Our purpose in this essay is to introduce new concepts in a wide and recursive view of the systemic consequences of the following biological facts that I and we have presented that can be resumed as: that as living systems we human beings are molecular autopoietic system; that living systems live only as long as they find themselves in a medium that provides them with all the conditions that make the realization of their living possible, that is, in the continuous (...) conservation of their relation of adaptation to the circumstances in which they find themselves; that as a living system exists only in a relation of adaptation with the medium that operates as its ecological niche, its reproduction necessarily occurs as a process of systemic duplication or multiplication of the ecological organism-niche unity that it integrates; that the worlds of doings that we generate as languaging beings in our conversations, explanations, reflections and theories are part of our ecological niche; and that we human beings as living beings that exist in languaging, are biological–cultural beings in which our cultural and our biological manners of existences can be distinguished but cannot be separated. Of the systemic consequences of these biological facts that we consider in this essay, we wish to mention two as the principal: that the diversification of manners of living produced in biological evolution is the result of differential survival in a changing medium through the conservation of adaptation, and not through competitive survival of the best; and that we in our living as languaging human beings are the epistemological fundament of all that we do and know as such. (shrink)

RESUMEN En el libro X de la Metafísica se trazan las líneas generales de una henología. La reconstrucción de la argumentación debe hacerse desde dos pilares fundamentales: (a) la guía de problemas o aporías que proporciona el libro iii y (b) el proyecto ontológico anunciado en el libro iv, donde se señala la relación entre ontología y henología. El rasgo fundamental de dicha henología sería su subordinación a la ontología. El artículo argumenta que para Aristóteles el rol de la henología (...) es ante todo destructivo, pues con dicha doctrina se pretende establecer -ante todo- la imposibilidad de considerar al "uno" (τὸ ἓν) como principio de los entes. ABSTRACT In the Metaphysics, especially in Book X, are drawn the general lines of a henology. For the proper understanding of this doctrine it is necessary to reconstruct its argumentation from two fundamental basis: (a) the guide of puzzles or aporias that book iii provides and (b) the ontological project announced in book IV where the relationship between ontology and henology is indicated. Once the explanations of Book X are framed a theory about unity (τὸ ἓν) can be systematically assembled, whose fundamental feature would be the following: henology as a science is a subordinate part of ontology. The role of henology is for Aristotle primarily destructive, that is, with this doctrine it is intended to establish the impossibility of considering the 'one' (τὸ ἓν) as a principle of the entities. (shrink)

editorial changes not yet reviewed by author Purpose My intent in this essay is to reflect on the history of some biological notions such as autopoiesis, structural coupling, and cognition, that I have developed since the early 1960’s as a result of my work on visual perception and the organization of the living. No doubt I shall repeat things that I have said in other publications (Maturana and Varela 1980 and 1988), and I shall present notions that once they (...) are said appear as obvious truisms. But the reader it is not invited to attend to the truisms, rather he or she is invited to attend to the consequences that they entail for the understanding of biological processes. After all, explanations or demonstrations always become self evident once they are understood and accepted. KEYWORDS Autopoiesis, structural coupling, cognition, explanations, self consciousness, 1. Autopoiesis 1.1 Origins of the notion In November 1960, a first year medical student asked me the question “What began three thousand eight hundred million years ago so that you can say now that living systems began then?” I realized that I could not properly answer that question, so I said “I cannot answer this question now, but if you come back next year I shall propose an answer then.” Thus I accepted the question of the student to be answered later, and as I did so, I accepted also the question for myself. I realized that to answer this question I had to create a living system, either conceptually or practically, because I had to be able to say what kind of systems were living system to be able to say how they began. While in the attempting to answer the dual questions of what kind of systems are living systems, and of how did they begin so that I could now speak of their origin, it became obvious to me that living systems exist as autonomous entities in the form of self contained closed molecular dynamics of self production, open to the flow of molecules through them. Indeed, one can say that living systems arose in the history of the earth in the moment in which some spontaneous networks of molecular autocatalytic processes became closed upon themselves.. (shrink)

