A Fallacy in Constructivist Epistemology

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 37, No.
3, 2003
A Fallacy in Constructivist Epistemology

ROBIN SMALL
Constructivism comes in a number of forms. Some are models
of learning which involve few, if any, startling epistemological
claims. On the other hand, what has been promoted as
radical constructivism holds that our concepts cannot be
related directly to an external reality, and that claims for the
objectivity of knowledge are therefore unjustified. This
standpoint is an anti-realist version of evolutionary
epistemology. I argue that it relies on a mistaken
interpretation of the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural
selection, and that its application of this model to the relation
between knowledge and the world is also mistaken.
Constructivism is a continuing influence in science and mathematics
education, not only in the school classroom but in the educational research
that supports and extends its approach to teaching and learning. A number
of philosophers of education have turned their attention to this
phenomenon, and made efforts to address the issues that it raises for
them. At times they have found this a challenging task, because
constructivism is not easy to pin down. At the pedagogical level, it may
be said to arise from recognition of the active role of the student in the
learning process, and the presence of existing understandings that need to
be taken into account by teachers wishing their students to achieve a
genuine grasp of current scientific knowledge. When these insights are
taken up by educational psychology, the result is a theory of cognitive
development that emphasises the role of mental models, and the ways in
which their development is influenced by experience, activity and
interaction.
However, a theory of learning can hardly be separate from a theory of
knowledge, and that is where epistemology comes in. Philosophers of
education have pointed out that the constructivist movement has many
affinities with the Deweyan tradition, as well as with the theories of
writers such as Piaget. In a recent analysis, Vanderstraeten (2002) argues
that a more defensible version of the constructivist position can in fact be
attained by retrieving Deweys ideas on the individual organisms
interactive relation to its environment, and the concept of active learning
that this supports. Such a transactional theory, as he points out, departs
radically from the dualistic assumptions of much of the modern
philosophy of mind. Now, it should be recalled that Deweys thought
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was strongly influenced not just by such biological models but also by
Darwins theory of evolution by means of natural selection. In this
discussion I want to address that source in a more direct way, by focusing
on the relation of constructivism to evolutionary psychology, and
especially to evolutionary epistemology, that is, to the theory of
knowledge that takes as its starting point the successful Darwinian
explanatory model for countless featuresbehavioural as well as
physicalof living organisms.
This is a theme that I think has not been addressed so far in the
contributions of philosophers of education to the debate over constructivism. Indeed, the initiative has come from the other side, the side of
supporters of constructivism who have extended their thinking into issues
of epistemology. The outcome is a theory of knowledge that holds that our
concepts cannot be related directly to an external reality, and that claims
for the objectivity of knowledge are therefore unjustified. It is true that
constructivism comes in a number of versions. Some are models of
learning that involve few, if any, startling epistemological claims. On the
other hand, what has been offered under the promotional heading of
radical constructivism is quite self-conscious about its philosophical
character. In this discussion, I will consider an argument that is crucial to
that brand of constructivism, but that has wider implications for
epistemology. I will show that it relies on a mistaken interpretation of
the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection, and that its
application of this model to the relation between knowledge and the world
is also in a way mistaken.
In brief, the fallacy arises from assuming that since the concept of
fitness or adaptation is a relational one, it must be given a relativist
interpretation. The conclusion is then drawn that fitness or its absence says
nothing about the actual properties either of organisms or of their
environments. In radical constructivism, this same line of argument is
used with reference to knowledge. Thus, the philosophical side of radical
constructivism is an anti-realist version of evolutionary epistemology. By
evolutionary epistemology I mean the theory that all knowledge results
from devising and testing concepts (or theories) by processes analogous to
those by which species evolve, adapt or become extinct. By itself, this
does not give an answer to one of the most traditional philosophical
problems about knowledge. Does the success of a theory tell us anything
about its actual objects? This is similar to: does the success of a species
tell us anything about its actual environment? The constructivist answer is
no in both cases. Hence, it concludes that the fitness of a theory does
not make it an accurate representation of reality.
The relations between philosophy and natural science have varied
between a partnership, a modest role for philosophy as a summary of the
general results of science, and claims for the authority of philosophy over
science. At times this last version has led to ill-advised attempts by
philosophers to provide a quick and easy refutation of some scientific
theory. I think we can see a case in point in the line of argument, aimed
against Darwinism, which underlies the constructivist interpretation of
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fitness. My discussion will begin by looking into this debate, and trying
to sort out the issues involved. Only then will we be in a position to
approach the epistemological question, and see where the strengths or
weaknesses of the constructivist position are located.
THE TAUTOLOGY ARGUMENT
The Darwinian theory of natural selection is often summarised under the

