con-
texts, however. These contexts comprise both
the individual (e.g., individual cultivation,
vision, etc.) and the collective domain (e.g.,
organizational change, radical innovation,
etc.). The constructivist approach does not
only offer a sound epistemological frame-
work, but also a rich repertoire of methods
and approaches from a wide field of disci-
plines (e.g., therapeutic domain, organiza-
tional learning, etc.) that have their roots in
the constructivist tradition. If these methods
were combined with approaches from other
fields (such as phenomenology), a highly
sophisticated and powerful paradigm for rad-
3. The term environment covers a wide field
ranging from people to things and even to
the “internal environment.” It is both giv-
en and the result of a (cognitive) process of
co-construction.
4. Classical philosophy shows that there is a
close relationship between the “heart” and
the will. Both are concerned with the ori-
entation, the finality, etc. of the human
person.
5. “The learning theory that emerges from
Piaget’s work can be summarized by saying
that cognitive change and learning take
place when a scheme, instead of producing
the expected result, leads to perturbation,
and perturbation, in turn, leads to accom-
modation that establishes a new equilibri-
um” (Glasersfeld 1989, p. 128).
6. A rough translation: “If one wants to sup-
port the distinction between scientific
knowledge and wisdom with more pro-
found arguments, one has to find an an-
swer for the question of how to produce
usable rational knowledge […] We need a
general theoretical model that makes the
production of rational knowledge plausi-
ble […] That is the original and genuine
task of constructivist theory.”
radical constructivism
ical/profound change could emerge. This par-
adigm would not only have a deep impact on
the process of how profound change can be
brought about, but could also trigger a new
understanding of science that is compatible
with the constructivist approach and that has
a broader perspective on knowledge, its
dynamics, and its permanent renewal and
innovation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Markus F. Peschl is professor for Cognitive
Science and Philosophy of Science at the
Dept. of Philosophy of Science, University
of Vienna, Austria. He spent two years at the
University of California, San Diego (UCSD,
cognitive science, neuroscience, and philos-
ophy department) and 1/2 year at the Uni-
versity of Sussex for post-doctoral research.
Furthermore, he studied philosophy for
1 1/2 years in France.
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Received: 5 January 2007
Accepted: 2 March 2007
145
 anecdotal
OPINION
Ernst von Glasersfeld’s Limerick
Stuart A. Umpleby A The George Washington University (USA) <umpleby@gwu.edu>
In the 1980s I went through a phase of
writing limericks during idle moments
when I lacked something to read. The result
was a set of 27 limericks about cybernetics
(Umpleby 1992). I occasionally use the limer-
icks in class to restate a theoretical point. Lim-
ericks bring a smile and demonstrate that
cybernetics can be approached in a variety of
ways. Below are three limericks from this col-
lection. The last was written by Ernst von Gla-
sersfeld. It seems Ernst believed that I was
overly concerned with “reality” as opposed to
perception, or at least that I had not captured
the point that he was trying to make.
A seminal paper in cybernetics was the
article What the Frog’s Eye Tells the Frog’s Brain
by Jerome Lettvin, Humberto Maturana,
Warren McCulloch, and Walter Pitts (1959).
It demonstrated that the eye does not receive
information and then pass it to the brain for
interpretation. Rather, each neuron is a com-
putational element, and only certain types of
signals are perceived at all.
If you were an eyeball in pain,
And you spied a cool pool down the lane,
But the rest of the bod
Could just barely jog,
What would you then tell to the brain?
At a conference in Acapulco in 1980 Ernst
von Glasersfeld referred to the work on the
visual system of the frog (cf. Glasersfeld 1974).
Apparently frogs will die of starvation if sur-
rounded by immobile but quite edible flies, but
if one rolls a bee-bee across a frog’s field of
vision, it will strike out with its tongue and
146
swallow it with relish. Hence the frog is con-
structed to eat, not flies, but moving black
specks of a certain size. I thought this was a
delightful story and so wrote a limerick about
it.
A rather dim-witted, large frog
Ate bee-bees I rolled down his log.
For me they were slugs,
But for him they were bugs.
Will he sink when he jumps in the bog?
When Ernst read this limerick, he felt that
the frog had been maligned. His purpose in
telling the story had been to illustrate how the
nervous system constructs a “reality.” In
defense of the frog, Ernst wrote the following
limerick.
The beebees in Frog made a lumpl,
Too heavy for him to jumpl;
So he stood on his head
And dropping the lead
He pensively said,
“There must be more than one bee in Umpl.”
Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3
http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
radical constructivism
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Smock, C. D. & Glasersfeld, E. von (eds.)
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Through Publications: Athens, GA, pp. 1–
24. Reprinted in: Glasersfeld, E. von
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tells the frog’s brain. Proceedings of the
Institute of Radio Engineers 47: 1940–
1951. Reprinted in: McCulloch, W. S. (ed.)
(1965) Embodiments of Mind. MIT Press:
Cambridge.
Umpleby, S. A. (1992) Limericks about
Cybernetics. Cybernetics and Systems
23(2): 229–239.
Copyright Note
Adapted from Umpleby (1992) with kind per-
mission of Francis & Taylor Ltd.
The cartoons were exclusively drawn for the
festschrift © by Mihaly Lenart.
Received: 16 October 2006
Accepted: 5 February 2007
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stuart Umpleby is a professor in the
Department of Management and Director
of the Research Program in Social and
Organizational Learning in the School of
Business at The George Washington Univer-
sity. He teaches courses in the philosophy
of science, cross-cultural management, and
systems thinking.
 Above: Ernst von Glasersfeld in 1998 receiving the honorary doctorate from the Universität Klagenfurt, Austria (Photo: E. Martins).
Below: Ernst von Glasersfeld in 2006 (with rector Michel Pigeon) receiving the honorary doctorate from the Univiersité Laval, Canada (Photo: Marc Robitaille).
Ernst, happy constructing bis
hundert-und-zwanzig!

Constructivist Foundations 2007, vol. 2, nos. 2–3 Illustration by Mihaly Lenart

http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/