NEED OF TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGES IN SASKATCHEWAN:

The biological origin of cognition and implications for Education

By Mario deSantis, September 27, 1998

Premise

About a week ago, Honourable Pat Atkinson [1], Education Minister, launched a sweeping review of education services [2] for disabled and gifted children by establishing a review committee composed of five experts. This review will cover issues of finance, accountability, program delivery and overall philosophy. Honourable Atkinson justified this review by making references to the ever increasing high cost effecting the education of disabled students, and that since the last 30 years there hasn't been a comprehensive review.

We have just embarked into the writing of several articles dealing with the need of transformational changes in Saskatchewan, and therefore we take the opportunity to write an article on the emerging new philosophical approach to the education of our children. We hope that the panel of experts appointed by Honourable Pat Atkinson will evaluate this new philosophy and incorporate the relevant implications in their comprehensive review of education services for disabled and gifted children. This new philosophical approach is based principally on the work of the biologists Maturana and Valera [3] in the field of cognition and it is part of the larger picture to see the world as the web of life where all the related phenomena are intertwined and interwoven [4].

The need of a new philosophy of Education.

its major faults have been the traditional belief that knowledge is a fixed objective reality independent from the students

the premises of the unquestioning authority of knowledge as an absolute truth and the related unquestioning authority of the teacher as a source of knowledge have determined the building of a sterile educational system

During my years as student, parent and educator, I have come across examples of educational policies and procedures which have nothing to do with our responsibility to facilitate learning for our students: allocation of grades in accordance to the bell curve, dictation of notes as a substitute for books, delivery of courses with no contextual explanation of their relationships with other courses, the use of the strap, going back to the three R's (reading, writing, and arithmetic), measuring students' IQs, teaching of obsolete subjects such as phonetics, and so forth. We forgot to realize that the fundamental need of all human beings--especially children-- is creativity and that its denial brings a pervasive state of dissatisfaction and boredom [5]. Our educational system has not provided an environment which focuses on the unleashing of the creativity and learning of our students, and its major faults have been the traditional belief that knowledge is a fixed objective reality independent from the students, and the educational entrenched practice of behaviour modification and positive reinforcements [6]. In general, the premises of the unquestioning authority of knowledge as an absolute truth and the related unquestioning authority of the teacher as a source of knowledge have determined the building of a sterile educational system where the cultural impositions of competition, control and hierarchy deprive our children of their creativity and humaness [7].

In the past fifty years, the confluent work of many scientists, artists, and philosophers have been pointing to a new conceptualization of the world as a web of creative living organisms [8] rather than as a machine. This new worldview sees cognition and creativity as a process of life for all living organisms and this new conceptualization of life is having dramatic effects on the building of healthy human communities [9], including education [10]. The biologists Maturana and Valera have made a major contribution to the new emerged theory of living organisms, and their acknowledged scientific and practical contribution to the biological origin of cognition should somewhat redimension the artificial theoretical abstractions [11] of most of our current epidemiologists and social psychologists [12a] [12b].

The Theory of Living Systems and The Biology of Cognition

defined cognition as the self-organization of living systems to maintain themselves

how we exist in language as languaging beings, it is a study on human relations

understanding does not result from invoking objectivity, the truth, or a compelling argument, to achieve agreement by the force of reason

our experiences don't represent an objective reality independent from our languaging and emotioning

The theory of the biological origin of cognition evolved from the theory of living systems. Living systems are composed of cells and they are open to the continuous flow of energy and matter. Maturana and Valera observed the ongoing regularities and coherences of living systems and abstracted that these systems operate as closed networks of molecular productions such that the molecules produced through their interactions produce the same molecular network that produced them [13]. Maturana and Valera called this abstraction autopoiesis [14] (where auto means "self" and poiesis means "making", that is self making) and defined cognition as the self-organization of living systems to maintain themselves. In providing a comprehensive understanding of living systems, Maturana and Valera included the additional notions of organization and structure: the organization [15] being the pattern or set of relations describing the form, the order and the quality of the system which permit us to distinguish for instance a dog, or a birch tree, or a cat, or a liver; the structure being the relations identifying the physical components of the system (physiology) in terms of, for instance, their individual shapes, chemical composition and related quantities.

Maturana and Valera have provided an explanation of the biological origin of cognition based on the self organization model of living systems [16]. Maturana has succinctly defined The Biology of Cognition
[17] as follows:

"The Biology of Cognition is an explanatory proposition that attempts to show how human cognitive processes arise from the operation of human beings as living systems. As such, The Biology of Cognition entails reflexions oriented to understand living systems, their evolutionary history, language as a biological phenomenon, the nature of explanations, and the origin of humaness. As a reflection on how we do what we do as observers it is a study in the epistemology of knowledge. But, and at the same time as a reflection on how we exist in language as languaging beings, it is a study on human relations".

