Context: The problems that are most in need of interdisciplinary collaboration are “wicked problems,” such as food crises, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development, with many relevant aspects, disagreement on what the problem is, and contradicting solutions. Such complex problems both require and challenge interdisciplinarity. Problem: The conventional methods of interdisciplinary research fall short in the case of wicked problems because they remain first-order science. Our aim is to present workable methods and research designs for doing second-order science in domains where there are many different scientific knowledges on any complex problem. Method: We synthesize and elaborate a framework for second-order science in interdisciplinary research based on a number of earlier publications, experiences from large interdisciplinary research projects, and a perspectivist theory of science. Results: The second-order polyocular framework for interdisciplinary research is characterized by five principles. Second-order science of interdisciplinary research must: 1. draw on the observations of first-order perspectives, 2. address a shared dynamical object, 3. establish a shared problem, 4. rely on first-order perspectives to see themselves as perspectives, and 5. be based on other rules than first-order research. Implications: The perspectivist insights of second-order science provide a new way of understanding interdisciplinary research that leads to new polyocular methods and research designs. It also points to more reflexive ways of dealing with scientific expertise in democratic processes. The main challenge is that this is a paradigmatic shift, which demands that the involved disciplines, at least to some degree, subscribe to a perspectivist view. Constructivist content: Our perspectivist approach to science is based on the second-order cybernetics and systems theories of von Foerster, Maruyama, Maturana & Varela, and Luhmann, coupled with embodied theories of cognition and semiotics as a general theory of meaning from von Uexküll and Peirce.

Key words: Perspectivism, semiotics, complex phenomena, social systems theory, differentiation of science, perspectival knowledge asymmetries.

We characterize Rolando García’s view on science, as outlined on his writings on science and university policy, and then we trace this view on his constructivist epistemology. Through this lens, we analyze his review and reformulation of Jean Piaget’s constructivist theory, his subsequent reflection on interdisciplinary research of complex systems. Based on this analysis, we outline the current challenges for a constructivist epistemology.

When he formulated the program of neurophenomenology, Francisco Varela suggested a balanced methodological dissolution of the “hard problem” of consciousness. I show that his dissolution is a paradigm which imposes itself onto seemingly opposite views, including materialist approaches. I also point out that Varela’s revolutionary epistemological ideas are gaining wider acceptance as a side effect of a recent controversy between hermeneutists and eliminativists. Finally, I emphasize a structural parallel between the science of consciousness and the distinctive features of quantum mechanics. This parallel, together with the former convergences, point towards the common origin of the main puzzles of both quantum mechanics and the philosophy of mind: neglect of the constitutive blindspot of objective knowledge.

This paper presents a critical analysis of Tamar Szabó Gendler’s view of thought experiments, with the aim of developing further a constructivist epistemology of thought experiments in science. While the execution of a thought experiment cannot be reduced to standard forms of inductive and deductive inference, in the process of working though a thought experiment, a logical argument does emerge and take shape. Taking Gendler’s work as a point of departure, I argue that performing a thought experiment involves a process of self-interrogation, in which we are compelled to reflect on our pre-existing knowledge of the world. In doing so, we are forced to make judgments about what assumptions we see as relevant and how they apply to an imaginary scenario. This brings to light the extent to which certain forms of skill, beyond the ability to make valid logical inferences, are necessary to execute a thought experiment well.

Key words: thought experiments, gendler, cognitive skill, constructivism, science, imaginary scenarios.

This article focuses on the frontier between the technological domain of production of artefacts and the naturalistic domain of the sciences of life and cognition. It shows that, since the 1940s, this frontier has become the place of production of an innovative kind of scientific knowledge – “synthetic knowledge.” The article describes the methodology and the main characteristics of synthetic knowledge, and formulates a hypothesis on its epistemological genealogy. Accordingly, it characterizes synthetic knowledge as one of the most advanced expressions of a heterodox tradition of research which, since the 1930s, has been promoting the development of a “non-representationalist” – “constructivist” – science.