principle of the survival of the fittest. One objection raised is that this
theory does not provide a genuine explanation of the process of evolution,
because survival of the fittest is a tautology (or rather, a tautological
expression, since it is not a proposition by itself). That is, the application
of fittest is determined by the fact of survival, and so the proposition that
only the fittest organisms survive is a mere truism, rather than an
informative statement. In that case, Darwins theory is not a scientific
discovery, but at best a re-description of what is already known about the
world. Ordinarily this claim is intended as a harsh criticism of Darwinism.
Yet it also has a very different function: it enables a certain kind of
evolutionary epistemologist to suggest that the success of a theory does
not imply that it tells us anything about the real world. Constructivism
turns the objection on its head. The principle of the survival of the fittest
says nothing about realitythis is agreed. So much the worse for reality,
concludes the radical constructivist.
The tautology argument appears in all sorts of places. It is common
within creationist literature, alongside opportunistic misuses of scientific
principles such as the first and second laws of thermodynamics. Yet it is
also found in contributions that are less clearly prepared to use any
weapon that comes to hand against evolution. I will begin by trying to
make some progress in sorting out what is at stake in this debate, starting
with an attempt to place the survival of the fittest in the context of
evolutionary theory.
It is true that Darwin did not use this phrase in the first edition of The
Origin of Species, but he did introduce it into the fifth edition of 1869,
where it is more or less synonymous with natural selection. Darwin did
not make this change of his own accord, or with a very good grace. He was
pressured by various supporters (including Alfred Russel Wallace) to give
up the expression natural selection, which they thought implied
conscious intention on the part of nature. Darwin disagreed, insisting
that the metaphor of selection was a harmless and useful one. (Darwin,
19861989, vol. 19, p. 5 and vol. 16, p. 66) In the end, he compromised by
using the phrase natural selection, or the survival of the fittest in several
places, while adding an explicit defence of the use of natural selection by
itself (Darwin, 19861989, vol. 16, pp. 65109) If the phrase survival of
the fittest had not been proposed as a replacement for his favoured
metaphor, Darwin would probably have accepted it more readily. He does
write things like: Generally, the most vigorous males, those which are
best fitted for their places in nature, will leave most progeny (Darwin,
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19861989, vol. 15, p. 64). And the full title of his book is (On) The
Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of
Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, where natural selection is defined
as the preservation of those kinds of living things favoured (another
metaphor) by their environmenta notion that, again, amounts to the
survival of the fittest.
As historians of science commonly note, this expression was due to
Herbert Spencer in his Principles of Biology, first published in 1866, as a
characterisation of natural selection (Spencer, 1904, p. 530, and see Paul,
1988). It does not occur in Spencers earlier essay on population (Spencer,
1852), as is often asserted (e.g. in Bethell, 1976, p. 72). For Spencer, an
organisms fitness is its ability to fulfil the conditions of life, by
balancing its activities with the powers acting upon it from outside. He
writes: That organisms which live, thereby prove themselves fit to live, in
so far as they have been tried; while organisms which die, thereby prove
themselves in some respects unfitted for living; are facts no less manifest,
than is the fact that this self-acting purification of a species, must tend ever
to insure adaptation between it and its environment (Spencer, 1904,
p. 531). Spencers firm belief in an inevitable law of progress towards
complexity and specialisation informs his approach to adaptation, and his
bold expressionslike purification here, and the best (for the fittest)
elsewhereare quite unlike Darwins careful, if metaphorical, language.
The claim that the principle of natural selection is vacuous is a very old
one indeed. In fact, it predates the first publication of The Origin of
Species. The first person to advance it was the Reverend Samuel
Haughton, in a presidential address delivered to the Geological Society of
Dublin on 9 February 1859, that is, several months before the appearance
of Darwins book. Haughton based his comments on the preliminary
communication that Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace had jointly
presented to the Linnaean Society the previous year (Darwin, 1957, pp.
103119). He abruptly dismissed Darwins idea of the struggle for
existence as borrowed from Malthus and notable only for its lack of
novelty; and went on to attack Wallaces idea of an indefinite departure of
varieties from original types as contrary to experience. Haughton summed
up his verdict on the theory of natural selection in these words: If it means
what it says, it is a truism; if it means anything more, it is contrary to fact
(Haughton, 18571860, p. 152). That Darwin was aware of this
criticismstill before the publication of The Origin of Speciescan be
seen in his letter to J. D. Hooker of 3 May 1859, which quotes Haughtons
words and adds ironically, Q.E.D. (Darwin, 1985, p. 292).
Later generations have not tired of rediscovering Haughtons objection
to natural selection. Its appeal to philosophers has been particularly
noticeable, since it offers a welcome opportunity to establish the authority
of philosophical analysis over empirical research. This was evident during
the period when logical empiricism placed the status of scientific theories
in question, and in many cases challenged their claims to factual content
and which also saw the emergence of radical constructivism. J. J. C.
Smart wrote: If we try to produce laws in the strict sense that describe
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evolutionary process anywhere and anywhen it would seem that we can do

so only by turning our propositions into mere tautologies. We can say that
even in the great nebula in Andromeda the fittest will survive, but this
is to say nothing, for fittest has to be defined in turns of survival
(Smart, 1963, p. 59). Another prominent proponent of the tautology line
was Karl Popper, who stated the argument in a 1965 lecture that became
part of his book Objective Knowledge. According to Popper:
Quite apart from evolutionary philosophies, the trouble about evolutionary theory is its tautological, or almost tautological, character; the
difficulty is that Darwinism and natural selection, though extremely
important, explain evolution by the survival of the fittest (a term due to
Herbert Spencer). Yet there does not seem to be much difference, if any,
between the assertion those that survive are the fittest and the tautology
those that survive are those that survive. For we have, I am afraid, no
other criterion of fitness than actual survival, so that we conclude from the
fact that some organisms have survived that they were the fittest, or those
best adapted to the conditions of life. (Popper, 1972, pp. 241242; see
also 1974, p. 137)
Some presentations of the argument have been part of a broader attack on

