Radykalny konstruktywizm. Krótkie wprowadzenie

Radical Constructivism. A Brief Introduction The book „Radical Constructivism. A Brief Introduction” concisely introduces the reader to the history and lines of argumentation of a particular type of constructivism, the founders of which are, among others, Ernst von Glasersfeld and Heinz von Foerster. The author begins by recalling the scientific figures of its main authors, pointing to the interdisciplinary genesis of this style of thinking. Then he guides the reader through the philosophical tradition, pointing out, following Glasersfeld, that the sources of constructivist thinking can be found in the history of philosophical skepticism. It turns out that the view according to which we do not have access to an independent reality is present in the Western philosophical tradition since the presocratics, and it finds its fullest expression in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. In the following parts of the book, the author presents the components of the concept of autopoiesis by Humberto R. Maturana, which as a theory of the organization of life, is the starting point of constructivist epistemology. The concept of the brain as a self-referential system, which constructs the world known to consciousness solely on the basis of reactions to its own states of excitation, is derived from Maturana’s concept which is the part of the long development of systems theory. For the brain that generates cognition, the external environment is only a source of stimuli, their nature and usefulness is determined by the process of generating cognition solely by its structure. The radical nature of radical constructivism lies precisely in the fact that it does not provide a derogation from this rule. Later in the book, the author outlines the constructivist concept of communication that emerges from the model of how the brain and mind work. He recalls the views of the classics of constructivism, indicating that communication is based on the parallelization of the structures of the brain’s operation, leading to the creation of a virtual consensual space. Within this space, the intersubjective tools of socialization are created for the joint construction of reality such as natural language and modern media as well as fields of communication. The author devotes a separate chapter to briefly describe the concept of social systems by Niklas Luhmann, a German sociologist who formulated his own social theory based on the concepts of autopoiesis. The book also includes three excursions that present selected specific scientific issues from the perspective of radical constructivism. These are the following chapters devoted to memory, the concept of Ludwik Fleck’s thought collectives and the project of Empirical Theory of Literature by, among others Siegfried J. Schmidt. The book ends with a short summary – the ten theses of radical constructivism – in which its universal message is indicated.