In vielerlei Hinsicht weist das Werk von Friedemann Schulz von Thun konstruktivistische Züge auf. Er selbst negierte das. Diese Bachelorarbeit jedoch zeigt den Mittelweg zwischen Realismus und Radikalem Konstruktivismus auf – und konstatiert, dass Schulz von Thuns Denken eine Dialektik aus beiden Erkenntnistheorien verfolgt, die ferner von der Humanistischen Psychologie und der Systemtheorie durchdrungen ist.

This bachelor thesis has its focus on the theoretical aspects of Radical Constructivism, as well as on the criticism against the theory. The first chapters will discuss the main principles of the theory which have been set by Ernst von Glasersfeld. It will argue the importance of the term “viability” in the radical constructivist epistemology as well. Jean Piaget’s cognitive model, along with his theory of learning will also be examined, as they represent the foundation of radical-constructivist ideas. Afterwards, the dissensions about the position of Radical Constructivism in the academic world will be thematized, where opinions about its representation as either a “tool” or a “paradigm” will be discussed. Furthermore, this thesis deals with the questions of the social aspect in the radical constructivist discourse, where the main differences between the radical and social form of constructivism will be demonstrated. Claims of it representing a solipsism and relativism, while apparently also pleading for a “nowrong- answer-approach”, will be challenged as well. To conclude, this thesis will end with a discussion about the challenges of the practical implementation of the radical constructivist theory in schools.

Die Informationswissenschaft beruht auf einer positivistisch-ontologischen Sichtweise, welche eine Realität als beschreibund erfassbar darstellt. In dieser Arbeit werden die Grundbegriffe und exemplarische Kernprozesse der Informationswissenschaft aus Sicht des Radikalen Konstruktivismus betrachtet, einer Erkenntnistheorie, welche besagt, dass der Mensch seine Wirklichkeit nicht passiv erfährt, sondern aktiv konstruiert. Nach einer kurzen Beschreibung der Informationswissenschaft wird zum Radikalen Konstruktivismus übergeleitet und die daraus folgenden Konsequenzen für Verständigung und Wirklichkeit erläutert. Der konventionellen Anschauung von Daten, Information, Wissen, etc. wird dann diese neue Sichtweise entgegengestellt. Darauf aufbauend werden Informationsverhalten, – pathologien und -prozesse vom radikal-konstruktivistischen Standpunkt aus dargestellt. So sollen der Informationswissenschaft ein breiteres Verständnis für ihren Gegenstandsbereich und zusätzliche Kompetenzen vermittelt werden.

The “4E” approach to cognition argues that cognition does not occur solely in the head, but is also embodied, embedded, enacted, or extended by way of extra-cranial processes and structures. Though very much in vogue, 4E cognition has received relatively few critical evaluations. By reflecting on two recent collections, this article reviews the 4E paradigm with a view to assessing its strengths and weaknesses.

Key words: 4e, embodiment, enactivism, culture, cognition, perception, action, representation

Living beings are autopoietic systems with highly context-dependent structural dynamics and interactions, that determine whether a disturbance in the genotype or environment will lead or not to phenotypic change. The concept of epigenesis entails how a change in the phenotype may not correspond to a change in the structure of an earlier developmental stage, including the genome. Disturbances of embryonic structure may fail to change the phenotype, as in regulated development, or when different genotypes are associated to a single phenotype. Likewise, the same genotype or early embryonic structure may develop different phenotypes, as in phenotypic plasticity. Disturbances that fail to trigger phenotypic change are considered neutral, but even so, they can alter unexpressed developmental potential. Here, we present conceptual diagrams of the “epigenic field”: similar to Waddington’s epigenetic landscapes, but including the ontogenic niche (organism/environment interactional dynamics during ontogeny) as a factor in defining epigenic fields, rather than just selecting among possible pathways. Our diagrams illustrate transgenerational changes of genotype, ontogenic niche, and their correspondence (or lack thereof) with changes of phenotype. Epigenic fields provide a simple way to understand developmental constraints on evolution, for instance: how constraints evolve as a result of developmental system drift; how neutral changes can be involved in genetic assimilation and de-assimilation; and how constraints can evolve as a result of neutral changes in the ontogenic niche (not only the genotype). We argue that evolutionary thinking can benefit from a framework for evolution with conceptual foundations at the organismal level.

A broad assumption in argumentation theory is that argumentation primarily regards resolving, confronting, or managing disagreement. This assumption is so fundamental that even when there does not appear to be any real disagreement, the disagreement is suggested to be present at some other level. Some have questioned this assumption (most prominently, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, and Doury), but most are reluctant to give up on the key idea that persuasion, the core of argumentation theory, can only regard disagreements. We argue here that this assumption is false. Argument may be as much about strengthening or maintaining agreement as it is about disagreement. Once we see how argument is possible and manifestly enacted under conditions of agreement, then we have tools to explain otherwise curious fallacies and argumentative phenomena.

Neuroscience techniques provide an open window previously unavailable to the origin of thoughts and actions in children. Developmental cognitive neuroscience is booming, and knowledge from human brain mapping is finding its way into education and pediatric practice. Promises of application in developmental cognitive neuroscience rests however on better theory-guided data interpretation. Massive amounts of neuroimaging data from children are being processed, yet published studies often do not frame their work within developmental models – in detriment, we believe, to progress in this field. Here we describe some core challenges in interpreting the data from developmental cognitive neuroscience, and advocate the use of constructivist developmental theories of human cognition with a neuroscience interpretation.

This contribution offers reflections about Chilean Cybersyn, 50 years ago. In recent years, Cybersyn, has received significant attention. It was the brainchild of Stafford Beer, who conceived it to support the transformation of the Chilean economy from its bureaucratic history to hopefully create a vibrant and modern society, driven by cybernetic tools. These aspects have received much attention in recent times; however, in this contribution, I want to discuss how working in Cybersyn influenced my work after the coup of 1973. Perhaps, for me, its major influence was in the management of complexity, through what I refer here as variety engineering and through the Viable System Model VSM as a paradigm to the management of relationships with implications to enterprises, society and the economy. After the 1973 coup major interest was in technological aspects of Cybersyn such as real-time management and its contribution to decision support and executive information systems. In the late 70s I was personally influenced by information management, but by the early 1980s my work moved towards methodological aspects of how to use the VSM. By 1989 I had created the VIPLAN method (Espejo, 1989). Key questions I attempted to answer were, how to model the complexity of enterprises and their interactions with environmental agents. Later on, in the 1990s and 2000s, the main direction of my work was epistemological, ontological and methodological towards second-order cybernetics and relationships. Only in recent decades the political transformations proposed by Cybersyn have captured the imagination of many commentators. The confluence of social and cultural changes with information technology, data models, artificial intelligence, algorithms and several additional technological developments have challenged the excesses of capitalism, particularly after the banking crisis of 2008–2009. The purpose in this paper is discussing this evolution in the light of those early days in Chile.

This article elaborates on the historic roots of management cybernetics and its evolving identity. The nature of this evolution is explained by presenting a theory of action in organizations, which makes visible the interplay between people’s autonomous actions and their role as observers of these actions. This interplay is referred to as the process of grounding epistemology in ontology. The article then discusses complexity. The idea of distinctions is central, we make distinctions about our experiences. These distinctions define our individual complexity and also our situational complexity as we ground them in shared tasks (i.e., purposeful action). It is argued that creating situational complexity requires managing our interactions and that this management is effective if it gets the best out of us and provides our actions with direction and purpose.