Darwinism. In his article The Concept of Evolution, Manser argued that
Darwinism amounted to a transference of Victorian social and economic
beliefs into the natural realm. (Manser, 1965, p. 21) It was no accident,
he suggested, that the struggle for existence was central to Darwins
theory, or that Darwin had studied the writings of Malthus, or that Marx
wanted to dedicate the English edition of Capital to Darwin. (On the
falsity of this last point, see Feuer, 1975, 1978.) Mansers main argument,
however, was that Darwins theory was unscientific. The concept of the
survival of the fittest failed to provide a genuine explanation, he wrote,
since there can be no independent criterion of fitness or adaptability;
survival and adaptability or fitness are necessarily connected. Manser
suggested that Darwinism retained some value as a picture of the world,
but did not explain the nature of this contribution further, so it is hard to
assess its significance.
Mansers article may well be seen in the context already indicated, as an
attempt to assert the capacity of philosophical thought to intervene
effectively in the realm of empirical science. During the analytic
revolution in philosophy such triumphs were celebrated quite frequently.
Sometimes the authority of ordinary language was used to pronounce
some proposition based on science to be invalid, as when Sir Arthur
Eddingtons claim that tables are not as solid as they seem, given that their
atomic structure consists mainly of empty space, was declared a fallacy by
Susan Stebbing. The ordinary use of the term solid was established by
everyday experiences of dealing with objects, she explained, and these
were not affected by scientific theories about the constitution of matter
(Stebbing, 1944, p. 46). While this approach leaves room for a response
that queries the adequacy of ordinary language, no such escape seems
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possible from an argument that appeals to the properties of logical

tautologies.
Building on these academic contributions, but aimed at a wider
audience, an article in Harpers magazine entitled Darwins Mistake
described Darwinism as being on the verge of collapse (Bethell, 1976, p.
72) The author was Tom Bethell, a persistent critic of Darwinian
orthodoxy in biology (Bethell, 1978, 1985). Bethell alleged that Darwin
had made a mistake sufficiently serious to undermine his theory.
Although Darwin himself had believed in criteria of fitness independent of
survival, Bethell saidwithout elaborating what Darwin thought these
werehis modern followers had made things easier for themselves by
reinterpreting the principle of natural selection as a tautology. The
argument is formulated here in a neat way. Bethell argues that a single
feature cannot be identified as evidence of fitness, because any such
feature may well have some side effect that cancels its usefulness. He
concludes: Fitness must be identified with survival, because it is the
overall animal that survives, or does not survive, not individual parts of it.
That is, because fitness and survival both apply to the organism as a
whole, we must suppose that they are the same thing.
An interesting feature of Bethells position is his attempt to show that
the tautology objection is not equally fatal to the idea of artificial
selection. One can see the danger there. After all, Darwin began The
Origin of Species with this familiar phenomenon just because it could be
assumed as common ground. He knew his readers would readily accept
that many features of domesticated animals and plants are to be explained
as outcomes of human selection. But what if the appeal to selection as an
explanatory principle is an empty truism here as well? On Darwins view,
the facts that sheep with long wool are picked out by breeders, that male
peacocks with splendid tails are preferred by female peacocks, and that
bears with white fur are favoured by the arctic environment, all serve to
explain certain observable phenomena. These are all instances of
selection, in its broadened sense, and if selection means the survival of
the fittest, they are all instances of the survival of the fittest. So it seems
that these accounts must stand or fall together as explanations providing
genuine knowledge.
Bethell is keen to show that the case of artificial selection is different.
He argues that it contains a concept of fitness independent of survival. For
instance, in the case of breeding sheep, long wool is the independent
criterion, since that is what determines the selection made by human
beings. Bethell seems to be making a reasonable point here, and yet on
closer examination it does not amount to much. Long wool makes sheep
more likely to survive and reproduce just because of the human preference
for long wool. But what is the evidence for this preference? We can ask
people what they want, but the final test is their behaviour. Breeders pick
out the sheep with the longest wool and use them to breed from. These are,
therefore, the sheep that manage to reproduce. Now, Bethells own
argument works as well here as for natural selection. Whether long wool
constitutes fitness depends on whether or not it is accompanied with other
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features that are harmfulas it could well be, given that long wool would
often be a disadvantage for sheep in the wild. Only an unwise breeder
would fail to take issues of viability and fertility into account. It is the
whole sheep that survives to reproduce, not just its long wool. Hence, just
as before, fitness must be identified with survival.
It should be added, however, that the analogy Darwin wanted to draw
between natural and human selection is harder to maintain when this
terminology is introduced. One would not ordinarily use the term fitness
in describing selection by what may be quite arbitrary human standards.
That the Tasmanian tiger was hunted to extinction by European settlers
says nothing about its fitness in any useful sense of the word. In any
case, the sharp distinction between artificial and natural selection is quite
hard to maintain. Which category do the mating habits of birds (supposing
that they can be said to select their mates) fall into? The concept of sexual
selection, a minor subject in The Origin of Species but the dominating
theme in The Descent of Man, blurs the boundary. Conversely, even
within the human realm, Darwin argues, not all selection is deliberate,
though some is plainly highly deliberate. Some changes in domesticated
species occur through what he calls unconscious selection, that is, as a
result of the exercise of preferences but without being made explicit as a
planned goal. In several kinds of selection, then, the usefulness of the
concept of fitness cannot be taken for granted.
Nevertheless, the objection remains as a challenge to natural selection in
its main form. Defenders of Darwinism have not been notably successful
in answering this criticism. For instance, Gould repudiates it but does not
give a detailed explanation of its falsity (Gould, 1977, pp. 3945). The
reason, I think, is that these scientific respondents accept the terms of the
argument, which involves a conceptual apparatus unsuited to the function
of the expression fitness within a theory of natural selection. The source
for this model is logical empiricism, as some presentations of the
objection indicate quite openly. Manser says that Darwinism is like
Marxism, since neither explain in the sense that they enable events to
be deduced from a set of initial conditions together with universal laws, in
the way that physics and chemistry explain within their respective fields
(Manser, 1965, p. 31). Peters is even more explicit in acknowledging the
direction from which his model of scientific explanation is taken, writing:
My criteria for the acceptance of a scientific theory are derived from the
logical positivists, and specifying Hans Reichenbachs hypotheticaldeductive model of scientific explanation as a particular source (Peters,
1976, p. 1).
The challenge posed by these writers is to find a criterion of the term
fitness. This notion of criterion refers to the conditions of use of a
concept. It is bound up with the operational approach to theoretical
concepts that is, in turn, characteristic of logical empiricism. For a strict
operationalist, a concept and its criterion are the same thing, and so
pragmatists come under suspicion of inconsistency in maintaining (as
William James sometimes did) that they are not, in fact, tampering with
the traditional concept of truth as correspondence to reality in proposing a
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practical test as the criterion or measure of truth. Yet operationalism faces