Para la ejecución de este trabajo se entrevistaron a 122 adultos mayores de 60 años de la ciudad de Arica (52,5% hombres y 47,5% mujeres). A éstos se les administró un cuestionario de Satisfacción Vital SWLS (Diener, Emmons, Larsen y Griffin, 1985) junto con un cuestionario demográfico, para determinar cuáles de estas variables de contexto por si solas o en su conjunto, explican la Satisfacción Vital. El objetivo principal de este estudio es evidenciar cómo los indicadores de la Satisfacción Vital, (...) se ven influidas por la situación de pareja comparando las puntuaciones medias del cuestionario. (shrink)

El presente estudio busca determinar posibles diferencias por sexo en la aparición de variables asociadas al síndrome de Burnout medidos a través del clima y la satisfacción organizacional en una muestra de 233 trabajadores de la ciudad de Arica, pertenecientes a cinco diferentes actividades económicas (educación, salud, comercio de tangibles e intangibles, y administración pública).

La Educación Parvularia en Chile y principalmente su gestión pedagógica, se sitúa en un nuevo escenario que exige de los educadores competencias más humanas que de funcionalidad técnica para adaptarse a las impresiones, la emergencia, la incertidumbre y la complejidad de los procesos epistemológicos infantiles; comprender cómo aprenden los niños, cómo acceden al conocimiento y qué estrategias utilizan para hacerlo, es fundamental para contribuir a un sistema educativo de calidad. Si bien en Chile se han intentado algunas reformas e innovaciones (...) curriculares para la Educación Parvularia con el firme propósito de mejorar la calidad del sistema educativo, aún no está claro, qué es aquello que entorpece el logro de los aprendizajes y pone en peligro la calidad del sistema. En este contexto, resulta interesante centrar la mirada en los juegos infantiles, describir el tipo de interacciones sociales y con el entorno que se producen en estas dimensiones lúdicas e intentar descubrir los indicios epistemológicos que en ellas surjan; descubrir en los espacios de informalidad en que se desarrollan los juegos infantiles algunas aproximaciones que nos contextualicen epistemológicamente, nos permitirá comprender que las prácticas adultistas utilizadas en los espacios educativos formales no impactan significativamente los procesos de aprendizaje de los niños. (shrink)

