A few weeks ago, my wife related to me these questions from our son when he learned she was expecting:
Son (to mom): "How did the baby get there? Did you eat him?"
Similar to the story of the three blind men stating their opinions of the elephant's nature, academic theories derive from interpretations of experience--not from objective perceptions of reality.
I noted this earlier in "Is there anything new under the sun?"
learning to write involves a process of reflecting and acting on contradictions between students’ existing schemas and their present experiences.
... The concept of viability reminds us that reality cannot be directly perceived.
Although learning anything is a processing of resolving contradictions, or in Piaget's terms, a process of equilibrating between assimilation and accommodation, that learning remains an adaptation to experience rather than an insight into reality.
This is not an "anything goes" theory. Try jumping off the Empire State Building. Rather, it's acknowledging that at best we "see in a mirror dimly." What I'm wondering is how we apply this theoretical perspective practically to our other theories. When we say to "listen carefully" to our students, do we really see with more light?