Ernst von Glasersfeld American philosopher, psychologist Date of Birth: 08.03.1917 Country: USA

Biography of Ernst von Glasersfeld

Ernst von Glasersfeld was an American philosopher and psychologist, known as one of the founders of radical constructivism. He was born on March 8, 1917, in Munich, to Austrian parents. His father was a diplomat in Bavaria, and his mother was a professional skier.

Throughout his life, Glasersfeld lived in various countries including Switzerland, Austria, France, Czechoslovakia, Ireland (from 1939), Italy (from 1947), and the United States (from 1966). He completed his education at Zuoz College in Switzerland, obtaining a Swiss Scientific "Matura" degree in 1935. He went on to study mathematics at the University of Zurich and later at the University of Vienna. However, due to the annexation of Austria by Hitler, Glasersfeld had to move to Paris to continue his studies. Unfortunately, his parents' properties were confiscated by the Nazis, leaving him without the means to pursue his education.

In 1939, Glasersfeld emigrated to Ireland, where he became a farmer. He obtained Irish citizenship in 1945 and privately studied philosophy, logic, and psychology. He held dual citizenship, first as an Austrian subject and later as a citizen of Czechoslovakia together with his parents. In his later years, he held citizenship in both Ireland and the United States.

In 1947, Glasersfeld moved to Italy and began working under Professor Silvio Ceccato. He also worked as a correspondent for newspapers in Austria and Switzerland. He later worked at the Center for Cybernetics (1949-1959) and the University of Milan (1960-1969). He conducted research at the Foreign Language Section, Center for Cybernetics, University of Milan, and worked as a chief scientific collaborator in the Language Research Project, funded by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research and administered by the Italian Institute of Engineering Information. In the United States, he served as a psychology professor at the University of Georgia and the University of Massachusetts. From 1966 to 1969, he was the director and chief scientific collaborator at the Georgia Institute for Research in Athens, GA. He also worked as a professor of psychology at the University of Georgia from 1967 to 1987.

Glasersfeld is recognized as one of the founders of radical constructivism in philosophy, along with Paul Watzlawick and Heinz von Foerster. In 1981, he published his article "Introduction to Radical Constructivism" in the collective work edited by Paul Watzlawick, where he presented Giovanni Battista Vico as the first "constructivist" philosopher. He introduced the term "Radical Constructivism" in the late 1970s in his work "Radical Constructivism and Piaget's Concept of Knowledge" (1978). The central paradigm of radical constructivism, as formulated by Glasersfeld, states that knowledge is not passively acquired but actively constructed by the knowing subject. Its function is adaptive and serves to organize the experiential world, rather than to discover ontological reality.

In addition to his contributions to philosophy and psychology, Glasersfeld also created the first 120 symbol signs (known as Lexigrams) for the artificial language Yerkish, which was used to communicate with chimpanzees. This language was first applied in his work with a female chimpanzee named Lana in 1973 at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, affiliated with Emory University in Georgia.

Ernst von Glasersfeld passed away on November 12, 2010, in Leverett, Massachusetts, USA, at the age of 93, due to pancreatic cancer.