Key words: artificial life, autonomy, constructivism, cybernetics, self-organization, synthetic methodology

This introduction provides a brief sketch of explanatory pluralism and related issues. It is argued that traditional ideas in the philosophy of science about connections between levels of explanation, autonomy and reduction are too simple to account for the multifaceted explanatory relations between psychology and its neighboring disciplines. Explanatory pluralism holds that theories at different levels can co-evolve and mutually influence each other, without reduction of the higher-level theory to the lower-level one. Establishing bridges between cognitive psychological and neuro-physiological theories may suggest problems and solutions, and thus foster further development, both ways. The ideas put forward in this Symposium provide resources for a pluralistic view on psychological explanation, and militate against the `single-plot story” that physiological reductionism holds up as an ideal to psychology.

Key words: eliminativism, explanatory pluralism, reductionism

The problem of induction is closely connected with the idea of an ontological reality as the regularities we perceive can be generalised to the laws of an independent nature only by means of inductive methods. A constructivist evolutionary epistemology (CEE) is proposed which considers all regularities perceived and the laws of nature derived from them as invariants of mental operators, similar to quantum mechanics which defines the properties of subjects as invariants of measuring operators. Then the laws of physics are specific to human beings. This will apply even for the law of the conservation of energy if it is derived from the homogeneity of time and therefore will depend on the phylogenetically evolved mental mechanisms defining the metric of time perception. Also mathematical regularities and the laws of logic are not universal. Rather they have to be seen as invariants of certain human mental operators. If these mathematical and perceptual operators are phylogenetic homologa, we have the possibility of explaining why mathematical methods are so successful in extrapolating experimental data or, as Davies put it, why the universe is algorithmically compressible. The possible relationship is discussed between the continuity of all physical motion as perceived by men and a special constructivist approach of counting processes. As the laws found in higher physics are invariants of the experimental facilities applied they can neither be derived from nor are they determined by the given functional structure of the brain. The CEE, therefore, does not suggest teleological ideas. The view is taken that the evolution of science is as open and endless as organic evolution is.

It is widely understood in physics that evaluation criteria for empirical theories are determined by what is called the objective structures of an outside and real world, and on this basis, discussions ensue as to whether our scientific efforts to condense observations into theories will eventually result in a “theory of everything” (Feynman 1965, Hawking 1979, Barrow 1990, Chalmers 1982) reflecting precisely these structures. “Unless one accepts that the regularities (we perceive) are in some sense objectively real, one might as well stop doing science” (Davies 1990a). I.e., reality is seen as a prerequisite for a non arbitrary and reasonable development of theories. Without reality “anything goes” – which is the downright unacceptable in physics. On the other hand, if regularities are objective in the sense that they depend on the structures of an objective outside world, it remains unclear why mathematics which obviously does not include any information on these structures is nevertheless so helpful in describing them in such a way that purely mathematical extrapolations will lead to correct predictions. This is the old question about “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences” (Wigner 1960), or, as Davies (1990b) put it, “why the universe is algorithmicly compressible” (i.e. why the obviously complex structure of our world can be described in so many cases by means of relatively simple mathematical formulae). This question is closely linked to why induction and, therefore, science at all, succeeds. It is difficult to avoid asking whether mathematics, as the outcome of human thinking has its own specificity which, for what ever reason, fits to the specificity of what man would see or experience. As long as this question is not comprehensively answered science may explain much – but not its own success. But how can such entirely disparate categories as perceiving and thinking be linked with each other? This question will be discussed here in the context of a new constructivist version of evolutionary approaches to epistemology (Diettrich 1991, 1993), which will lead to a revised notion of reality, as well as to some rather unexpected links between the phenomena of non-classical physics and the mathematical findings of Gödel.

Excerpt: The topic of this paper is social constructivist doctrines about the nature of scientific knowledge. I don’t propose to review all the many accounts that have either claimed this designation or had it ascribed to them. Rather I shall try to consider in a very general way what sense should be made of the underlying idea, and then illustrate some of the central points with two central examples from biology.

Key words: philosophy, science