Investigar a los buenos profesores es complejo porque se corre el riesgo de generalizar trivializando sus características, por lo mismo, es fundamental no caer en la tentación de pensar que son ideales, puesto que son seres humanos que viven su existencia al igual que cada uno de nosotros, sólo que con compromiso y amor por lo que hacen. Gracias a las historias de vida pudimos entender el proceso de la profesionalización docente, develar sus principales complejidades y señalar tendencias válidas para (...) cualquier profesor que pueden ajustarse con flexibilidad a esos patrones. La construcción analítica nos aportó luces para entender y explicar qué es lo que hace a un profesor un Buen Profesor. Esto es, la valoración del sentido común, la improvisación, la conciencia del cambio, la reflexión y la acción pedagógica. Sus características pueden ser intencionalmente promovidas en las distintas etapas de formación profesional porque tienen la cualidad de generar entusiasmo, contagio con un compromiso pedagógico, social y político por el trabajo bien hecho. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Why Maturana?Hans Ulrich GumbrechtWhy would a German scholar specializing in pedagogical thought travel thousands of miles to Santiago de Chile for an interview with a aging scientist who, it seems, has created for himself a solid reputation in the field of "biology of vision" without being hailed by his peers as a path-breaking innovator? In the German intellectual context, the answer to this question could be as laconic (...) as it would be superfluous: it consists in a deictic reference to the name and, implicitly, to the work of Niklas Luhmann. American readers, in contrast, may need some introductory explanation in order to understand the epistemological triangle between contemporary pedagogical thought, Maturana's biology, and Luhmann's philosophy—and, above all, in order to assess and even to appreciate its intellectual potential.Niklas Luhmann is certainly difficult to read, at least for starters, and to those who met him during his lifetime he invariably appeared to be a dead-serious person. But today, more than five years after Luhmann's death, we begin to discover traces of a sometimes uncanny irony—one may want to call it a "practical irony"—in his writing. One of the discursive gestures that characterized Luhmann's texts were references to academic authors who nobody had ever heard of (let alone read), presented with the same seriousness and with the same attitude of intellectual reverence that we normally reserve for the classics: for example, to the logician Gotthart Guenter, the philosopher Fritz Heider, the biologist Humberto Maturana, or the mathematician George Spencer Brown. There is no doubt that, in each case, a specific concept or a specific thought developed by one of these authors had turned out to be truly important within Luhmann's own work, and yet the "effects of authority" that his very serious quotes produced were nothing short of hilarious. For Luhmann's readers, with that self-flagellating attitude in which we academics so like to indulge, quite regularly attributed the experience that they had never heard of those seeming "authorities" to their own lack of intellectual cosmopolitanism. This is why, until the present day, some departments of sociology or philosophy in Germany have Spencer Brown or Guenter specialists on their payrolls, and this also explains why some of those authors have had moments of intense reception [End Page 22] in the world of the humanities and social sciences at German universities. Among them, Humberto Maturana, together with his co-author the late Francisco Varela, seem to be the exception confirming the rule that none of those Luhmann references had the intellectual power to survive Luhmann himself.Now why should one trust Luhmann's trust in Maturana? The debate about the importance of Luhmann's thought (he labeled it a "theory of social systems") in the larger context of contemporary Western philosophy has barely begun to become serious, and we are certainly many years away from a definitive consensual evaluation. But there are two—very different—features about Luhmann's work that make him fascinating at first glance. One lies in the simple fact that, probably, no other thinker since Hegel has managed to develop a restrained set of basic concepts and premises into a systematically coherent philosophical edifice of similar proportions. In this sense, entering the dimension of Luhmann's thought offers the patient reader a possibility to view many familiar positions and questions from sometimes radically different innovative angles. Less obvious, however, and more intriguing is Luhmann's intellectual bet to develop his systemic thought under strict avoidance of notions such as "subject," "subjecthood," or "agency." It was this very bet (about whose existential and political motivations he only left some rather vague remarks) that explains Luhmann's fascination for much theoretical thinking emerging from biological research, above all for Humberto Maturana's work. For from a biological perspective, subjecthood and agency are highly marginal attributes in the realm of living organisms. I believe that this (almost hidden) component in Luhmann's thinking can explain the particularly strong affinity of contemporary pedagogical thought in Germany with his work. Of course, such an affinity will not necessarily lead to a pedagogical theory that, in orthodox reliance on Luhmann, will... (shrink)

Context: Maturana’s views on cognitive processes and explaining have ethical implications. The aim of this paper is to link ethics and epistemology to facilitate thinking about how to promote respect between different viewpoints through mutual understanding. Method: Maturana’s views on ethics are outlined in three domains: the personal, the interpersonal, and the societal. Results: The ethical implications that emerge around the notion of reality with or without parenthesis, the concept of the legitimate other, and Maturana’s conjectures about (...) the origins of human social groups. Social groups in which cooperation is more important than competition are based on love in the sense that others are accepted as legitimate members of the community. An epistemology that responds to the biological origins of human cognition is one that is more open to cooperation, honesty, responsibility, and respect than an epistemology that takes reality as given and the task of human cognition to represent truth. Implications: This framework for thinking about cognitive processes provides a way of approaching disagreements so they become opportunities for discussion rather than for power assertion of one reality over another. In a world where strongly held viewpoints on ethics and reality lead to conflict, promoting viable models of cognitive process that link cognition and ethics may lead to insights that promote tolerance. Ideas from attribution theory in social psychology are presented as a means of facilitating the emergence of the concept of the legitimate other in discussion about disagreements. (shrink)

Context: Humberto Maturana has generated a coherent and extensive explicatory matrix that encompasses his research in neurophysiology, cognition, language, emotion, and love. Purpose: Can we formulate a map of Maturana’s work in a manner that is consistent with the systemic matrix it represents and that serves as an aid for understanding Maturana’s philosophy without reifying its representation? Method: Our arguments are based on experience gained from teaching and presentations. Results: We present a map that that represents (...) class='Hi'>Maturana’s main contributions as clusters of notions clustered according to how we see them to be related to each other as a projection of a matrix of ideas onto a two-dimensional space. We claim that there are many paths through these clusters of ideas. Though ideas relevant to individuals are obtained from various partial perspectives, a deep understanding of any element is dependent on an understanding of the whole matrix. Furthermore, we summarize the contributions to this special issue on Maturana. (shrink)

This paper is based on notes taken during a three day lecture given by Humberto Maturana in St Kilda, Victoria, August 7th - 9th, 1993. It was obvious from the participants that many non biologists have found Maturana's work to be influential in their thinking. The audience included immunologists, family therapists, academics, architects, agriculturalists and information technologists.

