What follows is my attempt to explore some of the issues that emerge out of the constructivist perspective related to the issue of assessment. I have chosen the form of a “Galilean Dialogue” modeled after Galileo’s famous “Two Major Systems of the World” [see Jauch, 1973, for a more recent incarnation of this format]. The topic of Galileo ‘s dialogue was the comparison of the Ptolemaic and Copernican views of the universe. To some, a discussion of objectivist and constructivist views of assessment may seem trivial in comparison, but I would disagree. The issues raised here go to the heart of our world view, to the core of what we believe It means to be human. I have retained the names of the original participants (Salviati, Sagredo, and Simplicio), although their role in the dialogue is transformed to accommodate the issue at hand.

In recent years a new movement in the philosophy of education has arisen. It flies the banner of “constructivism, ” taking its name, Ernst von Glasersfeld tells us, from comments of the eighteenth century Neapolitan philosopher Giambattista Vico. Vico was an admirer of the work of René Descartes, the seventeenth century philosopher, mathematician, and scientist, who offered rational explanations of a wide range of natural phenomena, for which he is famous to this day. Unfortunately, Descartes’ writings had been banned by the Church, suffering the same fate as those of Copernicus and Galileo. And that region of the Italian peninsula was then ruled by a Spanish viceroy, who, like the king he served, had little tolerance for ideas that might be seen as challenging religious authorities. For this reason, Vico faced a difficult problem in publishing his philosophy of history, which sought rational and historical explanations of the origin of human cultures from early primitive beginnings to the complexities of European states of that day. Such explanations might seem to conflict with the conventional wisdom that human societies were the work of Divine providence, being properly ruled by kings responsible only to God. His solution was to tell us that, as God had created the world, only He could truly know it. The best that mere humans could do was to construct their own ideas about it, without pretending that these could ever reach the stature of His knowledge. By putting matters in this way, Vico was successful in getting the publication of his work permitted by the Church, and his philosophy of history stands today as a historical landmark on its own.

The paper outlines the significant influence of constructivism in contemporary science and mathematics education, and emphasises the central role that epistemology plays in constructivist theory and practice. It is claimed that despite the anti-empiricism of much constructivist writing, in most forms its epistemology is nevertheless firmly empiricist. In particular it is subject-centered and experience-based. It is argued that its relativist, if not skeptical conclusions, only follow given these empiricist assumptions. Further it is suggested that such assumptions belong to Aristotelian science, and were effectively overthrown with the modern science of Galileo and Newton. Thus constructivism cannot provide understanding of post-Aristotelian science.

The paper outlines the significant influence of constructivism in contemporary science and mathematics education and emphasizes the central role that epistemology plays in constructivist theory and practice. It is claimed that constructivism is basically a variant of old-style empiricist epistemology, which had its origins in Aristotle’s individualist and sense-based theory of knowledge. There are well-known problems with empiricism from which constructivism appears unable to dissociate itself.

Key words: Constructivism, empiricism, epistemology, Aristotle, Galileo

According to Piaget, a fundamental epistemological distinction must be made between the psychological and the epistemic subject. The epistemic subject is studied by the genetic epistemologist who charts development through a “common universal rationality, which develops,” whereas the psychological subject is studied by the developmental/cognitive psychologist by focusing on accidental contingencies surrounding particular people and their individual differences. The epistemic subject as compared to the psychological subject is an idealized abstraction, viz., that set of underlying epistemic structures common to everyone at the same level of development. The objective of this study is to investigate the degree to which investigators in science education conceptualize the difference between the epistemic and the psychological subjects. It is argued that just as the ideal gas law (based on the theoretical formulation of Maxwell and Boltzmann) provides a “general model” to which the real gases approximate under different experimental conditions, so we can consider (by abduction) the epistemic subject to be an “ideal knower” to which the real (psychological) subjects approximate to varying degrees. The difference between the epistemic and the psychological subjects, however, cannot be used as an “epistemological shield” in defense of Piagetian theory. Any test of the Piagetian theory must involve psychological or real subjects. Empirical testability, however, need not be equated to being scientific. An analogy is drawn between Galileo’s idealization, which led to the discovery of the law of free-fall, and Piaget’s epistemic subject. Research conducted in science education shows that at least for some critics the wide variations in the age at which individuals acquire the different Piagetian stages is crucial for rejecting the theory. It is argued that the real issue is not the “proportion of heterogeneity” but the understanding that Piaget, by neglecting individual differences, attempts to build a general model applicable across types of situations/subjects. The distinction between the epistemic and the psychological subjects is important not for defending Piaget’s theory (which has serious theoretical flaws) but to understand epistemic transitions, for example, the one between Piaget’s epistemic subject and Pascual-Leone’s metasubject. It is concluded that failure to understand the distinction between the epistemic and the psychological subjects would lead to misconstruing the significance of our research findings and, what is more serious, to a lack of a historical perspective.

Excerpt: In the focal paper of Zeleny and Hufford (1991), the criteria of autopoiesis (which were created by others) were applied to three examples of systems: cells, osmotic growth, and family. This is a simple exercise, but with very important implications. It has also not been carried out before, not even by the “fathers” of autopoiesis. Our conclusions are also clear: Although all living systems are autopoietic, not all autopoietic systems are living. All autopoietic systems must be social systems. These conclusions have many implications, some of them significant. It is irrelevant whether we personally like, dislike, or hate such implications. Such emotions, although important, should not make their way into the discussion. Without attempting to be “cute,” let us remember that many critics deeply hated not only Galileo’s conjecture, but the man himself; also, we all might dislike the law of gravity while falling down a flight of stairs. It certainly was not our goal to discuss human families, concentration camps, biological cells, or osmotic growths as such in all their richness and specificity. We will therefore resist being drawn into discussing whether these systems are good, bad, or “hell.” It all depends on one’s personal experiences with them. We would have written an entirely different paper had we wished to address such emotions. Clarity, simplicity, and importance of the premises and conclusions of our paper should normally elicit very short, simple, and clear responses. In this context, one should comment on whether or not we have misapplied one or more of the criteria and instruct us about their correct application, or perhaps even question the set of criteria itself, although we have not questioned them ourselves. In this context and in our opinion the rejoinders consist of only tangentially related personal views, experiences, philosophies and convictions which are inappropriate and redundant in the discussion of the focal topic, “The application of autopoiesis in systems analysis: Are autopoietic systems also social systems?” If it is necessary to refer to other related, or even remotely related, ideas, it is, as it always has been, appropriate to provide published references rather than substitute a full, personal exposé.