Partial Memories : Sketches from an Improbable Life

Autobiographical sketches by the philosopher and semioticist Ernst von Glasersfeld. The author writes: "Memories are a personal affair. They are what comes to mind when you think back, not what might in fact have happened at that earlier time in your life. You can no longer be certain of what seemed important then, because you are now looking at the past with today''s eyes. The Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico had that insight three hundred years ago: When we think of things that lie in the past, we see them in terms of the concepts we have now." Ernst von Glasersfeld is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Georgia, Research Associate at the Scientific Reasoning Research Institute, and Adjunct Professor in the Dept. of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. A philosopher & cybernetician, he spent large parts of his life in Ireland (1940s), in Italy (1950s) and since the mid-1960s in the USA. Elaborating upon authors as diverse as Vico and James Joyce, von Glasersfeld developed his own model of Radical Constructivism.