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Purpose: This paper demonstrates the conceptual relevance of Maturana’s biology of cognition for the theoretical foundations of the language sciences. Approach: Stuck in rationalizing, rather than naturalizing, language, modern orthodox linguistics is incapable of offering a comprehensible account of language as a species-specific, biologically grounded human feature. This predicament can be overcome by using Maturana’s theory to stress that lived experience gives language an epistemological “lining.” Findings: The key concepts of Maturana’s biology of cognition provide a more (...) coherent theoretical framework for the study of language that can give new life to the language sciences by stressing languaging and the importance of connotation. Conclusion: Maturana’s concept of “languaging” allows the language sciences to depart from the view of language as a system of symbols. Instead, focus should be placed on how the relational dynamics of linguistic interactions trigger changes in the dynamics of the nervous system and the organism as a whole, and how their reciprocal causality is distinguished and described by the languaging observer in terms of mind, intelligence, reason, and self-consciousness. (shrink)

Context: Maturana’s work is not easy to follow. Correct and full understanding of his work has still to be achieved in spite of its importance. Problem: The objective of this paper is to investigate the core logic penetrating Maturana’s wide-ranging work and to place his work in the history of western thought. Method: Through intensive reading of his wide-ranging work, I intended to grasp the core biological structure that he advocates, namely, his core logic. Results: Maturana’s biology (...) is the biology of structural determinism. It is embodied in a composite entity called a “structure-determined system” with two non-intersecting domains - the domain of interactions and the domain of the composition of components – which can be called the core structure or the core logic of his biology. From the perspective of the history of western thought, Aristotle and Schopenhauer can be regarded as good candidates as the precursors of Maturana’s work, and his work can be characterized as an advanced form of Aristotle’s hylomorphism, depicted on the horizon of Schopenhauer’s world of “Vorstellung” (bringing-forth). Implications: This finding will be useful for understanding Maturana’s wide-ranging work and its place in the history of western thought. (shrink)

Context: Maturana’s lifework is extensive, and consists of a coherent network of interlinked ideas the consequences of which have not been fully explored. Problem: What does it take to understand Maturana’s work? Is “learning” Maturana as arduous as learning a completely different language, or is there sufficient value in learning selected elements of his network of ideas? Method: We discuss these fundamental questions and relate them to aspects of understanding, word meaning and the scientific method. Results: While (...) getting only partially familiar with Maturana can have its merits in certain contexts, there is a clear danger of trying to understand Maturana on the basis of words such as autopoiesis, consciousness, cognition, and science. Implications: We identify three directions in which Maturana’s ideas can be further explored: preparing social media videos, finding ever new domains of application, and their historical-conceptual relativization. (shrink)

Kravchenko suggests replacing Turing’s suggestion for explaining cognizers’ cognitive capacity through autonomous robotic modelling by ‘autopoiesis’, Maturana’s extremely vague metaphor for the relations and interactions among organisms, environments, and various subordinate and superordinate systems therein. I suggest that this would be an exercise in hermeneutics rather than causal explanation.

Our passion for this work arose in very different histories of living, but these histories converged some years ago around the writings of Humberto Maturana1. There were other reasons for us getting together, but it was the ideas of Maturana which inspired us both to take another look at the way we were doing things in our research and education, respectively. One of us (Lloyd) was grappling with basic biological questions which arose from research on the physiology of stress. (...) Maturana's ideas provided a new way of thinking about the relationship between living things and their environment. David, in psychology and education, sought from Maturana a more solid scientific grounding for the extraordinary richness of the experiential learning environment in which he worked. (shrink)

