Passibility: At the Limits of the Constructivist Metaphor

This book argues that the `constructivist metaphor' has become a self-appointed overriding concept that suppresses other modes of thinking about knowing and learning science. Yet there are questions about knowledge that constructivism cannot properly answer, such as how a cognitive structure can intentionally develop a formation that is more complex than itself; how a learner can aim at a learning objective that is, by definition, itself unknown; how we learn through pain, suffering, love or passion; and the role emotion and crises play in knowing and learning. In support of the hypothesis that passibility underlies cognition, readers are provided with a collation of empirical studies and phenomenological analyses of knowing and learning science-in schools, scientific laboratories and everyday life-all of which defy a constructivist explanation. The author argues that `passibility' constitutes an essential factor in the development of consciousness, with a range of essential experiences that cannot be brought into the linguistic realm. His exploration is guided by concepts such as `otherness', passion, passivity and undecidability, and concludes by resituating the construction metaphor to accord it its proper place in a more comprehensive theory of learning.