An approach which has the purpose to catch what characterizes the specificity of a living system, pointing out what makes it different with respect to physical and artificial systems, needs to find a new point of view – new descriptive modalities. In particular it needs to be able to describe not only the single processes which can be observed in an organism, but what integrates them in a unitary system. In order to do so, it is necessary to consider a higher level of description which takes into consideration the relations between these processes, that is the organization rather than the structure of the system. Once on this level of analysis we can focus on an abstract relational order that does not belong to the individual components and does not show itself as a pattern, but is realized and maintained in the continuous flux of processes of transformation of the constituents. Using Tibor Ganti’s words we call it “Order in the Nothing”. In order to explain this approach we analyse the historical path that generated the distinction between organization and structure and produced its most mature theoretical expression in the autopoietic biology of Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. We then briefly analyse Robert Rosen’s (M, R)-Systems, a formal model conceptually built with the aim to catch the organization of living beings, and which can be considered coherent with the autopoietic theory. In conclusion we will propose some remarks on these relational descriptions, pointing out their limits and their possible developments with respect to the structural thermodynamical description.

Key words: Autonomy, Autopoiesis, (M, R)-Systems, Organization, Relational Biology

In this paper we provide some theoretical guidelines for the characterization of the specificity of biological systems in terms of organization and constraints. In the first place we advocate the view according to which a sound account of biological organization requires an appeal to emergent causation, and we propose a theoreti-cal justification of emergence against existing criticisms by consid-ering it as a causal power stemming from the relational properties of material configurations. Then, by interpreting constraints as a spe-cific form of this emergent causal power, we propose a distinction between the roles played by constraints in physical and biological systems. As a result we provide a possible definition of biological organization as a closed network of co-dependent and internally produced constraints.

In this historical treatise two biological-system theories, formulated in the 1920s and 1930s, are roughly sketched. The first part discusses the concept of a thermodynamically open system, as coined by the Russian pathologist Ervin Bauer (1890–1942). Like Bertalanffy, Bauer wanted to prove the specificity of the biological sciences against physics. To achieve this, he postulated the necessity to formulate specific laws of motion which are valid for living matter alone. In the second part of the paper, the organismic-system theory of the Austrian-Canadian philosopher and biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) is outlined. The focus of this theory relied on the process dynamics that is inherent inside an organismic system. Both theories exemplify closure models for a living organism from a methodical point of view that distinguishes these earlier models from semantic closure, developed by Howard Pattee as an epistemic clue in solving the enigma of living phenomena. The objective here is to disclose the essential differences between these closure conceptions. To encourage further research on closure, the essay concludes with a few questions concerning clarification of the term.

The specificity of human knowledge allow one to construct specific truths about human behavior. A structural notation and language for describing a complex hierarchically organized biological system was developed for the explicit purpose of analyzing the origins of health and disease. A specific application of these concepts to a specific patient (such as an individual suffering from the heritable disease, sickle cell anemia) requires a systematic formulation of a scientific truth. No universal law is applicable. The value of a clinical truth for the patient, as well as for the physician and society, is substantial. This value has moral, ethical, and legal weight. Both physics and chemistry use a universal external invariant reference system. Human beings and other living organisms function by an internal reference system that is neither invariant nor universal. In order to address the complexity of scientific truths within living systems, a mathematical graph is constructed from observations, descriptions, and symbolizations of the relevant human scientific activities and is placed in mutual coreference with three philosophical theories of truth. Consistency within the referencing relations of the graphic object creates an image of complex truths. When mapped over degrees of internal organization, the structural consistencies can form hierarchically transitive relations (many-to-one) creating redundancies that confirm one-another. Both structural and dynamic information can be composed within the graphic framework. The redundancies intrinsic to the degrees of organization notation, semantics, and syntax augment one another in the search for scientific truth. The degree of certitude emerging from structural implications increases in relation to the number of hierarchical degrees of organization invoked to represent the various behaviors of complex systems (as illustrated by the sickle cell anemia example). The successful synthesis of the complex image (or complex simple) of a scientific truth approaches the Heideggerian notion of identity in the sense that A = A and A is A.