the problem that defining terms by specifying a single procedure for using
them does not work even for seemingly obvious examples, such as
length, because it is quickly seen that there are indefinitely many and
varied applications. Poppers argument is that since survival is the only
criterion of fitness, the statement that those that survive are the fittest is
tautological, or almost tautological. Why almost? Possibly because the
criterion for a concept is almost the same as the concept itself: this is an
interpretation, but one that at least attaches a plausible sense to Poppers
choice of words.
Fitness is a relation to the environment, that is, to some particular
environment. White polar bears are better adapted than brown bears to one
environment, but not to others. Similarly, in an area that has been affected
by industrial pollution, dark moths have a better chance of avoiding
predators than light moths. If stricter controls on pollution (or a downturn
of heavy industry) were to change the environment back to its earlier state,
then lighter moths would be favoured by natural selection and regain their
predominance. However, fitness cannot usually be identified in a
straightforward way with some single observable feature of the organism,
as these familiar examples tend to suggest. Even for relatively simple
forms of life, coping with the environment is a complex business, and
different species adopt different strategies for survival and reproduction:
The manner in which any kind of organism achieves high fitness is
ultimately a matter of the physiological, anatomical, and behavioural
traits that underlie its viability and fertility and in turn underlie its overall
descendant contribution ability. And yet different types of organisms
achieve high fitness (and low fitness) in very different physiological,
anatomical and behavioural ways. For instance, what one accomplishes in
terms of increased viability, another may accomplish in terms of increased
fertility. (Beatty, 1992, p. 117).
Just as importantly, none of these strategies has any guarantee of success.

In the light of these facts, recent interpretations of fitness treat it as a
propensity, arising out of a variety of underlying factors (Mills and
Beatty, 1979). Dispositional properties manifest themselves in particular
circumstances, but subject to the presence or absence of interfering
factors, and they figure prominently in any explanation of the outcome.
The logic of dispositions appears to be far better suited to the role of the
concept in evolutionary thought than the logic of particular traits or
properties. Not only does it avoid the charge of circularity, but it lends
itself to comparisons of relative fitnessa major concern in modern
evolutionary biology, where fitness is not just shown in survival or
extinction, but measured in differential patterns of reproduction for which
mathematical models have been developed. Changing population ratios
may be interpreted to show that one species is fitter than another, although
both are surviving. In modern evolutionary theory, then, fitness is not just
shown in survival or extinction, as Spencers formula might suggest.
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What emerges from these considerations is that the concept of fitness is

a convenient and legitimate way of summarising the factors that, taken
together, give some living things better success in surviving and
reproducing than others. The fact that fitness is a relation between
organism and environment means that it involves assumptions about the
causal interactions between them. The problem identified by philosophers
is that talk of fitness runs together cause and effect, and so begs the
question about the process itself. This is what makes it a convenient term
to use in the everyday context, where building assumptions about causal
explanation into language is a common and harmless practice (think of
hangover, for exampleas much a diagnosis as a description). It leads to
problems only when the stricter demands of theoretical thinking are
applied. Then an abbreviation has to be spelled out, and this may or may
not be easy to do. Where it is done, the expression is set aside. So, may
that be the case with fitness? We can give a full account of the advantage
that polar bears gain from having white fur in an environment of snow and
ice without speaking of fitness at all. However, as Elliott Sober points
out, the pattern that runs through examples of natural selection that differ
widely in their details is hard to identify without an appropriate general
vocabulary (Sober, 1984, p. 83). Fitness thus remains a concept that is
neither vacuous nor superfluous.
FROM BIOLOGY TO EPISTEMOLOGY
Those approaching philosophy from the direction of biology have always

been attracted to the claim that a scientific investigation of perception (and
especially vision) undermines epistemological realism. In his monumental
Treatise on Physiological Optics, Hermann von Helmholtz argued that
since all perception involves a thorough processing (or interpretation) of
sensations, mostly occurring without conscious thought within the nervous
system, we have no reason to suppose that the resulting experience
corresponds to the nature of reality. The only truth of our ideas, Helmholtz
concluded, is a practical kind: they enable us to act in ways that bring
about a desired result: Not only is there in reality no other comparison at
all between ideas and thingsall the schools are agreed about thisbut
any other mode of comparison is entirely unthinkable and has no sense
whatever (Helmholtz, 1962, vol. 3, p. 19).
Citing evidence of this sort, the neo-Kantian historian of philosophy
Lange argued that traditional materialism had been refuted by physiology
alonean ironic outcome, given its strong support for the research
programme of natural science. He summarised his conclusions in three
theses:
1) The sense-world is a product of our organisation.
2) Our visible bodily organs are, like all other parts of the phenomenal
world, only pictures of an unknown object.
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3) The transcendent basis of our organisation remains therefore just as

