Sapiens... Qui nesciat. Social learning and the mediatized homo sapiens 47 like to highlight the set of social learning exercised through invention3, discovery, and creation in the face of contextual chal- lenges – to which our topic calls for special attention. The inferential capacity of the human species is our main aspect of adaptability in the Darwinian sense. The human species’ original way of learning is to perceive and make ten- tative hypotheses about the world – as a natural, pre-scientific gesture. Scientific research would be a specialized development of this ba K se a . rl Popper shows that, in biological life in general, adaptability occurs as a confrontation with problems through tentative solutions – which are reinforced in proportion to their effectiveness. He argues that the problem is the starting point of the process, both in the lifeworld and in science. What gives specificity to scientific knowledge is the process of rigorously testing tentative solutions (hypotheses) – which only survive as long as they resist verifications that seek their fallibility. Even there, the error is productive: because it makes us realize the need to know better the characteristics of the problem. In the general scope of society, these competencies are, at the same time, an element of self-defense to face the dangers of existence (survival of the species) and of creative potential, invention, discovery, construction of culture. 4. Interactional inventions in the long run In the previous item, we pointed out, among the set of aspects presented in the framework of dimensions of human learning, a greater attention in this article to social learning by discoveries and inventions in those contexts which present problems and challenges. This procedural set is frequent and necessary even in the face of simple everyday activities. It features an experimental process directly related to all human pro- fessions and processes. Even when we have habitual patterns of action, it is necessary (except perhaps in cases of tedious and 3 It is common to see an individual gesture in the invention with explicit inten- tionality. On the other hand, I emphasize here the social process, characterized by the attempt to solve problems, that develops in the medium or long term and is marked by diversified experiments.
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