Context: Sustainability is among major societal goals in our days. Education is acknowledged as an essential strategy for attaining sustainability by activating the creative potential within young people to understand sustainability, bring forth changes in their everyday life, and collectively envision a more sustainable future. Problem: However, teaching and learning about sustainability and sustainability-related issues is not an easy task due to the inherent complexity, ambiguity, and context-specificity of the concept. We are in need of innovative pedagogical approaches and tools that will allow us to design learning activities in which learners will be empowered to develop new, alternative interpretations of sustainability in personally and collectively meaningful ways. Method: We argue that a constructionist perspective involving the use of expressive media for digital storytelling offers an appropriate frame for designing learning activities fostering collaborative creativity in thinking and learning about urban sustainability. Our study is based on the design of a learning activity following this rationale. We adopted a qualitative approach in the collection and analysis of different sources of data with the aim to explore collaborative creativity as a learning process based on the students’ collective processes and resulting in the co-construction of new ideas and insights about sustainability, and new tangible artefacts (the digital stories) encompassing them. Results: Our analysis of the collaborative creativity exemplified in the three digital stories produced identified important creative elements with regards to the three components of a digital story (script, technical characteristics, and ideas of urban sustainability) and how they were embodied in each digital story produced as a result of the students’ joint constructionist activity. Implications: Our study provides some preliminary evidence that collaborative creativity from a constructionist perspective can stand as an appropriate framework for designing learning activities addressing the difficult concept of sustainability. There are several implications for both theory and educational practice in environmental education and education for sustainable development, constructionism, and digital storytelling in education. Moreover, our study opens up new fields for research and theory in creativity.

Key words: Sustainability, urban sustainability, collaborative creativity, constructionism, digital storytelling, learning design.

Open peer commentary on the article “Perception-Action Mutuality Obviates Mental Construction” by Martin Flament Fultot, Lin Nie & Claudia Carello. Upshot: We extend the authors’ arguments on direct perception, specificity, and foundational principles to concerns for theories of joint action. We argue for the usefulness of the affordance concept in an ecological theory of social interaction; highlighting linkages between theories of affordance-based behavior (control) and fundamental, physical principles.

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.

Theories and languages have in common that they aim at describing the world and the experiences made in the world. The specificity of theories is based on the fact that they code certain laws of nature. The specificity of languages is based on the fact that they code our worldview by means of their syntax. Also mathematics can be considered as theory in so far as it codes the constituting axioms. Language can achieve the objectivity postulated by analytical philosophy only if it can refer to a mathematics and logic being objective in the sense of platonism and based on a definitive set of axioms, or if the world-view concerned is definitive and based upon an objective (and therefore definitive) set of laws of nature. The first way is blocked by Goedel’s incompleteness theorem. The objectivity of the laws of nature being necessary for going the second way is questioned as well by what is called the constructivist evolutionary epistemology (CEE): the perceived patterns and regularities from which we derive the laws of nature is considered by the CEE to be invariants of inborn cognitive (sensory) operators. Then, the so called laws of nature are the result of cognitive evolution and therefore are human specific. Whether, e.g., we would identify the law of energy conservation which in physics results from the homogeneity of time, depends on the mental time-metric generator defining what is homogeneous in time. If cognitive operators are extended by means of experimental operators the result can be expressed in classical terms if both commute in the sense of operator algebra (quantitative extensions). Otherwise results would be inconsistent with the classical worldview and would require non-classical approaches such as quantum mechanics (qualitative extensions). As qualitative extensions can never be excluded from future experimental reasearch, it follows that the development of theories cannot converge towards a definitive set of laws of nature or a definitive ‘theory of everything’ describing the structure of reality. Also the structures of mathematics and logic we use have to be considered als invariants of mental operators. It turns out that the incompleteness theorem of Goedel has to be seen as analogy of the incompleteness of physical theories due to possible qualitative experimental extensions. Language, therefore, cannot be considered as an objective depiction of independently existing facts and matters but only as a theory generating propositions being consistent with our world-view. The competence of language is based on the fact that the mental mechanisms generating the ontology we use in our syntax are related to those generating our perceptions. Similar applies to the relationship between the operators generating perceived and mathematical structures enabling us to compress empirical data algorithmically (i.e. to transform them into mathematically articulated theories) and then to extrapolate them by means of the theory concerned (inductive inference). An analogue mechanism establishes our ability to compress verbal texts semantically (i.e. to reduce them to their meaning) and then to extrapolate them (i.e. to draw correct conclusions within the framework of the meaning concerned). This suggests a modified notion of meaning seing it as a linguistic analogy to theories. Similar to physical and mathematical theories also languages can be extended qualitatively particularly by means of metaphorical combinations of semantically noncompatible elements. The development of languages towards it actual richness can be seen as a process of ongoing metaphorosation. this leads to some parallels between verbal, cultural and genetic communication.

Upshot: We focus on the following issues: our intentions behind establishing the new Research Through Design conference series; epistemological concerns around “research through design”; and how we might find a balance between openness and specificity for the conference series going forward.

Radical Constructivism bases the study of literature on an epistemology derived from biology. The peculiar emphasis of its critical analyses results from the specificity of the model of cognition it adopts. Its specificity lies in its empirical method, in the constructivist terminology and construction of the relationship to aesthetic form.