unknown to us as the things which act upon it. We have always
before us merely the product of both (Lange, 1925, p. 219).
The physiology and psychology of perception give this approach its
persuasiveness, since they bring out the extent to which our experience of
the world is mediated by the processes of transformation, inference and
interpretation, which occur in between what is given to the sense organs
and what we are aware of. Hence, the argument concludes, we have no
right to assume that the character of external reality corresponds to the
content of our experience. By itself, this line of thought does not refer to
the theory of evolution. The development of a Darwinian approach to the
mind was in fact directed towards different epistemological conclusions.
In this sense, it could be said that the constructivist version of evolutionary
epistemology represents a reversion to these earlier sceptical or agnostic
philosophies.
In the first half of the twentieth century, the biologist Konrad Lorenz
presented a version of Kantianism informed by the Darwinian model of
natural selection in his essay, Kants Lehre von Apriorischen im Lichte
gegenwartiger Biologie. (The title of an English translation, Kants
Doctrine of the A Priori in the Light of Contemporary Biology, may be
misleading: Lorenz means the biology of the present day, not that of
Kants own time.) For Lorenz, our basic concepts are a priori only in a
somewhat weakened sense. They are not derived from the real world by
abstraction from sense-impressions in the individual mind, as empiricist
philosophy proposes. But they do depend on the environment in another,
longer-term way. Our mental apparatus constitutes an innate organ that,
like any other organ, has developed in a particular species under the
pressure of natural selection. Darwin had made a similar point about
instincts, but Lorenz extends it to the structures of cognition, claiming an
important part of the traditional territory of philosophy for scientific
treatment.
The earlier neo-Kantians were prepared to dispense with the thing-initself, regarding the idea as Kants greatest error. Away with it! wrote
Otto Liebmann, the movements founder (Liebmann, 1865, p. 205).
Lorenz, in sharp contrast, draws an explicitly realist conclusion from his
epistemological analysis:
We are convinced that the a priori is based on central nervous
apparatuses which are just as real as our hand or our foot, just as real as
the things of the external world existing in itself, whose form of
appearance they determine for us. This central nervous apparatus in no
way prescribes laws to nature, any more than the hoof of the horse
prescribes form to the ground. Like the horses hoof, this central nervous
apparatus stumbles over unforeseen changes in the task posed to the
organ. But just as the horses hoof is adapted to the ground of the steppes
with which it interacts, so our central nervous world-depicting apparatus
is adapted to the varied real world with which human beings interact, and
like any organ, it has reached its form, geared to preserving the species,
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during an evolutionary development lasting for aeons, by means of this

interaction of the real with the real. (Lorenz, 1941, p. 98).
According to Lorenz, other species have their own a priori concepts and
intuitions, which differ from the human ones. For a water shrew, he
explains, the shortest connection between two points is not a straight line.
Having found a route from one place to another, the water shrew will
always travel by the same path, because the investment of time and energy
it would need to put into keeping in a straight line is not worthwhile.
Lorenz comments that Its spatial ordering schema is quite correctas far
as it reaches! (Lorenz, 1941, p. 121). Human beings, however, have a
more encompassing view of things, and so a greater range of options, even
in moving about, than creatures who rely on rote learning and habitual
associations. Lorenz is not a relativist who believes that the water shrew
has a spatial reality of its own. Every species lives in the same space, but
some have developed more sophisticated mental organs for dealing with
spatial relations. Yet as modern physical science has revealed, even the
human scheme may prove inadequate in the long run.
Lorenz is thus a fallibilist as well as a realist. As such, he departs from
an orthodox Kantian philosophy in two important ways. On the one hand,
he affirms an objective reality, even using the expression thing-in-itself,
as what affects us and is in turn affected by our behaviour, and is common
to all living things, however different their innate mental structures. As
Lorenz puts it, again referring to different species, Such different
adaptations to one and the same lawfulness strengthen our belief in its
reality in the same manner as a judges belief in the actuality of an event is
strengthened by several mutually independent witnesses giving descriptions that are in general agreement, though not quite identical (Lorenz,
1982, p. 135). On the other, he rejects any claims for the absolute validity
of our a priori knowledge (for instance, the model of spatial properties
elaborated in Euclidean geometry) as a piece of human presumption and
arrogance.
The most systematic formulation of an evolutionary epistemology has
been that of Donald T. Campbell, largely inspired by Poppers formulation
of the growth of knowledge through a process of conjecture and
refutation that parallels the pattern of variation and selection in
Darwinian theory. Campbell turns the expected analogy on its head by
arguing not that learning should be seen as a kind of evolution, but that
evolutioneven in its biological aspectsis a knowledge process
(Campbell, 1974, p. 413). According to Campbell, learning can be said to
take place in the adaptation of even the most primitive organisms, and
it does so by Darwinian natural selection: that is, by unguided variation
and the subsequent preservation of those variants that are favoured by
the environment. He is not suggesting that learning by trial and error
always takes place in a wholly random, blind fashion. On the contrary,
it generally makes use of already achieved abilities that limit the range
of possibilities considered according to heuristic principles, themselves
the outcome of previous processes of trial and error. Much of his account
494
R. Small
is an elaboration of levels of problem-solving capacity, ranging from

random variation of activity up to the pursuit of scientific research
programmes.
Campbell is well aware that his approach is inconsistent with a nave
realism, but he rejects any reinterpretation of knowledge that leaves out
reference to a real world, writing:
For both Popper and the present writer the goal of objectivity in science is
a noble one, and dearly to be cherished. It is in true worship of this goal
that we remind ourselves that our current views of reality are partial and
imperfect. We recoil at a view of science which recommends we give up
the search for ultimate truth and settle for practical computational recipes
making no pretence at truly describing a real world (Campbell, 1974,
p. 447).
The reference here is to the critical realism advanced by Popper, who

