Excerpt: I am pleased for the occasion afforded me by Revue Internationale de Sociologie to formulate a few thoughts of mine on Lucio Castellano’s book, Il Potere degli Altri (The Power of Others) indeed, this provides me with the opportunity of committing to writing a few points deriving from the informal discussions in which I have had the pleasure to take part with its author over the past few years in the room we share at the Faculty of Statistics at Rome’s “La Sapienza” University. What follows is not meant to be a review of the above book, but deals exclusively with the clarifying of the terms of a question which I posed myself over the course of the long journey on which the text conducts us, linking politological themes (sovereignty, democracy, government of the res publica, decision-making power, obedience to the laws of the State, equal rights, juridical-procedural rules etc) with issues concerning the “theory of society- (the formation of societal identity, societies’ environment, the nature of social norms, common sense, institutionalization, the measurement of strength relationships, symbolic representation, emancipation from the constraints of domination etc) and the philosophy of science (truth, contradiction, natural language, scientific theory, paradigm, objective || construct, formal universe, Wertsfreiheit, symbolic generalization etc). My question is: is it acceptable, given the present state of the social sciences, to make epistemology directly or indirectly dependent on forms of political decisionism? The book’s answer to this question is affirmative.

Excerpt: I wish to argue that the term ‘allopoiesis’ in principle does not seem to be appropriate for further theoretical exploration into what lies beyond the field of autopoietic systems. Neither can ‘allopoiesis’ be considered ‘the other’ of autopoiesis. The allopoietic system is at best ‘another’ system, but it is not ‘the other’ of the autopoietic system. When described as ‘another’, the allopoietic system has no more than an analogical relationship with the autopoietic system. In order for the allopoietic system to be conceived as ‘the other’ of the autopoietic system, the existence of an evolutionary link between the two systems must be assumed. What is further necessary for explaining such a link is a corresponding systems philosophy that considers the dialectical relation-ships between the two.

A major challenge in educational and institutional research is to disseminate findings effectively. It is proposed that the solution lies in establishing a theory-grounded, evidenced-based approach to learning, teaching and communication as part of the culture of educational systems and institutions. Conversation theory CT of Pask and Scott provides both an evidence-based, theoretical model for guiding good practice in learning and teaching and also, when applied iteratively, recursively and propagatively, provides a model for how to produce the desired culture change. The paper describes the iterative, recursive, propagative IRP form of CT. Iterative refers to reflective practice which has a commitment to continuous improvement. Recursive refers to vertical dissemination of good practice within an organisation. Propagative refers to horizontal dissemination. The IRP model has general applicability to organisations that would aspire to be learning communities.