According to the American Society for Cybernetics (2012), there is no unified comprehensive account of a far-reaching narrative that takes into account all of the Macy Conferences and what was discussed and accomplished at these meetings. This chapter will thus propose how group dialogues on concepts such as information and feedback allowed the Macy Conferences to act as a catalyst for second-order systems theory, when fi rstorder, steady-state models of homeostasis became supplanted by those of self-reference in observing systems. I will trace how such a development transpired through a conferences-wide interdisciplinary mindset that promoted the idea of refl exivity. According to N. Katherine Hayles, the conferences’ singular achievement was to create a “new paradigm” for “looking at human beings … as information-processing entities who are essentially similar to intelligent machines,” by routing Claude Shannon’s information theory through Warren McCulloch’s “model of neural functioning” and John von Neumann’s work in “biological systems” and then capitalizing on Norbert Wiener’s “visionary” talent for disseminating the “larger implications” of such a paradigm shift. From this perspective, the most crucial work would achieve its fruition after the end of the Macy conferences. Yet the foundations for such work were, perforce, cast during the discussions at the conferences that epitomize science in the making and, as such, warrant our careful attention.

Mancuso’s (1996) article is to be welcomed for its attempt to bring together social constructionism, personal construct theory and narrative psychology. Whilst the underlying tendency of the three approaches-to view the text as self-enclosed and constitutive of reality-is drawn out well, the differences between them are underplayed. Most significantly, these include the difference between the individualist ontology in Mancuso’s version of personal construct theory and the social ontology that is the basis of social constructionism. The fact that Mancuso ignores these differences in ontology ultimately thwarts his commendable aim of reintroducing issues of individual psychology into a constructionist framework.

This essay takes – as its point of departure – Cavicchi’s (2006) argument that knowledge develops through experimentation, both in science and in educational settings. In attempting to support and extend her conclusions, which are drawn in part from the replication of some early tasks in the history of developmental psychology, the late realist-constructivist theory of Jean Piaget is presented and summarized. This is then turned back on the subjects of Cavicchi’s larger enquiry (education and science) to offer a firmer foundation for future debate. Several of Piaget’s “forgotten works” are discussed; their theoretical contributions synthesized to form a single interdisciplinary, crosspollinating narrative describing how it is that both children and scientists grow into the world. (In addition, translated excerpts from two related historical documents have been provided in an appendix, while detailed footnotes add further context and integrate the discussion with current advances in related fields.)

Open peer commentary on the target article “From Objects to Processes: A Proposal to Rewrite Radical Constructivism” by Siegfried J. Schmidt. Upshot: We largely agree with Siegfried J. Schmidt’s focus on process and his call to look at how the “heavy words” of philosophy – “reality,” “knowledge,” “truth,” and like – are used in our everyday life-world. As communication researchers, we examine two transcripts of conversation to sketch empirically how “the real” is reported in giving directions or used in an account to undermine another’s blame narrative. By this discursive turn we attempt to let the ontological wind of out such terms as “real” and look at its indexical situated uses and how it works in constituting our life-world.

This collection presents a comprehensive overview of established and emerging techniques for collecting and analyzing data for constructivists, derived from Personal Construct psychology. It looks at both qualitative and quantitative research methods, as well as ones useful in clinical and counseling settings. Methods include content analysis, repertory grids, narrative assessments and drawings, and the laddering and ABC techniques, providing easy to follow descriptions and examples of applications in clinical and nonclinical settings.

Excerpt: This essay has two parts. In the first, I advance the main theses of the enactivist approach to perception and experience. Moreover, embracing Alvin Goldman’s concept of “enactment imagination,” I argue that the imagination works by simulating (or enacting) a hypothetical perceptual experience, and that this accounts for its experiential quality. In the second part, I develop an enactivist model of the reader’s imagination, suggesting that narrative texts are sets of instructions for the enactment of a storyworld. I also question the view that fictional consciousnesses are represented in narrative texts, adding some remarks concerning the relationship between narrative and qualia (defined as the intrinsic, ineffable qualities of our experience). The analogy that steers me through this argument is that, in their imaginative engagement with narratives, readers are like blind people tapping their way around with a cane. Every tap of the cane corresponds to the reader’s being invited to imagine a nonexistent object.

Topics addressed include: constructive alternativism and the knowledge–reality relation; anticipation, self-organisation, and structural determinism; constructs, systems, and complementarity; identity, sociality, and the mind–body problem; acceptance, orthogonal interaction, and the psychotherapeutic relationship; and person-as-scientist and the narrative approach.

A book that proposes to outline a systematic approach to psychotherapy cannot omit describing the psychological theory such an approach belongs to. George A. Kelly had the same opinion, in that he put an analysis of the differences between the philosophical assumptions of “accumulative fragmentalism” and “constructive alternativism” before the exposition of his theory of personality and his psychotherapeutic proposal. Choosing the title for the book “Constructivist Psychotherapy: A Narrative Hermeneutic Approach” represents the attempt to mark a significant differentiation from the more orthodox expositions of Kelly’s personal construct psychotherapy on which we heavily base our approach, and at the same time to specify as much as possible our metatheoretical and theoretical references. Relevance: The book has an extensive exposition of the different constructivist views on knowledge with their links with genetic epistemology, autopoietic theory, phenomenology, hermeneutics, social constructionism, radical constructivism.

“Gaming the Trace” builds up the power of narrative structures from a consideration, first, of the trace – the event of minimal inscription – and next, of what is latent in the reception – that is, the construction – of the trace. I coin a word to capture this combination of grammatological event and observing process, semiolepsis, and relate these dynamics to an allegory of narrative reception. Metempsychosis, or the tale of the transmission of the soul from one body to another, comes forward as an allegory of the reception of the trace. From here the essay moves to an interrogation of the movie Avatar’s mise en scène of the avatar system – its telling, its design specs, and its phantasmagoric realizations of technological metempsychoses. It turns out that an actual media technology exterior to that frame feeds another digital “transmission of soul” back into the physiological metamorphoses of the storyworld. Relevance: The essay expounds as well as applies a broadly Luhmannian framework of systems differentiations. Its methodology throughout is an application of epistemological constructivism and second-order systems theory.

Open peer commentary on the article “Learning about Urban Sustainability with Digital Stories: Promoting Collaborative Creativity from a Constructionist Perspective” by Maria Daskolia, Chronis Kynigos & Katerina Makri. Upshot: The target article by Daskolia, Kynigos and Makri shows the great potential of narrative learning to foster general learning skills, such as meaning-making, collaboration and creativity, while facilitating the construction of disciplinary content knowledge. This learning approach has much to recommend it, especially from a constructivist perspective, because it supports the implementation of collaborative and creative learning processes apt to promote reflective dialogue as a basis for knowledge construction, capitalizing on students’ previous knowledge and experience.