This paper presents a case study of 3- to 9-year-old children's concepts of size, weight, density, matter, and material kind. Our goal was to examine two claims: (1) that individual concepts undergo differentiation during development; and (2) that young children's concepts are embedded in theory-like structures. To make progress on the first issue, we needed to specify in representational terms what an undifferentiated concept is like and in what sense this undifferentiated concept is a parent of the more differentiated concepts. Our strategy was to use a model of conceptual differentiation suggested by the history of science to guide our search for evidence. In this model, undifferentiated concepts, like differentiated concepts, can be analyzed in terms of their component properties, features, or dimensions. The key difference is that an undifferentiated concept unites certain components which will subsequently be analyzed as components of distinct concepts, and that the undifferentiated concept is embedded in a different theoretical structure from the differentiated concepts. In our study, the same group of 78 children (18 3-year-olds, 18 4-year-olds, 18 5-year-olds, 12 6-7-year-olds, and 12 8-9-year-olds) were given a range of tasks probing their understanding of size, weight, and density; a

Prevailing views about what constitutes organisational knowledge need to be systematically evaluated at deep epistemological levels. We argue there is a need is to establish a new paradigm comprising of both a theoretical and an ontological foundation for thinking about knowledge epistemologies. We think, along with Bill McKelvey, (1997, 2002) that the “science of management ” as it relates to organisations seems to be greatly wanting. Our approach is based on an evolutionary theory of knowledge contained within Karl Popper’s later epistemological works beginning with his 1972 “Objective Knowledge – an evolutionary approach ” and a framework of organisational theory based on Maturana and Varela's concept of self-producing complex systems ("autopoiesis"). We have drawn upon this combined approach in order to understand how best to integrate understandings of personal and objective knowledge and the notion of “living organisations ” into a new paradigm of organisational knowledge. A model that is congruent with this new paradigmatic approach is detailed and discussed. This model is designed to provide a general overview of the different types of knowledge that give rise to organisational knowledge. Importantly, we highlight that all explicit knowledge held in organisations encoded in analogue or digital objects is in fact inert. Such knowledge cannot be regarded as “living knowledge ” unless the filter of human interpretative intelligence is applied to generate meaning from these knowledge objects or, increasingly, unless such intelligence is

Abstract. Tenix Defence, one of Australia’s largest defence contractors, depends on winning bids and managing contracts for long-lifecycle engineering projects. The ability to capture, manage and deliver project knowledge in explicit formats is crucial to its success. Tenix is moving from a paradigm of traditional paper documents to electronically managing and automating structured knowledge artefacts in a knowledge management framework based on Karl Popper’s (1973) three worlds of knowledge. The new technology captures the authors’ implicit knowledge that was inevitably lost when working with paper documents and also moves aspects of personal cognition from the subjective and personal World 2 into the objective, virtual and persistent World 3.

This work explores revolutions in human and organizational cognition that have resulted from new technologies and methods for managing the kinds of persistent knowledge that form Karl Popper's (1972) world 3. World 3 knowledge includes the logical contents of books, libraries, computer memories, etc. Persistent or "explicit " knowledge is a major blind spot for many of today's KM practitioners because of their reliance on a much narrower concept of knowledge derived from Michael Polanyi's works. This paper seeks to highlight and fill in that blind spot. Knowledge workers using different cognitive tools often become so heatedly involved in irrational arguments about which tools are best, that bystanders call such discussions "holy wars". This is symptomatic of historically unprecedented cognitive and technological revolutions that fundamentally change how individuals and organizations interact with the world. To explain what is behind these holy wars, I weave together disparate themes, including epistemology, military affairs, the evolution and heredity of complex systems, and ideas regarding revolutions in human cognition to shed new light on the importance of knowledge in organizations.

Knowledge and the communication of knowledge are critical for self-sustaining organizations comprised of people and the tools and machines that extend peoples ’ physical and cognitive capacities. Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela proposed the concept of autopoiesis (“self ” + “production”) as a definition of life in the 1970s. Nicklas Luhmann extended this concept to establish a theory of social systems, where intangible human social systems were formed by recursive networks of communications. We show here that Luhmann fundamentally misunderstood Maturana and Varela’s autopoiesis by thinking that the self-observation necessary for self-maintenance formed a paradoxically vicious circle. Luhmann tried to resolve this apparent paradox by placing the communication networks on an imaginary plane orthogonal to the networked people. However, Karl Popper’s evolutionary epistemology and the theory of hierarchically complex systems turns what Luhmann thought was a vicious circle into a virtuous spiral of organizational learning and knowledge. There is no closed circle that needs to be explained via Luhmann’s extraordinarily paradoxical linguistic contortions.

