Luhmann is not a philosopher. And yet we are able to trace a philosophical dimension in his works since he is no naïve empiricist but extraordinary attentive to his method. With his ambition to develop a new paradigm for the observation of social systems he is forced to study the conditions of observing. He does not rest comfortably in a tradition where a community of observers is able to remain blind to its blind spots without consequences. However, although he makes frequent reference to philosophers, he is unfamiliar with the philosophical tradition and also does not respect it. He often puts ‘the philosophers’ in parenthesis as an indication of their dubious status. As a sociologist, he focuses on the unfolding of social systems and considers philosophical qualms irrelevant. As a consequence of this philosophical blindness, he entangles himself in a series of philosophical inconsistencies. The paper presents characteristics of Luhmann’s epistemology and shows how his lack of philosophical consistency creates a range of problems, which may be solved through a radicalization of his theory of second-order observation.

Within the cognitive sciences, cognition tends to be interpreted from an anthropocentric perspective, involving a stringent set of human capabilities. Instead, we suggest that cognition is better explicated as a much more general biological phenomenon, allowing the lower bound of cognition to extend much further down the phylogenetic scale. We argue that elementary forms of cognition can already be witnessed in prokaryotes possessing a functional sensorimotor analogue of the nervous system. Building on a case-study of the Escherichia coli bacterium and its sensorimotor system, the TCSTsystem, we home in on the characteristics of minimal cognition, and distinguish it from more basic forms of ontogenetic adaptation. In our view, minimal cognition requires an embodiment consisting of a sensorimotor coupling mechanism that subsumes an autopoietic organization; this forms the basis of the growing consensus that the core of cognition revolves around sensorimotor coupling. We discuss the relevance of our interpretation of minimal cognition for the study of cognition in general.

Key words: minimal cognition, escherichia coli, bacteria, sensorimotor coupling, tcst-system, situated cognition.

Historically, immunology emerged as a biomedical science, concerned with host defense and production of anti-infectious vaccines. In the late 50s, selective theories were proposed and from then on, immunology has been based in a close association with the neo-Darwinian principles, such as random generation of variants (lymphocyte clones), selection by extrinsic factors (antigens) – and, more generally, on genetic determinism and functionalism. This association has had major consequences: (1) immunological jargon is full of “cognitive” metaphors, founded in the idea of “foreignness”; (2) the immune system is described with a random clonal origin, coupled to selection by random encounters; and (3) physiological events are virtually absent from immunological descriptions. In the present manuscript, we apply systemic notions to bring forth an explanation including systemic mechanisms able to generate immunological phenomena. We replace “randomness plus selection” and the notion of foreignness by a history of structural changes which are determined by the coherences of the system internal architecture at any given moment. The importance of this systemic way of seeing is that it explicitly attends to the organization that defines the immune system, within which it is possible to describe the conservative physiology of the immune system. Understanding immune physiology in a systemic way of seeing also suggests mechanisms underlying the origin of immunopathogeny and therefore suggests new insights to therapeutic approaches. However, if seriously acknowledged, this systemic/historic approach to immunology goes along with a global conceptual change which modifies virtually everything in the domain of biology, as suggested by Maturana.

Key words: immune system, organization, structural determinism, autopoiesis, maturana.

This paper contrasts the notions of learning, teaching and development as these are conceptualized in two versions of constructivism: the socio-interactional one (in which Piagetian and Vygotskian insights are often merged) versus the one founded by Vygotsky and expanded in activity theory (especially by Galperin and Davydov). We reveal a broad conceptual commonality that makes these frameworks compatible at one level, but draw profound contrasts in their premises concerning history (including cultural tools) and the concept of the social. Examples of educational practices (including results of our own year-long observation) are used to illustrate implications of these premises. We argue that the Vygotskian framework expanded by a dialectical view of history can be used to devise education that takes history to the fullest and yet does not fall into the traps of a conservative agenda with its two extremes of unidirectional authoritarianism or laissez-faire individualism. It is on this foundation that a coherent and unified constructivist approach committed to ideals of social justice can be construed in the future.

Key words: constructivism, cultural-historical activity theory, education, piaget, tools, vygotsky, zone of proximal development.

