QUESTION:

 

Dear Prof. Ernst von Glasersfeld,

I am doing my Phd in the Theory of knowledge in

the University of Athens in Greece. I would like

to know what is the difference between radical

constructivism and social constructivism.

I would also like to have your opinion about the

Sophists' theory of knowledge and especially

Protagoras´ : man is the measure of all things.

Could we consider this as a hint for the later constructivism?

 

Thank you

Papageorgiou Pagona

Athens

Greece

 

 

ANSWER:

Dear Mr/Ms (?) Papageorgiou Pagona,

 

I am sure you would get a different answer from

a social constructivist. From my "radical" point

of view, most social constructivists seem to

take society and language as "existing" apart

from the minds of individuals. This is

incompatible with my constructivism, in which

society and especially language have to be

constructed by each individual for him- or

herself. Most of this construction, of course,

takes place in interaction with the constructs

we call others in our experiential field. So

there is, indeed, social construction, but it

takes place with entities that we ourselves have

constructed, much the same as we interact with

the constructs we call walls or rocks or skiing

slopes and devise methods and rules for dealing with them.

 

Among the Pre-Socratics, there seem to be many

suggestions of the notion that we ourselves

construct our world. Protagoras is not the only

one. But as I do not speak classical Greek I am

not certain. On the other hand, the translators

are nearly always staunch realists and therefore

deaf to the constructivist allusions that may be

in the original texts. Parmenides is, I think, a

prime example, The comments I have read about

his fragments all confuse his epistemology with

his metaphysics. I have an old plan to write a

paper about him, but I may never get it done.

Best wishes,

Ernst von Glasersfeld
 

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