Este texto é a síntese de alguns anos de estudos e de pesquisas onde as proposições da Biologia-cultural, da Biologia do Amor e da Biologia do Conhecimento, do pensador chileno Humberto Maturana Romesín (1928-2021) serão tomadas como a principal referência epistemológica. Nosso objetivo principal é fazer uma reflexão sobre o entendimento do processo de aprendizagem como um devir Biológico-cultural e que se realiza num contexto ecológico de aprendizagem. A ênfase de nossa reflexão neste momento será no sentido de contribuir (...) para a construção de um processo de _aprendizagem humana_, que tenha como ponto de partida alguns fundamentos, tais como: a cooperação, o respeito mútuo, a colaboração, a aceitação mútua, reconhecimento da legitimidade e dignidade do outro(a), o deixar aparecer, enfim, uma educação na qual a aprendizagem tenha como orientação o amar. (MATURANA, DÁVILA, 1997, 2009, 2005, 2016, 2019, 2021). Neste texto refletiremos a proposição de Maturana do amor como o princípio epistemológico para a construção de uma aprendizagem que privilegie a cooperação entre os seres humanos e não a competição. Nosso argumento principal provém da proposição de que a competição pressupõe, via de regra, a negação, o aniquilamento, a anulação do outro. Nossa proposta está ancorada na proposição apresentada por Maturana de que nos construímos humanos não pela competição, mas, sim, pela cooperação. Para concluir, e como forma de viabilizar essa aprendizagem, apresentamos o que denominamos dos três momentos da aprendizagem, a saber: o conhecer, o entender e o compreender, onde_ Conhecer_ é conseguir descrever o fenômeno (problema/conflito) que se apresenta no contexto do cotidiano vivido; (2) _Entender __-_ é perceber, as relações sistêmicas/ecológicas relacionais no contexto local onde os fenômenos acontecem e (3) _Compreender -_ é perceber a trama sistêmica relacional onde o fenômeno ocorre para dar-se conta das suas possíveis consequências. Compreender é dar-se conta de onde, como e quando deveremos atuar no sentido de evitar e/ou resolver um determinado problema que surja no local e com a particularidade com a qual acontece. (shrink)

Este artículo muestra que la Biología del conocimiento de Humberto Maturana pretendió ser una Fenomenología del conocer pero devino gnoseología escéptica. El problema se originó cuando el autor no partió desde la descripción de las experiencias que justificarían la nueva "conciencia epistemológica" que buscaba, es decir, la conciencia de que la realidad debiera ponerse entre paréntesis. En vez de eso, prefirió adherir arbitrariamente a axiomas escépticos, porque su propósito principal era la refutación de la teoría de la objetividad.

Context: Introduced in 1970, bioethics is now more and more commonly used since it applies to a variety of concepts belonging to traditional Western thought. Just like other dualisms that are typical of traditional Western thought (e.g., mind/body, subject/object, philosophy/science), bioethics is developing in areas that are mostly isolated from each other, with each argument restricted to its specific space, without affecting the general concept of bioethics. It is also characterized by the dualism ought/being. Purpose: I maintain that the definition (...) of a relevant moral criterion should include the whole scope of thinking and the whole adopted perspective. Consequently, the current conception of bioethics should be changed. Such an alternative view objects to the fragmentation of knowledge. In this way, specifically in bioethics, our way of living and life itself acquire an ethical dimension. Maturana’s theory is expected to be a useful instrument for dealing with the difficulties that the concept of “bioethics” brings. Method: First, traditional bioethics and its way of dealing with some of its typical problems are discussed. Then, Maturana’s epistemology, including his emphasis on the observer, his biology of cognition located in “languaging,” and his ethics of love are described. Its features, such as trust and respect, will be highlighted, taking into account his modality of speaking as a biologist, exposed to the risk of “naturalistic fallacy” but dispelling it thanks to – I argue – the radical difference between Maturana’s theory and the traditional Western epistemology. Results: Maturana’s definition of ethics leads to the conclusion that the whole of living is ethics, the whole of life is ethics, and there is no separation existing between the “ought” and the “being.” Bioethics, and also ethics, dissolve themselves in the circularity of the living, which operates in the living-acting of each human being in the systemic texture they belong to and which they contribute to creating in an open-ended process of “languaging.”. (shrink)

