The social constructionism perspective says that we never know what universal true or false is, what is good or bad, right or wrong; we know only stories about true, false, good, bad, right or wrong. The social constructionism abandons the idea of constructivist that individual’s mind represents a mirror of reality. The constructionism is focused on relations and sustains the individual’s role in social construction of realities. „Maps for the same territory” seems to be the essence of constructivist. The social constructionism is not interested to create maps; it surprises the processes that maps form. Our maps are formed from our experience and how we perceive them. All our maps are differing maps of the same world. Each of us creates our own worlds from our perceptions of the actual world. The social constructionism sees the language, the communication and the speech as having the central role of the interactive process through which we understand the world and ourselves.

The article presents the possibility of a dialogue between constructivism and the studies on historical reception. Based on the fixation on the location in historical epistemological efforts, it criticizes an unnecessarily radical constructivism with reference to evolutionary epistemology, and makes an appeal for a moderate ‘morphological constructivism’, which can be methodically applied in the form of ‘morphological imagology’. Subsequently, it illustrates a concrete example for the use of this morphological-constructivist method in the field of historical reception studies based on the Latin America reception of the German historian Georg Gottfried Gervinus. Even the argumentation of the representatives of radical constructivism is not able to negate the specific cognitive ambition of the historian to be able to make conclusive statements about the past. The historians’ obligation to the past, at least the right to veto the sources, prevails. Within this framework, however, the innovative potential of constructivist models and methods open a broad spectrum of possibilities for historical reception studies which take historical persons’ perceptions of reality seriously as a reality ‘sui generis’.

Current methodology concerning participating observation in general leaves the act of observation unobserved. Approaching participating observation from systems theory offers fundamental new insights into the topic. Observation is always participation. There is no way to escape becoming a participant and, as such, co-producer of the observed phenomenon. There is no such thing as a neutral or objective description. As observation deals with differences and process meaning, all descriptions are re-constructions and interpretations of the observed. Hence, the idea of neutral descriptions as well as the idea of the naïve observer becomes a void. Not recognizing and observing oneself as observer and co-producer of empirical data simply leaves the process of observation as the major unobserved absorber of contingency in data production based on participating observation. Relevance: The paper describes participating observation as second order observation.

Key words: language development, mind, genetic epistemology, social research, cognition, child development, developmental stages

The world, as we perceive it, is our own invention, so we always invent and never discover realities. This main thesis is grounded on neurophysiological research. But how radical then is FOERSTER’s constructivism “really”? Is it not also an empirical as well as a social constructivism plus some realism in it, too? And what shall we do with such academic questions if “the way in which a question is asked determines the way in which an answer may be found”? The physicist and philosopher Heinz von FOERSTER and the journalist and communication scientist Bernhard PÖRKSEN talk about the sensual perception of human beings and the borders of our capacity for knowledge, communication and understanding. They debate about truth, objectivity and responsibility and discuss the connections between knowledge, ethics and practice. I have been enriched of some of the aphorisms, anecdotes and aporias, still, I am not able to answer the questions asked above conclusively. The book is interesting for people who love sophistic conversations, but it is not very helpful for qualitative social research. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs050330

Key words: constructivism, dialogue, labeling, communication, hermeneutics, culture, truth, objectivity, responsibility

Reviewed Work: Wahrheit ist die Erfindung eines Lügners. Gespräche für Skeptiker (6. Aufl.) by Heinz v. Foerster, Bernhard Pörksen. The world, as we perceive it, is our own invention, so we always invent and never discover realities. This main thesis is grounded on neurophysiological research. But how radical then is FOERSTER’s constructivism „really“? Is it not also an empirical as well as a social constructivism plus some realism in it, too? And what shall we do with such academic questions if „the way in which a question is asked determines the way in which an answer may be found“? The physicist and philosopher Heinz von FOERSTER and the journalist and communication scientist Bernhard PÖRKSEN talk about the sensual perception of human beings and the borders of our capacity for knowledge, communication and understanding. They debate about truth, objectivity and responsibility and discuss the connections between knowledge, ethics and practice. I have been enriched of some of the aphorisms, anecdotes and aporias, still, I am not able to answer the questions asked above conclusively. The book is interesting for people who love sophistic conversions, but it is not very helpful for qualitative social research.

This article critiques the central premise of social constructionism, namely that groups of people freely construct beliefs about things and that beliefs are “local truths” which must be honored by outsiders and cannot be evaluated by external criteria. I argue that eliminating truth claims makes all beliefs arbitrary and eliminates the very notion of error. This leads to accepting what are in fact false and dangerous beliefs. It also leads to dogmatic cults of divergent social groups maintaining any belief system they want, and rejecting in principle all criticism or need improvement. The resulting social fragmentation prevents mutual understanding and communication. While social constructionism claims to be radically anti-modernist, i.e., anti-capitalist, the social fragmentation and uncritical thinking it promotes, exactly reflect the practices of capitalists who work for their own self-interests, disregard community concerns, and dismiss factual evidence about capitalism’s negative effects on the environment, health, and society. I propose that real community and understanding require an acceptance of “modernist” scientific principles that can critique harmful practices and design social reform.

Key words: critical realism, validity, philosophy of science, subjectivism, community, social fragmentation