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Compatibility does not imply identity, it merely implies viability in the given circumstances. That is why, after having used a word in a particular way for fifty or more years, we may discover that it is not quite the way others are using it – it is just that the circumstances in which we have so far used the word happened to be such that they did not bring out any differences. +
What I suggest now, is that the relationship between our knowledge and “reality” is similar to the relationship between organisms and their environment.[4] In other words, we construct ideas, hypotheses, theories, and models, and as long they survive, which is to say, as long as our experience can be successfully fitted into them, they are viable. (In Piagetian terms we might say that our constructs are viable as long as our experience can be assimilated to them.) This, of course, immediately raises the question as to what “survival” and “viability” mean in the cognitive domain. Briefly stated, concepts, theories, and cognitive structures in general, are viable and survive as long hey serve the purposes to which they are put, as long as they more or less reliably get us what we want. “Getting us what we want,” however, means different things in different realms of experience. In the realm of everyday experience, for instance, Newton’s physics serves our purposes well and is perfectly viable. Most of us simply do not enter the realms of experience where the methods and predictions based on Newton’s concepts break down. This is not so for the ideal scientist (e.g., as portrayed by Popper, 1934/1965 and 1962/1968) who is perennially searching for concepts and theories that “get by” the constraints encountered in all realms of experience and who is, therefore, more concerned with the possible “falsification” of his concepts and hypotheses than with their practical success as means in the pursuit of certain limited ends. This leads to the somewhat peculiar situation that Newton’s ideas are quite “true” for the man in the street, the mechanic, and the working engineer, whereas hey are “false” for a relatively small group of specialized scientists. What must be stressed, however, is that none of this can change the epistemological status of the ideas, concepts, theories, or models that we consider as constituting our “knowledge.” +
It was, indeed, radical to break away from the traditional way of thinking according to which all human knowledge ought or can approach a more or less “true” representation of an independently existing, or ontological reality. In place of this notion of representation, radical constructivism introduces a new, more tangible relationship between knowledge and reality, which I have called a relationship of “viability.” Simply put, the notion of viability means that an action, operation, conceptual structure, or even a theory, is considered “viable” as long as it is useful in accomplishing a task or in achieving a goal that one has set for oneself. Thus, instead of claiming that knowledge is capable of representing a world outside of our experience, we would say, as did the pragmatists, that knowledge is a tool within the realm of experience. +
This viability is, in principle, the same notion as in the case of the lock and the key. +
If we accept this concept of viability, it becomes clear that it would be absurd to maintain that our knowledge is in any sense a replica or picture of reality. +
In the biological theory of evolution we speak of variability and selection, of environmental constraints and of survival. If an organism survives individually or as a species it means that, so far at least, it has been viable in the environment in which it happens to live. To survive, however, does not mean that the organism must in any sense reflect the character or the qualities of his environment. Gregory Bateson (1967) was the first who noticed that this theory of evolution, Darwin’s theory, is really a cybernetic theory because it is based on the concept of constraint rather than on the concept of causation. Somehow we always tend to think that the character of surviving organisms is determined by its environment. We speak of “adaptation”, and the idea of causation seems to become associated with that concept so that we end up believing that environmental constraints can cause certain biological structures or certain behaviors in organisms. This is a serious conceptual error. In order to remain among the survivors, an organism has to "get by" the constraints which the environment poses. +
Let me cite one example that is particularly well-documented and well-known: the Japanese macaque Imo on Koshima Islet that started washing her sweet potatoes (Kawai, 1965). Within 10 years the entire population, with the exception of a few old males who were too conservative, practiced potato washing. There was no time for a mutation or some other genetic accident to increase or decrease anyone’s viability. Nor, indeed, is there any evidence that potato washing has increased anyone’s genetic fitness. But as the new activity quickly created exceptional familiarity with water, it led to yet another novel behavior: swimming. Since all this has taken place in a country where earthquakes and tectonic disasters are not at all impossible, it might be tempting to conjecture that if Koshima Islet should one day sink into the sea, the swimming skill might yet become the crucial feature that allows these macaques to reach a safe shore while the macaques in other sinking regions perish. Subsequent generations of sociobiologists could then use the swimming macaques as a textbook example for “evolutionary explanation.” But such a scenario in which swimming might become an important asset toward the survival of macaques or macaque genes has not yet happened. Yet the washing of food and swimming have become part of the behavioral repertoire of a macaque population without the benefit of an evolutionary explanation. +
