Excerpt: Undoubtedly a great contribution to the spread of systems theories within the performing arts has been those new theories that propose patterns of cognition no longer isolated in an individual’s brain, but embodied and located within an environment. The model that has probably facilitated the most complete synthesis of these principles is the enaction model, proposed by Francisco Varela in the late 80s.

Excerpt: Staging traditional text-based theatre can be described as moving from the page to the stage, doing things with words or making the word flesh. Theatre artists create worldswithin-the-world that are meaningful for and affect those who make them and see them. Using two case studies, Thornton Wilder’s Our Town and Caryl Churchill’s Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, this essay considers how to apply principles of 4E cognition to processes of making theatre, in negotiating the relationships among text, research and embodiment. Terms from cognitive science illuminate the inter-relationships of perception and meaning involved in performance, and also in human experience more broadly. 4E cognition is a basic feature of human existence – we operate by its principles all the time every day. This essay uses some of the research in 4E cognition to study rehearsal and performance processes in the theatre, in order to better understand both theatrical practice and aspects of human cognition more generally; rehearsal processes and performances provide discrete models of cognitive ecologies that are broadly reflective of how we operate in life. Through the case studies, I consider dramatic text, actor-as-individual, actor-as-company-member, physical material given (e.g., space, set, costumes, props – or ‘properties, ’ things actors manipulate and use with their hands) and audience, and how these work together. Applying enactivist concepts can move actors from an intellectual grasp of historically complex materials into a fully embodied and collectively vital engagement. I begin with a brief reminder of the 4E terms: embodied, embedded, extended and enacted.

Excerpt: We perceive as much as we do because, in a way, we perceive so little. Traditional approaches to perception have found it difficult to accommodate the distinctive amodality of perceptual consciousness. Take vision, for example. If we think of what is visible in terms of projective geometry and artificial perspective, then, however paradoxical it may sound, vision is not confined to the visible. We visually experience much more than that. We experience what is hidden (occluded) and what is out of view. For example, we have a sense of the visual presence of the back of a tomato when we look at one sitting before us, even though the back of the tomato is out of view; and we experience the circularity of a plate, its actual shape, even when, seen from an angle, the circularity itself can’t be seen. Or consider your sense of the detail of the scene before your eyes now. You have a sense of the presence the detail; the scene is replete with detail. But it is not the case that you seem to yourself actually to see all the detail; you can no more see every bit of detail in sharp focus and high resolution than you can see the tomato from all sides at once. Just as the back of the tomato shows up in your experience although it is hidden from view, so the detailed scene before you shows up in your experience, although the detail outstrips by far what can be taken in at a glance. The world outstrips what we can take in at a glance; but we are not confined to what is available in a glance.

In this article we propose that the mechanism that gave rise to the diversity of living systems that we find today, as well as to the biosphere as coherent system of interrelated autonomous living systems, is natural drift. And we also propose that that which we biologists connote with the expression natural selection is a consequence of the history of the constitution of the biosphere through natural drift, and not the mechanism that generates that history. Moreover, we do this by proposing: a) that the history of living systems on earth is the history of the arising, conservation, and diversification of lineages through reproduction, and not of populations; b) that biological reproduction is a systemic process of conservation of a particular ontogenic-phenotype/ontogenic-niche relation, and not a genetic process of conservation of some genetic constitution; c) that a lineage arises in the systemic reproductive conservation of an ontogenic-phenotype/ontogenic-niche relation, and not in the conservation of a particular genotype; d) that although nothing can happen in the life history of a living system that is not permitted by its total genotype, whatever happens in it arises in an epigenetic manner, and it is not possible to properly claim that any features that arises in the life history of an organism is genetically determined; e) that it is behavior what guides the course of the history of living systems, not genetics; and f) that that which a taxonomist distinguishes when he or she claims that an organism belongs to a particular species, is a particular ontogenic phenotype/ontogenic niche relation that occupies a nodal position in the historical diversification of lineages.

Key words: evolution, natural drift, natural selection, lineage, organism, species.

Excerpt: In principle, one might expect each of the papers in this section, “What is Cognition?,” to present some 4E answer to what cognition is. Perhaps this would be a definition of “cognition,” or a theory of what cognition is, or a conceptual framework that articulates what the concept of cognition is. Nevertheless, in the chapters in this section, as in the 4E literature more generally, the question of what cognition is does not come to the forefront. Moreover, even when the question is taken seriously, the answers do not seem to be worked out in much detail.

How can a teacher apply ideas from the constructivist learning model to classroom teaching? This article reviews the main ideas of the constructivist learning theory as well as the epistemological shift in the view of scientific knowledge, and suggests ways of applying these ideas to science teaching. Yager presents a teaching model developed by the National Center for Improving Science Education that is based on the constructivist learning model and includes four aspects: invitation, exploration, proposed explanation and solution, and taking action. Specific strategies that science teachers can use to help students construct their own meaning are listed. In addition, the article contains a self-check instrument that can be used to determine the extent to which a teacher is basing his or her practice on constructivist learning theory. Yager concludes with the recommendation that this model should also be used in preparing new teachers.