How might one account for the organization in behavior without attributing it to an internal control structure? The present article develops a theoretical framework called behavioral dynamics that inte- grates an information-based approach to perception with a dynamical systems approach to action. For a given task, the agent and its environment are treated as a pair of dynamical systems that are coupled mechanically and informationally. Their interactions give rise to the behavioral dynamics, a vector field with attractors that correspond to stable task solutions, repellers that correspond to avoided states, and bifurcations that correspond to behavioral transitions. The framework is used to develop theories of several tasks in which a human agent interacts with the physical environment, including bouncing a ball on a racquet, balancing an object, braking a vehicle, and guiding locomotion. Stable, adaptive behavior emerges from the dynamics of the interaction between a structured environment and an agent with simple control laws, under physical and informational constraints.

Key words: perception and action, perceptual–motor control, dynamical systems, self-organization, locomotion

For over two decades, science education has been a site of struggle between adherents of the apparently antithetical epistemologies of objectivism and constructivism; recently, proponents of personal and social constructivism have locked horns. However, at the beginning of the 21st Century, we feel that it is timely for science education to enter an age of pluralism, of tolerance for multiple and competing ways of knowing, in which no one way is ultimately privileged; to exercise humility about the authority of our cherished ways of knowing the world around us. In the interest of creating greater equity of access amongst students to a much richer encounter with science, a new mode of pedagogical reasoning is needed. From the perspective of constructive postmodernism, we propose dialectical thinking as a way of generating unity-in- diversity, and metaphor as a key referent for overcoming the obstacle of literalism which tends to reinforce fundamentalist notions of difference. We illustrate the viability of an integral perspective on science teaching with a brief account of an inquiry into the scientific literacy of a class of junior high school students, from which emerged a 3-metaphor framework. Mindful of the limitations of this framework, we argue for science education researchers to join us in conceptualizing more powerful and compelling integral metaphors for promoting worldwide epistemological pluralism and cultural diversity.

The rich and ongoing debate about constructivism in chemistry education includes questions about the relationship, for better or worse, between applications of the theory in pedagogy and in epistemology. This paper presents an examination of the potential to use connections of epistemological and pedagogical constructivism to one another. It examines connections linked to the content, processes, and premises of science with a goal of prompting further research in these areas.

Purpose: The aim of this research was to test whether Hong Kong science students would prefer a learning environment based on critical constructivism and whether a closer preferred-actual fit to such an environment would be associated with better learning outcomes. Method: The participants were 149 Hong Kong secondary school Chemistry students aged 16–19 years. They completed actual and preferred forms of a Chinese version of the Constructivist Learning Environment Survey and measures of self-efficacy and intrinsic value of their Chemistry course. Their Chemistry examination scores were also obtained at the end of the course. Findings: Analysis showed that these students would prefer their Chemistry classrooms to be more personally relevant, to allow students more say and to share more control, and to encourage more negotiation with their teacher. Regression surface analysis showed that congruence of person environment fit did not influence examination results but was associated with greater valuing of the course and higher student self-efficacy. Research implications: Further research with a wider sampling from Hong Kong and elsewhere and focusing on other subject areas will be necessary to assess the generalizability of these findings. Practical implications: It seems that educational reforms based on critical constructivist principles may be of value in non-Western contexts. Original value: Educational reforms in Hong Kong and elsewhere currently are based on traditional constructivist principles. But this is the first research to support a more radical approach in what is usually regarded as a relatively conservative Asian educational context.

Key words: learning environments, chemistry, Hong Kong Chinese

Earlier versions of evolutionary epistemology were based on – or at least strongly informed by – the adaptationist paradigm. It is for this reason that advocates of evolutionary epistemol- ogy have been frequently criticized by those who have adopted an organismic perspective in evolutionary thinking. Evolutionists defending the view that any living system – including all its characters at the anatomical as well as the behavioral level – can be sufficiently explained in terms of adaptation, have neglected the (somehow trivial) fact that organisms are active systems that do not entirely depend on their respective environment(s). Meanwhile, however, a systems-theoretical approach to understanding living beings and their evolution has made clear that (1) organisms and their environment(s) have a common history and have not evolved independent of each other, (2) any living system and its environment(s) are linked together by a feedback principle, and (3) adaptability is not defined by the environment but the or- ganism itself. This has serious consequences for evolutionary epistemology. In this paper, I outline a non-adaptationist version of this epistemology. I also briefly discuss its philosophical implications. The main focus is the problem of realism.