As I was reading Von Glaserfeld's essay on Radical constructivism, he brought up the concept of evolution and how the environment not only shaped biology and how we function by eliminating those that were not able to survive in this life, it does the same with ideas, specifically this passage here:
"Just a the environment places constraints on the living organism (biological structures) and eliminates all variants that in some way transgress the limits within which they are possible or "viable", so the experiential world, be it that of everyday life or of the laboratory, constitutes the testing ground for our ideas (cognitive structures)."
It reminded me of a concept developed in the ninety's by biologist Richard Dawkins called Meme theory. Meme theory is the concept that ideas, in their own right undergo their own form of natural selection.
"Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passed it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and his lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain."
According to Dawkins, a meme is an idea that undergoes natural selection, which evolves and adapts over time, or else it dies out because it can not survive in the natural world. This is very similar to how Glaserfeld thinks we perceive reality. He claims that all our ideas and mental constructs exist because they helped us in surviving the world and navigating through it. Anything that is not conducive to survival, dies off because it would then lead the believers of that idea to extinction.
However, where Dawkins and Glaserfeld differ is where they believe these ideas to originate. Dawkins is an empirical biologist, who believes that these memes originate and spread from interaction with external entities who are also conscious, Glaserfeld would hold that all the ideas one holds and concepts one have come from an internal source of one's own personal reality. In this issue, I am leaning more towards Dawkins.
