Niklas Luhmann died in November 1998. He had been elaborating his theory of the society for more than thirty years which has been well received in many quarters of society in the modern world. Yet somehow we are only now beginning to read him when he is no longer there to be asked. And we are beginning to discuss his work although we cannot invite him to lecture us anymore. The following article takes up Luhmann’s very recent small and comprehensive book on Husserl and places him, as he did himself, in a tradition of “enlightenment” which aims for a self-critical constitution of reason.

The key problem of cultural psychology comprises a paradox: while people believe they act on the basis of their own authentic experience, cultural psychologists observe their behavior to be socially patterned. It is argued that, in order to account for those patterns, cultural psychology should take human experience as its analytical starting point. Nevertheless, there is a tendency within cultural psychology to either neglect human experience, by focusing exclusively on discourse, or to consider the structure of this experience to originate in an already produced cultural order. For an alternative approach, we turn to the enactive view of cognition developed by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. Their theory of autonomy can provide the epistemological basis for a cultural psychology that explains how experience can become socially patterned in the first place. Cultural life forms are then considered as consensually coordinated, embodied practices.

Key words: cultural psychology, embodiment, enactivism, epistemology, experiential reality

Radical constructivism grows out of the belief that knowledge is constructed and legitimated by individuals as they make sense of their experiences in particular contexts and drawing on their own histories. Extending this understanding of learning and ways of knowing to girls as they work in the terrain of science, we argue that honoring student experience as the starting place for science instruction fundamentally alters the nature of science, the purpose of teaching and learning science, and the focus of relationships in science class. The implications for this position are extensive: they suggest that the dynamic relationships between language and cultural background of students and teachers alter the ways in which science education historically has enacted discipline, curriculum and pedagogy. We argue that this is particularly important to understand, for science and science education have historically operated within the masculine domain and working with girls in science in ways that respect their (gendered and cultural) construction of knowledge and their experiences, fundamentally alters the enterprise of science – an idea contradictory to most visions of the purposes of education and current reform efforts in science education, even the most liberal.

Self‐referential reflection inevitably reveals paradox. For some, paradox is a fruitful metaphor; for me, it raises problems that have epistemological implications. Traditionally paradox has been avoided by the problematic means of removing the observer from the domain of observation. Luhmann’s theory of autopoietic social systems offers an alternative manner of dealing with paradox. Such systems observe the self‐reference resulting from including an observer within the domain of observation and in their recursively closed operations combine other‐reference with every self‐reference. In this way, paradox is able to be “unfolded” in the operational moment. Luhmann’s social systems require, however, a radically different view of the place of the individual in society from that of traditional social theory – he or she does not belong! Communications are the elementary units for the social processing of meaning. This requires a radical revision of our concept of communication: it is communication that reproduces communication, not individuals.

Key words: …, systems theory

Metabolism is a criterion of life. Three senses are distinguished. The weakest allows strong A-Life: virtual creatures having physical existence in computer electronics, but not bodies, are classes as ‘alive’. The second excludes strong A-Life but allows that some non-biochemical A-Life robots could be classed as alive. The third, which stresses the body’s self-production by energy budgeting and self-equilibrating energy exchanges of some (necessary) complexity, excludes both strong A-Life and living non-biochemical robots.

Educational technology is an instantiation of technical rationality. Technical rationality depends on an objectivist epistemology and a representational model of mind. Currently, a growing number of practitioners in the field of educational technology consider themselves constructivists. Because their epistemological position conflicts with that of technical rationality, these practitioners must currently find a warrant for their practice outside the field. However, a warrant for a strong form of constructivism (enactive constructivism) can be located in recent developments in systems theory, one of the foundational pillars of educational technology. These developments have the potential to provide practitioners a philosophical mooring within the field itself. One of these developments, autonomous systems theory, with its rejection of the representational model of mind, is described, and implications of its application to educational technology are discussed.

The present article will approach biosemiotics from two different interests and contexts. One is an interest in the development of the ethological project of Konrad Lorenz (1970–1971) and Niko Tinbergen (1973) into a truly non-mechanistic bio-psychological foundation of cognitive science. The other is an interest in finding a non-Cartesian foundation for the idea of a unified framework for information and communication science which – of course – must be consistent with the knowledge accumulated in cognitive science.