The above definition is beyond the immediate comprehension of most people, however, for our purposes, it is enough to understand that cognition is the process of life and that knowledge is not an entity but is about doing interpersonal relationships. Maturana's proposition of knowledge as doing interpersonal relationship is somewhat analogous to Bohm's belief to use Dialogue as an effective way to increase our individual and collective intelligence [18]. The utilitarian effects of the consideration of this theory of cognition in building healthy human communities are tremendous and because of this reason, many scientists, educators and business leaders "...subscribe to the view, expressed by Maturana and others, that a satisfying experience of , nor from a process of information exchange, but from some other qualities of the biological interaction itself on humanity [19]..." In order to have a tangible comprehension of the biological theory of cognition, and of the relatedrecursive and feedback features, I am providing the following simplistic justification:

We, as human beings, are living systems and become alive [20] as we language and emotion [21] with each other to form the world. Therefore, our world [22] is the history of our languaging and emotioning and it is continuously alive and evolving at any given moment with our languaging and emotioning. As we reflect on our experiences we provide different explanations in accordance to our histories of languaging and emotioning and as a result our experiences don't represent an objective reality independent from our languaging and emotioning.

The biological origin of cognition and implications for Education

The building of a healthy educational system should obviously follow the general principles of organization of living organisms

there is not one objective reality, and therefore knowledge is not information

we have the social responsibility to facilitate learning by using optimal physical resources

Our educational system is representative of our culture, and since our culture cannot change overnight we must realize that the needed transformational changes can occur only slowly. However, it is important that our educators become aware of the educational implications of the proposition of the biological origin of cognition so that hopefully they can change their mental models and divest themselves of their traditional and obsolete way of thinking. The building of a healthy educational system should obviously follow the general principles of organization of living organisms [23], but as we concern ourselves with the classroom setting we are going to expand on the related implications [24] brought by Maturana's theory of cognition.

The teacher and the students have different languaging and emotioning histories and therefore every member of the classroom would bring different explanations to the experiences presented by the teacher. This implies that the teacher should get to know the histories of every student, that every member of the classroom should interact with every other member, and that we all learn from each other including the teacher. The need to interact between all the members of the classroom is further supported by the fact that knowledge is "doing interpersonal relationships". This interaction between every member of the classroom implies the exercise of the processes of reflection and explanation on any experience presented by the teacher.

Maturana states that there is not one objective reality, and therefore knowledge is not information [25] or a commodity which can be transferred readily to people. People bring to the classroom only what they were born with along with their own personal histories; this implies that people cannot be forced to learn what they cannot learn. In addition, learning [26] is a spontaneous process rather than a competitive process, and therefore, any learning system based on reward and punishment (or praise and blame) is socially useless.

In the classroom, learning is a spontaneous and individual process of languaging and emotioning among all the members. Therefore, we have the social responsibility to facilitate learning by using optimal physical resources. At the same time, every individual member should have the responsibility to know his/her personal history and to facilitate learning through optimal languaging and emotioning; that is every member should explicate the responsibility to come to the classroom with healthy emotions, say healthy attitudes, and exercise as much as possible the learning processes of reflections and explanations. 