holds that while realism is strictly neither demonstrable nor refutable, it is
arguable, and the weight of the argument is overwhelmingly in its favour
(Popper, 1972, p. 38). The conjectural theories of science, he argues, are
attempts to describe and explain reality, and the more refined they become
through trial and error, the closer they approach to the truth about reality.
In Poppers view, most of the objections to realism arise from the belief
that genuine knowledge must involve certainty (an idea that, as he notes,
was rebutted by Dewey) and that the task of epistemology is to find
privileged observations that can serve as foundations for the structures of
scientific knowledge. As a fallibilist, Popper denies this assumption, and
insists that objective knowledge need not make any claims for either
certainty or finality. Nor does he consider that the acknowledged theoryladenness of observations compromises their status as representations of
reality.
How does one get from these unambiguously realist versions of
evolutionary epistemology to the anti-realism of the constructivist
approach? The answer is closely related to the tautology argument, as
we will see in turning our attention to the position labelled as radical
constructivism.
CONSTRUCTIVISM AND PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION
In 1977, Karl Popper announced that he had changed his mind about
natural selection. His reason was that in view of sexual selection and
random genetic drift, one recognised by Darwin himself and the other by
later Darwinians, natural selection was known to have exceptions, and so
could be accorded the status of a genuinely empirical theory (Popper,
1978, p. 346). Yet Poppers recantation, as he called it, did not do much
to discredit the tautology argument. His objection to Darwinism continued
to have a life of its own. It was taken up at this time by Ernst von
Glasersfeld, in writings that have had a wide influence in educational
circles (though none elsewhere, as far as I can tella possible comment
495
on the isolated situation of educational thought). For radical constructivism, the significance of this argument is very different from its earlier
uses. The conclusion that the evolutionary concept of fitness tells us
nothing about the real world is hailed as a liberating insight, one that
forces evolutionary epistemology to redefine its conception of knowledge.
The first presentation of this view by von Glasersfeld seems to be in a
paper on Piagetian psychology delivered in 1975. In this formulation, he
does not focus explicitly on the notion of fitness:
Selection means no more than the elimination of the nonviable, and an
adapted organism is merely one that comprises no feature, biological or
behavioural, that would significantly increase the probability of the
organisms elimination (prior to its having procreated others). Adaptation,
therefore, can never be said to reflect the structure of the real world,
because, even if it did, we can not possibly know it. Similarly, from
maladaption and extinction we can at best infer some organismic features
that seen incompatible with the extinguished organisms environment as
we see it. That is, we may gather indications as to what the environment
does not allow. But a description in negative terms cannot be turned into a
positive description, because the exclusion of some possibilities in a field
of infinite possibilities, does not make that infinity finite. (von Glasersfeld,
1979, p. 115).
The argument here is that reality imposes a selection that determines our
knowledge only in a negative way, by setting the limits outside which an
adaptation breaks down. A restatement of this point in terms of fitness
occurred in another presentation of von Glasersfeld, in a symposium at the
1978 conference of the American Psychological Association. The subject
was Wilsons recent proposal for a new science of sociobiology, using
evolutionary theory to account for social behaviour. In his contribution,
von Glasersfeld argues that evolutionary explanations are not logically of
the same type as explanations in, say, mechanics or physics (von
Glasersfeld, 1980, p. 971) He puts forward the tautology objection as
one side of a dilemma: either fitness is definedvacuouslyas survival,
or else survival is redefined as the passing on of a gene, and not as the
continued life of an individual organism. Once again, he suggests that
fitness (as demonstrated by survival) does not tell us what the environment
is like, only what it is not like. When this conclusion is applied to the
fitness of claims to knowledge, it implies that scientific theories do not
represent ontological realityan expression apparently of his own
devising, referring to the real world:
The biological notion of fitness or viability does not require that
organisms or species have information about or share properties with an
independent given environment. Adaptation merely requires that they
avoid points of friction or collision. Whatever has passed through the
sieve of natural selection might know that it has passed, but this does not
provide any indication of the structure of the sieve. Both in the theory of
evolution and in constructivism, to fit means no more than to have
496
R. Small
passed through whatever constraints there may have been (von

Glasersfeld, 1995, p. 45).
His conclusion is that there is a basic logical flaw in an evolutionary

epistemology that takes successful adaptation to indicate that information
about the environment has been acquired, whether consciously or not, by
the adapting organism.
Turning the case about, von Glasersfeld suggests that the phenomenon
of extinction provides a strong supporting argument: Besides, the notion
that the adaptedness of organisms provides a glimpse of the structure of
Nature as it is, hardly jibes with the biologists finding that the vast
majority of species that were evolved and survived for millions of years,
were nevertheless extinguished at some point. (von Glasersfeld, 1995, p.
44) This seems a strange argument. Normally, one would take extinction
to be dramatic evidence that external reality has the last word. What the
causes of extinction are is a debated issue in biology, but the leading
theory is that it results from changes in the environment to which a species
is unable to adapt. It is hard to see how that says anything about the
adequacy of the previous adaptation that, as von Glasersfeld observes,
may have lasted for millions of years.
The main argument here is that reality determines our knowledge only
in a negative way, by setting the limits outside which theories break down.
This distinction between positive and negative descriptions involves
what in traditional Aristotelian logic is called the quality of a judgement.
There are some old epistemological puzzles here. Can negative
judgements be said to add to our knowledge? They do not tell us what
properties things have, only what properties they do not have. This is, of
course, von Glasersfelds sceptical point. But how valid is it as a general
model of either everyday experience or scientific knowledge? In practice,
assertion and negation are interdependent, even within a falsificationist
approach to theory. When any hypothesis is tested, some possibilities are
ruled out and others are left in. Even measurement always involves a
certain margin of error. Now, this is quite a familiar observation,
especially in science. Does it justify the sceptical conclusion that
knowledge does not represent reality at all? Only if the criterion of truth
has been set at a very high level, one that requires absolute certainty.
There follows a different argument, which centres upon the concept of
causality. Natural selection depends on the occurrence of random
variations that are passed on in reproduction. Hence, it is not an
Aristotelian efficient cause, since it does not bring about change in a
species, but works only in a negative way, by elimination. Insofar as it
selects, Nature neither fosters nor encourages, but simply kills off (von
Glasersfeld, 1980, p. 971) Of course, if one appeals to the ancient Greek
conception of scientific inquiry as essentially a search for causes (of
diseases, for example) then much of modern science will seem inadequate
in the same wayincluding, say, Newtons theory of universal
gravitation, at least on Newtons own interpretation, which repudiates
the hypothesis of a causal power. It would be premature to suppose that
497
realism is at stake in this issue. Rather, there are concepts of explanation

