thoughts on Constructivism

this is not an elaborated explanation of the terms constructivism but it is more a clarification of the term that nowadays bifurcates in two.

from one side we have

the Social Constructivists that support the view that reality is always social mediated and mind-dependent and

Radical contructivists that argue that mind-independent entities exist and they are knowable.

thus

[Social] Constructivism is concerned with the social construction of reality

[Radical] Constructivism is concerned with the construction of reality

however it will be really dangerous to support that view that the social reality is mind independent

Manuel Delanda will clarify this point: "in the case of social ontology though this definition (of mind independence) must be qualified because most of the social entities, would disappear althogether if human minds cease to exist. In this sense social entities are clearly not mind independent but [as he adds later] the reality is conception-independent" (Deland 2006, p1)

Crowd synchrony

in symb(i/o)tika's video collection you can find a short film about the unexpected sway from side to side that emerged under the synchronization of pedestrians step... it is a very clear example where local action produces and emergent behaviour that then feeds back and drives that local action.

more on Steven H. Strogatz et al. paper "Theoretical mechanics: Crowd synchrony on the Millennium Bridge". published in Nature 438, 43-44 (3 November 2005).

Beyond Autopoiesis II

"the key innovation effected by autopoiesis is to grant to living systems a dynamical capacity for change through self-maintenance, which means, at least in part, that such systems must function as open systems (only relatively). the functioning of the autopoietic organism or machine is not reducible to its particular genetic structure or composition. In other words, what are inportant are not the component of the system but the dynamic relations between them. Autopoietic entities engender and specify their own organization and limits/boundaries, functioning as unitary, individuated, and closed to relations input and out put. Such entities are understood as being 'organizationaly closed', which does not mean that they do not interact with an environment but rather that such interaction is always informed and determined by the organization of the particula autopoietic entity. An autopoietic organism evolves by engaging in an endless turnover of components under conditions of continuous petrubations and compesation of these petrubations. Any inference with their operation outside their domain of compensations will result in disintegration ( see Maturana and Varela in Autopoiesis and Cognition: the Realization of the Living, 1980).

We see here that the theory of autopoiesis equates change that does not conform to the internal and self-directed organization of the entity in question with destruction, dissolution, and abolition.

For a machinic thinking autopoiesis fails to appreciate the extent to which all living systems and their boundaries are caught up in machinic assemblages that involve modes of transversal becoming."

Germinal life: the difference and repetition of Deleuze

By Keith Ansell-Pearson