REFERENCES
[1]	Note dated September 24/98: The Honourable Pat Atkinson has changed her portfolio and is now Senior Minister of Health, Government of Saskatchewan. Clay Serby is now in that role.
[2]	"Province launches special needs review", by Kevin O'Connor, article in the StarPhoenix of Saskatoon, dated September 15/1998.
[3]	"The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding", by Maturana, H. R. & Varela, F. J., New Science Library, Shambhala, London, 1987.
[4]	"THE WEB OF LIFE", by Fritjof Capra, Anchor Books, 1996.
[5]	"Science order and creativity", by David Bohm and David Peat, Bantam, New York, 1987, page 232.
[6]	"Science order and creativity", by David Bohm and David Peat, Bantam, New York, 1987, page 232.
[7]	"An Interview' with Dr Humberto Maturana", by David Mendes, February 1997, http://www.northnet.com.au/~pfell/visit.html
[8]	THE THEORY OF LIVING SYSTEMS AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGES, A CONCISE DESCRIPTION OF THE THEORY OF LIVING SYSTEMS, by Mario deSantis, articles published in August and September 1998:
[9]	THE THEORY OF LIVING SYSTEMS AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGES, A CONCISE DESCRIPTION OF THE THEORY OF LIVING SYSTEMS, (Living Systems: Principles of Organization and Building Sustainable Human Communities), by Mario deSantis, September 12, 1998, http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign
[10]	Make reference to Sahtouris' statement "...the concept of living systems should be the overarching concept for all of our educational institutions...", "A Conversation with Elisabet Sahtouris", Copyright 1995 by Scott London, http://www.ratical.com/LifeWeb/Articles/radio.txt http://www.west.net/~insight/london, london@rain.org
[11]	"THE WEB OF LIFE", by Fritjof Capra, Anchor Books, 1996, page 295.
[12a]	Refer to the notions of constructivism, objectivisim, and cybernetics. http://www.stemnet.nf.ca/~elmurphy/emurphy/cle2.html Site created by Elizabeth Murphy in the context of course TEN-62349, Universite Laval, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, Summer, 1997 with Jacques Rheaume
[12b]	THE POSTMODERN PARADIGM, by Brent G. Wilson, University of Colorado at Denver, March 1997, http://www.cudenver.edu/~bwilson/postmodern.html
[13]	Make reference to the concept of recursion and feedback.
[14]	Welcome to the Autopoiesis plus... home page. Autopoiesis is a concept created by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela to explain how living systems operate. http://www.northnet.com.au/~pfell/index.html
[15]	The concept of pattern of relationship has been a natural intuition of many humanists. The writer Robert Persig describes the loss of his son Chris as the loss of a pattern "..larger than Chris and myself..", Gothenburg, Sweden, 1984, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", AN INQUIRY INTO VALUES, http://skynet.ul.ie/~chopper/zen/afterword.html
[16]	Both our organism/person along with its nervous system are closed networks. Maturana and Valera explain that cognition takes place as a sequence of sensory-effector correlations of our organism and nervous system (external to the organism/person: refer to sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch; internal to the organism/person: refer to the working of the nervous system, neurons, receptors,...)
[17]	Chilean School of Biology of Cognition, The Web Page of Humberto Maturana, Santiago de Chile, Edited by Alfredo Ruiz, http://www.inteco.cl/biology/ http://www.inteco.cl/biology/ontology/ooo-c1.htm
[18]	DIALOGUE - A PROPOSAL, Copyright 1991. c. David Bohm. Donald Factor and Peter Garrett, http://world.std.com/~lo/bohm/0000.html
[19]	"The Dance of Understanding", by Lloyd Fell and David Russell, included in "Seized by Agreement, Swamped by Understanding", edited by L. Fell, D. Russell & A.Stewart, A collection of papers to celebrate the visit to Australia in August 1994 by Humberto Maturana, Last update: 10 Jan 1998, ISBN 0-646-20084-4 Hawkesbury Printing, University of Western Sydney, http://www.northnet.com.au/~pfell/dance.html
[20]	Being alive is the process of cognition, that is learning.
[21]	Languaging and emotioning: two verbs created by Maturana. Languaging refers to the natural coordination of behaviour among people within the environment. What we call normally language is an abstraction and it is part of languaging. Emotioning refers to bodily predispositions which reveal themselves in our behaviour, for instance love and fear. Emotioning is therefore a generative process linking body and behaviour. If we refer to the self-organization model of autopeisis, we can say that languaging takes place in the context of our behavioural (or organizational) relationships within the environment, while emotioning takes place in our physiology or structure.
[22]	Our world is our knowledge, that is our histories of languaging and emotioning, and of our subsequent explanations.
[23]	THE THEORY OF LIVING SYSTEMS AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGES, A CONCISE DESCRIPTION OF THE THEORY OF LIVING SYSTEMS, (Living Systems: Principles of Organization and Building Sustainable Human Communities), by Mario deSantis, September 12, 1998, http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign
[24]	"Maturana's Biology and Some Possible Implications for Education", by Joy Murray, included in "Seized by Agreement, Swamped by Understanding", edited by L. Fell, D. Russell & A.Stewart, A collection of papers to celebrate the visit to Australia in August 1994 by Humberto Maturana, Last update: 10 Jan 1998, ISBN 0-646-20084-4 Hawkesbury Printing, University of Western Sydney, http://www.northnet.com.au/~pfell/educat.html
[25]	Maturana states that the nervous system operates as a closed network and cannot have inputs and outputs, that is the nervous system cannot pick up information from the environment, process it, and provide a representation in our minds/brains. The nervous system operates only in terms of sensory-effector correlations. Therefore, cognition is not information processing, and biologically it is about internal coherence rather than internal representation of something.
[26]	Learning (cognition) is the process of life and as such is spontaneous.