that do not coincide with the ancient model, and yet that have proven their
worth in the development of modern natural science. So while it is true
that Darwinism does not make a good Aristotelian scienceespecially
where final causes are concernedthe same criticism, for what it is worth,
could readily be made for any number of modern scientific theories.
Von Glasersfelds interpretation of natural selection is open to criticism.
For one thing, it focuses on mortality and ignores the importance of
reproduction. Yet if two strains have the same mortality but differ in
fertility, one will come to predominate; and this is a case of natural
selection. The ratio of females to males amongst offspring may also be a
determining factor. Sexual selection is another determinant of success in
reproduction, usually taken as distinct from natural selection in the
narrower sense. Furthermore, even conventional Darwinians acknowledge
a place for random genetic drift in bringing about evolutionary change
without the operation of natural selection. In his one-sided emphasis on
the dilemma of life and death, von Glasersfeld is much closer to Spencer
than to Darwinanother consequence of pre-occupation with the
survival of the fittest concept.
At the same time, von Glasersfeld argues that there is strictly no such
thing as survival of the fittest, because there cannot be degrees of fitness.
He writes: But in a theory in which survival is the only criterion for the
selection of a species, there are only two possibilities: Either a species fits
its environment (which includes other, competing species) or it does not;
that is, either it survives or it dies out (von Glasersfeld, 1984, p. 21) All
comparisons between one surviving species and another are therefore
made according to criteria that go beyond survival. They may involve
value judgements about the economy, simplicity or elegance of the
method of survival, and yet, he argues, that none of this justifies labelling
one surviving species as fitter than other. But is it true that fitness does
not admit of degrees, since survival does not admit of degrees either? A
reasonable counterpart to this argument might be the following: We
should not say that there are faster or slower racehorses, only that some
racehorses win races and others lose them. Whats more, to say the fastest
horse won the race is just a tautology, since winning is the criterion for
being fastest. This seems plainly wrong, but we need to look at it more
closely. Why did Phar Lap win the Melbourne Cup? An obvious answer
is: because he ran faster than the other horses entered in the race.
However, Phar Lap was not running faster than the others at every
moment during the event. If so, he would have been in the lead
throughout, which was not the case. So the most we can say is that he ran
faster overall. What this means is that he took less time to run the entire
course, but that seems to be synonymous with the statement that he
reached the winning-post first, and thus won the race. So this explanation
for his winning appears to be an empty one.
How can we avoid that conclusion, and maintain that Phar Lap won the
race because he ran faster than his rivals? If this is a causal explanation, it
presumably points out some process that led to the outcome that is being
498
R. Small
explained. In this case, it would be the events of the race itself. Now, I
think that some assumptions are being made here. One is that the race was
a fair one, that all the horses were able to run on their merits, without
anything occurring to prevent the fastest horse from winning. This does
not go without saying, especially in horse racing. Similarly, anyone who
says May the better team win before a match is conceding that logical
consistency does not, by itself, guarantee that the better side will win.
Rather, this person expresses a hope that the match will be conducted in a
way that enables the outcome to be determined by certain factors alone.
But what are those factors? They are always quite complex, involving not
just fitness in the sense of health and strength, but also skill, strategy,
determination, teamwork and various other features of the contestants.
And however well-conducted a match is, there are also contingencies:
goals are barely missed, players suffer injuries, and good teams have a bad
day. So law-like prediction is not to be expected here, even when
untoward behaviour is excluded from the picture.
Natural selection involves complexities, both in the range of features of
the organism relevant to its survival and reproduction, and in the
interrelations between them. An evolutionary epistemology can find
analogies here with forms of knowledge. There are many properties of
theories that are taken into consideration when they are assessed:
comprehensiveness, economy, simplicity and so on. When making a
choice between competing models of reality, we may be guided by
comparisons of these kinds and, in so doing, we are judging the fitness of
the two theories, despite von Glasersfelds claim that such differences are
merely external (von Glasersfeld, 1984, p. 21). For features like these
have a strong bearing on the success or failure of theories in the long term,
and since they can be present to a greater or lesser extent, they figure
prominently in decisions between one theory and another. There are of
course further issues here, widely discussed in the recent post-positivist
philosophy of science. Following thinkers such as Quine, many writers
have argued that it is theories as a whole that are judged as valid or
invalidjust as organisms as a whole are fit or unfit, and not particular
traits, as we noted earlier. Again, it is not true that a successful scientific
theory simply eliminates its predecessors. Just as the water shrew, as
characterised by Lorenz, finds it more convenient (i.e. adaptive) to live
according to a pre-Euclidean conception of space, so we still make use of
Newtonian mechanics in everyday situations, while recognising that it has
been overtaken by the more encompassing theory of relativity. In ways
like these, a modern evolutionary theory finds several close analogies
within the post-positivist account of scientific knowledge, suggesting that
the research programme of evolutionary epistemology is worthy of further
exploration.
Finally, it is worth noting the motivation behind the constructivist
argument about the relation between fitness and reality. Its restriction of
natural selection to a setting of constraints is designed to mark out a
space within which freedom and creativity can come into play. This seems
to me to imply a rejection of Campbells assertion that In going beyond
499
what is already known, one cannot but go blindly. If one can go wisely,
this indicates already achieved wisdom of some sort (Campbell, 1974, p.
422) Campbell clearly intends this observation as a truism. Yet many
people look for something here that does not amount to knowledge, but
still goes beyond past experience and abilities. Whether such a quasiteleological notion of foresight or insight can be made coherent is an open
question. Ever since Darwin presented his theory, loopholes have been
sought by those unwilling to accept the claim that trial and error can
account for everything. Von Glasersfeld is one who thinks that some kinds
of learning cannot be explained in this way, because they involve quite
novel uses of previously existing skills and knowledge. Such a capacity,
he writes, can be observed in chimpanzees who learn American Sign
Language, and presumably it is even more evident in human beings. It is
this conviction that Darwinian natural selection cannot account for
creativity or inventiveness that accounts for the attempt to limit its scope
to a setting of constraints.
Constructivism, then, has a broader agenda that is not always spelled
out. As with other epistemologies that emphasise the active and productive
role of the mind, its supporters often take some pride in the edifying
influence of their doctrine. Recognising that our knowledge is our own
construction, it is claimed, encourages a broad tolerance towards the
realities others have invented for themselves. Furthermore, it gives us a
strong sense of our own absolute freedom, as well as of our responsibility
in a very deep ethical sense for the reality that is our own construction
(Watzlawick, 1984, p. 327). These sound like desirable outcomes, and yet
they also have a certain ambiguity. Open-mindedness to other views of the
world may turn into relativism, and respect for the power of thought into a
hubristic (and indeed, solipsistic) claim to have created the world. Even
where constructivist aspirations to promote human creativity deserve our
sympathy, the denial of our contact with reality in knowledge is a high
price to pay, especially when it is not necessary to do so.
To sum up: the survival of the fittest, as we saw, is not Darwins
original expression. He accepted it as an alternative to the metaphor of
natural selection, under pressure from literal-minded colleagues like
Wallace and Spencer (whose counterparts nowadays direct their hostility
against the selfish gene concept). The notion of fitness opens itself to the
tautology objection because it does not point to some single criterion of
viability, but rather stands for the diversity of interdependent factors that,
in practice, contribute to success or failure in the struggle for existence.
Yet the objection is mistaken, and it is equally mistaken when used to
argue that the viability of a theory does not tell us anything about the real
world. This is the fallacy of radical constructivism, an error that testifies to
the unacknowledged persistence of quasi-positivist models of scientific
methodology in many areas of educational research.
This brings us back to the educational bearing of the epistemological
issues we have been exploring. It is, I hope, clear that my counterarguments have not been aimed against an approach to learning that draws
upon biological concepts, including those embodied in the scientific
500
R. Small
theory of evolution. The issue of realism and non-realism is central to