Scientific and technical knowledge of the world grows through individual processes of speculation, making and documenting knowledge claims, the social processes of circulating and testing them, and the cyclic iteration of these processes to incrementally build on what is already known. Formal publication of claims in journals has been critical to circulating and critiquing new knowledge claims. Editorial peer review supposedly justifies the costs of the publishing activities surrounding it. Yet publishing costs, largely paid by libraries, have become unsustainable. Also, the costs discourage many from publishing and limit access of others to what is published. Today’s editorial peer review results from the exponential growth and specialization of the sciences in the second half of the 20 th Century, but offers little genuine epistemic value. It may actually thwart the advancement of innovative and revolutionary research. Following Popperian evolutionary epistemology, we consider the social and epistemological dynamics of editorial peer review. We also note that that the ever increasing sophistication of digital technologies extending our cognitive capacities provides a pathway to very substantially reduce the cost of publishing whilst at the same time increasing the transparency and value of genuine peer review.

Knowledge is not passively received but actively built up by the cognizing subject (Ernst von Glasersfeld 1995: 18) Paper type: Conceptual perspective. Background(s): Physics, biology, epistemology Perspectives: Theory of autopoietic systems, Popperian evolutionary epistemology and the biology of cognition. Context: This paper is a contribution to developing the theories of hierarchically complex living systems and the natures of knowledge in such systems. Problem: Dissonance between the literatures of knowledge management and organization theory and my observations of the living organization led to consideration of foundation questions: What does it mean to be alive? What is knowledge? How are life and knowledge related? Method: The approach is synthetic and multidisciplinary. The concept of autopoiesis (as defined by Maturana) as a definition for life, and knowledge as a product of autopoiesis are developed from first principles regarding the behavior of dynamical systems in time. Results: Autopoiesis and the construction of knowledge are inseparable aspects of physical phenomena scalable to many levels of organization (e.g., cells, multicellular organisms, organizations, social systems, etc.). The result unifies theories of epistemology, physical dynamics, life, biological evolution, knowledge and social systems. Implications: Results highlight the importance to understand autopoiesis as first defined by Maturana and Varela – as a complex physical phenomenon persisting over time. Autopoietic “self-observation ” is not paradoxical. As dynamic physical processes, any internal/external activities relating to “observations ” are displaced in time. The worlds living systems act on are not those observed. “Circularly closed ” systems are actually open spirals along the axis of time.

this paper I will use 'concept x' and 'meaning of the term "x"' mlerchai .'14y In bulk cases, I refer to mentally represented concepts and meanings. fn Carey I 't15 both linguistic and nonlinguistic methods were employed to diagnose the young 0111d'$ concepts and meanings In every case that I found a difference in meaning of r terni 'x' between the child's lexicon and the adult's, there was a corresponding drlterence i n the concept x, as revealed by patterns of inductive projection, sorting tasks, and other tasks riot requiring the use of the term. 168 the toilet or anything. His idea seems to be that worms are so behaviourally bankrupt that there is no way for the small ones to have a limited repertoire relative to the bigger ones. Therefore, you would not want to call them ' babies'. When pressed by his mother whether you could think of short worms as baby worms, he replied that you could if you wanted to, but then you might as well think of small rocks as baby rocks

To survive and flourish in a changing and unpredictable world, organizations and people must maintain strategic power over necessary resources- often in the face of competition. Knowledge contributes to that strategic power. Without vigilance to maintain its currency and accuracy, the value of knowledge depreciates as circumstances change over time. Karl Popper's evolutionary epistemology and Maturana and Varela's concept of autopoiesis provide a paradigmatic framework for considering the roles and importance of time in constructing knowledge and using it to maintain strategic power. Following Popper, knowledge is constructed, used and evaluated via cyclically-iterated processes. We introduce nine timebased frames of reference based in this Popperian autopoietic paradigm to explore the relationships between time and a utility-based valuation of knowledge as it is constructed and applied. We believe this framework and associated paradigmatically consistent vocabulary provide useful tools for analysing organizational knowledge management needs.

This paper combines ideas from disciplines ranging from physics, epistemology and philosophy of science to military affairs, to sketch a scientific framework for studying organizational learning, knowledge and memory. Threads are woven from this background into a generic analytical framework that reveals the biological nature of knowledge in learning organizations. There are many epistemological and conceptual difficulties surrounding the concept of autopoiesis, so most of the present work focuses on explaining it in generic terms, establishing an epistemological framework in which the autopoietic status of any kind of complex system can be evaluated, and then deriving generic concepts of memory, learning and knowledge within the autopoietic framework. The autopoietic status of human organizations is then tested in relation to this framework, and some of the direct implications regarding organizational learning and adaptation are highlighted.