Jacob's Ladder and Scientific Ontologies
The main goal of this article is to use the epistemological framework of a specific version of cognitive constructivism to address Piaget's central problem of knowledge construction, namely, the re-equilibration of cognitive structures. The distinctive objective character of this
constructivist framework is supported by formal inference methods of Bayesian Statistics, and is based on Heinz von Foerster's fundamental metaphor of objects as tokens for eigen-solutions. This epistemological perspective is illustrated using some episodes in the history of chemistry
concerning the definition or identification of chemical elements. Some of von Foerster's epistemological imperatives provide general guidelines of development and argumentation
Keywords: Bayesian statistics; chemical elements; cognitive constructivism; development of cognitive structure; eigen-solutions; objectivity; ontology alignment; symbol grounding
Document Type: Research Article
Publication date: 01 January 2014
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