epistemology, but there are other divisions that cut across this one,
especially where theories of learning are concerned. In that case, it may be
that those who disagree over the claims of knowledge to objectivity (using
this word to mean a relation to an independent reality) will nevertheless
agree on related matters. We know that this has occurred in the conduct of
physical science. I am not suggesting here that epistemology can make no
contribution to positive knowledge, but simply noting that the relation
between philosophy and other forms of understanding is by no means a
straightforward one.
Let me illustrate this point with another example. There have been many
people who thought that a scientific account of perception justifies
sceptical conclusions, because it shows that the mind does not simply copy
impressions but relies on a great deal of processing within the nervous
system, so that the effect an external stimulus has on the sense organs is
thoroughly transformed before any perceptual experience appears in
consciousness. Nobody doubts the scientific findings in this case, but
realist philosophers have queried the inference and come up with various
counter-arguments. It is clear that we do not have to appeal to a folk
epistemology to respond to this challengeand I suggest that the same is
true of both the evolutionary conception of cognition and the
constructivist model of learning.
I noted earlier that the constructivist contribution to pedagogy arose
from recognition of the active role of the student in the learning process,
and from the hypothesis that students come into the classroom with
mental models that have structures of their own, and that provide the
starting point for any further learning they achieve. Thus, for instance, the
physics teacher wanting to explain Newtonian mechanics commonly has
to deal with an existing conception of force that is inconsistent with
Newtons first law of motion. Simply to dismiss that as wrong is unwise
since, as educational research has confirmed, the outcome may be that
students go on using their old understandings outside the classroom or the
examination situation. Yet a teaching that is committed to the best
available knowledge can hardly reconcile itself to an epistemological
relativism. A non-realist epistemology, it seems to me, faces the task of
solving this problem in its own terms if it is to make any plausible
contribution to the philosophy of education.
Constructivism is sometimes presented (by teacher educators, in
particular) as a classroom pedagogy that can be separated from the
philosophical doctrines presented in its radical version. This is a
defensible move, likely to bring out some genuine contributions made by
constructivist thought. Just as parents may be well satisfied with the
education their children receive at a Rudolf Steiner school, without
subscribing to (or even knowing much about) the esoteric doctrines of its
founding figure, so too, a constructivist teaching of science or
mathematics should be judged according to the usual standards, that is,
by its success or failure in promoting understanding in students. I have no
quarrel with this approach: what I have argued against here is the direction
501
of the constructivist incursion into epistemology that argues that the

evolutionary concept of natural selection gives support to an anti-realist
philosophy, owing to a supposed lack of informative content. This
argument should be recognised as what it is: an old fallacy, arising out of
an impoverished model of scientific theorising. For constructivism as it
occurs in the area of education, this points to the need for a better
acquaintance with post-positivist alternatives in epistemology, which do
far better justice to the subtlety and flexibility of actual thinking in
science.
Correspondence: Robin Small, School of Education, University of
Auckland, Private Bag 94006, Auckland, New Zealand.
Email: r.small@auckland.ac.nz
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Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 37, No.