The Certainty of Uncertainty Dialogues introducting constructivism Bernhard Poerksen February 2004, 200 pages ISBN 0 907845 819 (paperback), £17.95/$29.90 Search Inside the Book at Amazon.com  Search Inside the Book at Amazon.co.uk Secure ordering "If you are fairly well acquainted with the persons Poerksen has chosen as his cooperators, the book will give you the pleasure of revisiting—seeing the old horses doing their well-known tricks in the ring. And if you are not, these dialogues give a wonderful introduction to the themes and problems of constructivism." Ole Thyseen, Cybernetics and Human Knowing

Nothing that can be said is independent of us. Whatever can be said is coloured by our dreams and aspirations, by the way our brain works, by human nature and human culture. Whoever claims to know or to observe is - according to the central constructivist assumption - inescapably biased.

This book presents the views of the founders of constructivism and modern systems theory, who are still providing stimulating cues for international scientific debate. The conversations of Heinz von Foerster, Ernst von Glasersfeld, Humberto R. Maturana, Francisco J. Varela, Gerhard Roth, Siegfried J. Schmidt, Helm Stierlin, and Paul Watzlawick with Bernhard Poerksen, display a kind of thinking that steers clear of rigid fixation and reveals the ideal of objectivity to be a myth. The conversations turn on the results of brain research, the breaks through of cybernetics, the linguistic determination of thought, and the intrinsic connection between epistemology and ethical practice.

Throughout, the central figure of the observer is examined with sophisticated wit and just enough irritating grit to create the pearl in the oyster. Constructivism thus emerges as a philosophy of possibilities that keeps generating new points of view, insists on fundamental scepticism with regard to certainties and dogmas, and provides the foundation for an ethics of perception: Each and every one of us is responsible for their view of things.

Bernhard Poerksen is junior professor of journalism and communication science at the University of Hamburg. He was awarded a Ph.D. for a thesis on the language of neo-Nazis and has written books together with Heinz von Foerster and Humberto R. Maturana.

"Fertile with philosophical discussion . . . The Certainty of Uncertainty introduces us to a breadth of debate and unpacks for us the paradoxes that acknowledging the observer might result."  Aparna Sharma, Leonardo