No presente artigo pretendo apresentar a Autopoiesis, uma teoria formulada pelo biólogo chileno Humberto Maturana e pelo médico chileno Francisco Varela. Além de mostrar as similaridades entre o processo orgânico e o processo epistemológico, presentes nesta teoria, busco ressaltar a importância da Autopoiesis não somente no campo científico, como teoria epistemológica, mas também no campo ético e cultural, como uma teoria que ressalta desde a dinâmica interna do ser vivo, enquanto unidade, até a importância de sua interação com o (...) mundo em que vive. Assim, descrevo a formação do processo cognitivo através dos fundamentos autopoiéticos e de conceitos centrais, tais como: fronteira membranosa, metabolismo dinâmico, sistema operacionalmente fechado, acoplamento estrutural e deriva natural. A Autopoiesis demonstra que a experiência cognitiva do observador é intrínseca a sua estrutura biológica, ressaltando, assim, o papel do observador e questionando a validade de suas certezas sobre o que se propôs observar. A proposta deste trabalho será, portanto, trazer a discussão sobre a forma como conhecemos e sobre o processo de aprendizagem do homem e a influência de sua estrutura biológica e toda complexidade de fatores que estão envolvidos na extensa rede da vida que serão considerados aqui, fatores que são, antes de tudo, biológico-culturais. (shrink)

Problem: Starting with his personal experience the author pursues the question: How can we alter our way of living, sensoriality and reflective skills so that we can handle today’s information flows, which nowadays are so large that they create confusion and ineffective educational actions? Method: The approach to follow is called “parenthesism,” a practice based on Maturana’s theoretical frameworks of the “biology of cognition” and the “biology of love.” Results: One of the findings when a person lives in parenthesism (...) is the ability to see their own dogmatism and stubbornness when that person would otherwise be blind to his/her own convictions. Implications: Many aspects of this essay, and this manner of thinking, are circular and tautological, and hence may appear illogical to the reader. However, the author claims that existence is not solely logical, and that in a complex matrix circular and recursive relationships are common, and that these can best be understood through circular and recursive logics. Furthermore the relevance of parenthesism for UNESCO’s view on learning paradigms is reviewed in this light. (shrink)

This article delineates the notion of conjectural artworks—that is, ways of thinking and explaining formal and relational phenomena by visual means—and presents an appraisal and review of the use of such visual ways in the work of Chilean biologists and philosophers Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. Particularly, the article focuses on their recurrent uses of Cellular Automaton, that is, discrete, locally interacting, rule-based mathematical models, as conjectural artworks for understanding the concepts of autopoiesis, structural coupling, cognition and enaction: (i.e. (...) Protobio and Bittorio). Additionally, the article proposes a new model of conjectural artwork based on an extension of cellular automaton: random Boolean networks namely, binary systems with variable local connections. Such model, as it is argued, is useful to connect the theoretical frameworks by Maturana and Varela, especially structural coupling and enaction, with other relevant fields such as biosemiotics’ Umwelt-research and cognitive landscapes in neurodynamics, and to advance and explore the concepts of structurally coupled categorization and generalization. (shrink)

Context: Maturana’s published corpus is vast, and his publications span multiple venues, formats, and languages. For these and other reasons, the corpus is as complex as it is daunting in its scale. Problem: Over the last two decades, bibliographic data on Maturana’s publications had proliferated in terms of available resources, scope of coverage, and accessibility. However, as of 2011 the degree of accessibility was not matched by the inclusiveness, detail, and accuracy of the relatively few dedicated bibliographies upon (...) which most such resources relied. It had become time to update, consolidate, and better validate the core bibliographic data. Method: The five most comprehensive electronic bibliographies were merged and collated. The merged listing was then validated using the available evidence and a three-tiered set of evaluation criteria. Finally, the resultant merged and validated listing was augmented with previously unrecorded entries and data, subject to the same evidentiary constraints and evaluation criteria pertaining to the validation phase. Results: None of the five bibliographies in the starting set was comprehensive. All five contained ambiguities, missing details, discrepancies, and outright errors. The updated and consolidated listing presented here is the largest, most comprehensive, and most accurate compiled to date. Implications: The resultant bibliography offers a more complete and more reliable reference resource to both veteran Maturana scholars and newcomers to his work than previously existing bibliographies. (shrink)

