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The Certainty of Uncertainty: Dialogues Introducing Constructivism

by Bernhard Poerksen
Imprint Academic, USA, 2004
200 pp. Paper, $29.90
IBSN: 0-907845-819.

Reviewed by Aparna Sharma
Film academy, University of Glamorgan

aparna31s@netscape.net

The Certainty of Uncertainty: Dialogues Introducing Constructivism comprises eight interviews with scientists and philosophers who have been key in thinking and articulating the constructivist discourse. The interviews are conducted by Hamburg Professor of Journalism and Communication Science, Bernhard Poerksen. Upon sharing the key tenet, as it were, of the constructivist school of thought——the implication of the observer in the act of observation such that the claim for an observer-independent reality is thoroughly challenged——this text approaches the contradictions and paradoxes that are likely to arise from that position.

The Certainty of Uncertainty is fertile with philosophical discussion. In its preface, Poerksen alerts us that any attempt to define or approach the constructivist discourse as bearing a coherence or consonance of thought is defeating of the basis of constructivist understanding. As the text proceeds, we are introduced to a near ‘multiverse’ of competing and contending interpretations of the constructivist position from different disciplines employing varied methodologies. The text very clearly posits the constructivist discourse as itself a construction, open to contention. However, instead of the cul-de-sac a constructivist position might lead to in terms of the uncertainty of understanding given the relativism arising from the implication of the observer, there is an attempt in the text to discuss engagements, from both the cognitive and neurobiological as also the social and anthropological constructivist positions. While the applications that are discussed render uncertain the extents of the constructivist position, we are introduced to a wide range of philosophical concerns that inject necessary confrontation with issues of responsibility, ethics and morality, of value across disciplines including the arts too.

In a sense, most interviewees stress the context of practice rather than holding a rigidly ontological or fully socially determined approach. If we are to abide with the understanding that all observation is observer-implicated then the twin questions of practice and form arise as central. In the text we encounter, varied possibilities for practice——Ernst von Glasersfeld’s assessment of ‘viability’ that he shares in relation to his research into the dissemination of education; Francisco J Varela’s ‘co-construction’ through which the separation between ‘knower’ and ‘known’, ‘internal’ and ‘external’ world can be overcome; and Siegfried J Schmidt’s ‘integrative constructivism’ that unites cognitive autonomy and social fashioning with relation to the subject, are some of the provocative instances from the text. Estimating and emphasizing the positionality of the observer, these provocations facilitate investment of that understanding in practice involving variegated subjects and conditions. The value of constructivist understanding and its relation to practice surfaces as particularly significant within post-colonial, third world discourses that grapple with complexly constituted subjectivities on the one hand and their articulation within ‘national’ and ‘development’ discourses, on the other. If third world practitioners are to engage with the constructivist discourse more closely instead of the rather cursory and scattered encounters, practice would benefit from a less romanticized and more critical understanding that resists a reductionism, allowing for a more democratic, grassroots-based interface wherein subjectivities are not overestimated or undermined. They are confronted on dialogical terms - an imperative that one finds clearly lacking within much public discourse.

At its most advanced, the constructivist discourse coincides with mysticism and spiritualism. It’s stress on the construction of observation and the observer, proximates spiritual indications about processes and the experience of transcendence. This strain surfaces through the text, with Francisco Varela’s discussion around Buddhist practice being the most explicit and articulate exposition. However, not all interviewees agree and their contentions problematise the mystical and spiritual positions. In this, von Glasersfeld’s assertion that the mystics’ separation of the mystical and rational knowledge renders the two as incompatible, is useful in advancing the scope of intellectual engagement with spiritual discourses, both of which are distinguished, nearly oppositionally with respect to their methods of inquiry and assumptions. Von Glasersfeld is not alone in identifying that spiritual practice is founded upon certain assumptions that evade rational argument or proof. Formulating this concern will benefit engaging more critically with spiritual positionalities. Biologist Humberto R Maturana furthers the dispute with spiritualism, when he points at the impossibility in insights of transcendental encounters, for the reference to the encounter is itself not independent from the observer. This understanding presses on the inadequacy of language and discourse in the engagement with spiritualism——an insight that is needed both on behalf of intellectuals as well as spiritual practitioners to enunciate meaningful dialogue.

The Certainty of Uncertainty introduces us to a breadth of debate and unpacks for us the paradoxes that acknowledging the observer might result. At the same time, it traces assertions, conscious of the observer’s implication that has materialized into concrete practice, which may not be fully resolutionary, but facilitates complex conditions variegated subjects might be confronted with. To this extent, the text is both elucidative and stimulating. In this, its interview format is accessible being conversational and lucidly argumentative.

 

 




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