"Languaging", as Maturana occasionally explains, serves, among other things, to orient. By this he means directing the attention and, consequently, the individual experience of others, which is a way to foster the development of "consensual domains" which, in turn, are the prerequisite for the development of language. - Although the sentence (you might say, the languaging) with which I have here begun is at best a pale imitation of Maturana's style, it does perhaps represent one important aspect of (...) Maturana's system: The circularity which, in one way or another, crops up again and again. (shrink)

Purpose: Ernst von Glasersfeld has dedicated a lot of effort to trying to define just where his views and those of his friend Humberto Maturana part company, epistemologically speaking (Glasersfeld 1991, 2001). As a contribution to unravelling this puzzle I propose in this article to delineate just where they seem to differ most and why these differences arise. Approach: Part of my contribution is to propose drawing a distinction between von Glasersfeld's Radical Constructivism as the last viable outpost of (...) constructivism before entering into the domain of solipsism, in contrast to Maturana's position which is saved from being located within the solipsistic domain by virtue of his ideas on "structure determined systems" and his theory of how language arises in human experience. Findings: Von Glasersfeld's puzzle arises due to what Kant called "transcendental illusion," that is, the error of trying to encompass two mutually untranslatable phenomenal domains within the same language framework. Conclusion: After an examination of some of the crucial differences between von Glasersfeld and Maturana I typify Maturana's positioning as that of "radical realism" in contrast to von Glasersfeld's "radical constructivism.". (shrink)

This chapter introduces the central concerns of Humberto Maturana's theory of autopoiesis as they relate to the domain of psychotherapy. Several common terms which are redefined within his theory in an unusual manner are unpacked as to their idiosyncratic significance including the expressions, 'linguistic behaviour', 'languaging', 'structure determinism', 'organisation', 'structure' and others. The source material used for this exposition include not only the cited texts but also several workshops from which verbatim transcripts are often used in the form of (...) brief quotations. I have attempted to stay as close to the original material as possible in order to convey both the meaning and the texture of Maturana's work. This is not an easy theory to grasp ranging as it does across several specialist fields from the neurophysiology of perception through social communication to epistemology. Nor are the implicative transitions from a theory of biology to the praxis of psychotherapy without complexity and controversy. Nonetheless, Maturana offers a novel theory of conversations which could form the basis of a much needed new paradigm for personal change. (shrink)

Going back to Hum ber to Ma tu ra na´s ini - tial works about the ba sic con di tions for the ori - gin of Life through the con junc tion of `clo su re´, `au to nomy´ and `struc tu re´ of a pri mary cell as an au to poie tic system, an over view is made about two cen tral areas to wards which t..

Relationalität und Selbstdiskursivierung in den lebens -- und Sozialwissenschaften -- Selbstreflexion und Relationalität in der literatur.

Central to vaccination-induced responses, antibodies are suggested by Vaz to operate as observer-dependent entities that owe their status to categorization schemes of immunologists. Inspired by color research by Maturana, he argues that antibodies should be distinguished from immunoglobulins, which unlike the former can be considered as constituents of structural dynamics of an organism, products of millions of years of evolution. However, a deeper understanding of the historical roots of the concept of immunoglobulin and associated “languaging” and naming processes reveals (...) that immunoglobulins, as much as antibodies, are contingent on conceptual schemes of immunology. (shrink)

Se investiga el valor fundamental del constructivismo para el proceso educativo y se establecen conclusiones valiosas al respecto. Se analizan ideas claves de J. Dewey, L. Vigotsky y H. Maturana sobre educación, para concluir con una consideración positiva del constructivismo como proyecto pedagógico consciente y realista respecto al valor del ser humano, y de las necesidades y desafíos que las personas tienen en la actual realidad social. The article explores the fundamental values of constructivism for the educational process and (...) draws conclusions in that respect. It analyzes the key ideas of J. Dewey, L. Vigotsky, and H. Maturana regarding education and closes with a positive evaluation of constructivism as a conscious and realistic pedagogical project with respect to the value of human beings and the needs and challenges people face in contemporary social reality. (shrink)

This essay reviews the model of power from Maturana, Canetti, Foucault, and Zizek, in order to think the relationship between the State, freedom and decent society.