Este texto fue presentado originalmente en un debate con el Profesor Humberto Maturana , el día 27 de Mayo de 1994, en la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad de Chile, organizado por algunos estudiantes de la Carrera de Psicología de esa Facultad.

That this is so can be a compelling awareness, for in recognising this, we have the possibility of a different world, a world based in love, mutual respect and care, where the experience of the other is one of acceptance simply because he or she is a human being. That is a world based in humanness, and that is a world I, personally, prefer

Our Passion, Our Knowledge, Making Distinctions, Two Types of Explanation, Trying to Define Life, A Systems Approach, A Living System and its, A Living System and its Surrounding Medium, A Structural Coupling, Being in Language, Observing Biological Phenomena, Implications for Human Behaviour. Our Culture

Esta manera de concebir lo humano de Humberto Maturana puede tener consecuencias en un cambio en el experimentar de lo humano que puede conducir a que se le dé mayor importancia a la afectividad y a las emociones y menos énfasis a la eficiencia, los logros y la tecnología que son tan apreciados por la modernidad.

Questo sito si occupa di tutto ciò che è Autopoiesis. Ospita dunque articoli, contributi, segnalazioni, relativi agli studi di Humberto Maturana e Francisco Varela. E' creato e mantenuto dal Centro Studi Autopoiesi e Psicoterapia: ha dunque una attenzione specifica per i legami fra la psicoterapia e l'Autopoiesi. Qualunque contribuzione da questo punto di vista è dunque ben accolta. Un altro degli obiettivi del sito è verificare la possibilità di utilizzare anche la comunicazione telematica, tramite Internet, come via di comunicazione psicoterapeutica, con particolare attenzione all'utilizzo del linguaggio multimediale in questo campo.

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.

L’epistemologia di Gregory Bateson I cinque significati della parola «epistemologia» L’ontologia di Humberto R. Maturana Il determinismo strutturale: perché Maturana rifiuta il concetto di causalità Conseguenze del determinismo strutturale Da Bateson a Maturana Biologia e scienze sociali Biologia della cognizione ed epistemologia cibernetica BIBLIOGRAFIA

Conferencia de apertura de las JORNADAS DEL AMOR EN LA TERAPIA. Dr. HUMBERTO MATURANA ROMESIN Barcelona, 17 de Noviembre de 2000.

Los seres humanos somos seres sociales: vivimos nuestro ser cotidiano en continua imbricación con el ser de otros. Esto, en general, lo admitimos sin reservas. Al mismo tiempo los seres humanos somos individuos: vivimos nuestro ser cotidiano como un continuo devenir de experiencias individuales intransferibles. Esto lo admitimos como algo ineludible. Ser social y ser individual parecen condiciones contradictorias de existencia. De hecho, una buena parte de la historia política, económica y cultural de la humanidad, particularmente durante los últimos doscientos años, en Occidente, tiene que ver con este dilema. Así, distintas teorías políticas y económicas, fundadas en distintas ideologías de lo humano, enfatizan un aspecto u otro de esta dualidad, ya sea reclamando una subordinación de los intereses individuales a los intereses sociales, o al revés, enajenando al ser humano de la unidad de su experiencia cotidiana. Más aún, cada una de las ideologías en que se fundan estas teorías políticas y económicas, constituyen una visión de los fenómenos sociales e individuales que pretende afirmarse en una descripción verdadera de la naturaleza biológica, psicológica o espiritual, de lo humano. Pero, ¿están estas ideologías fundadas en una comprensión adecuada de lo humano?, ¿existe en verdad una contradicción esencial entre lo social y lo individual, o es esta contradicción una ilusión descriptiva? La diversidad etnológica de la humanidad nos muestra muchas instancias en las que hay, o se han dado, sistemas sociales cuyos miembros viven la armonía de los intereses aparentemente contradictorios de la sociedad y los individuos que la componen. ¿Qué teoría lo explicaría?

La noción del Tao constituye una invitación a un vivir en el bien-estar psíquico y corporal, a un vivir sin esfuerzo en la unidad de toda la existencia en el hacer que surge del ver el presente cuando no hay prejuicio o expectativa. Como tal, la noción del Tao ha llevado a muchas personas a la reflexión y a la acción que busca encontrar o revelar la naturaleza de ese vivir en los ámbitos de la filosofía, la mística, y la religión. ¿Con qué nos conecta ese vivir?, ¿con lo divino o lo biológico? Pensamos que el vivir al que la noción del Tao nos invita es el vivir fundamental del vivir del ser vivo en su naturaleza biológica que se da en el existir en un presente cambiante continuo. En nosotros, los seres humanos, ese vivir ocurre como un vivir en el lenguajear sin enajenarse en el explicar, vivir que surge cuando se vive en la ampliación del ver en el desapego que es la biología del amar. Por esto el camino del Tao es el camino del amar, y el camino del amar es la biología del Tao.

BIOLOGY OF COGNITION. Humberto R. Maturana. Biological Computer Laboratory Research Report BCL 9.0. Urbana IL: University of Illinois, 1970. As Reprinted in: Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Dordecht: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1980, pp. 5-58.

BIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE: The Epistemology of Reality Humberto R. Maturana. Chapter 2 in: Miller, George A., and Elizabeth Lenneberg (Eds.) Psychology and Biology of Language and Thought: Essays in Honor of Eric Lenneberg New York: Academic Press, 1978, pp. 27-63.

We human beings are love dependent animals. This is apparent in that we become ill when we are deprived of love at whatever age. No doubt we live a culture in which we are frequently in war and kill each other on different rational grounds that justify our mutual total denial as human beings. But doing that does not bring to us happiness, or spiritual comfort and harmony. Love and aggression - are they polar features of our biology or, of our cultural human existence? Are we genetically aggressive animals that love occassionally, or are we loving animals that cultivate aggression culturally? Our purpose in this article is to maintain that we are loving animals that cultivate aggression in a cultural alienation that may eventually change our biology. To this end we shall speak about the following themes in short but basic statements: A) the systemic constitution and conservation of human identity; B) the origin and development of the self in the mother/child relations; C) the evolutionary origin of humanness in the conservation of neoteny and the expansion of the female sexuality; D) the biology of love.

The diverse papers which make up this book are variations on a theme which is based in biological science - yet none of the contributors is really a biologist. Our metaphor for describing what we are doing here is that we have gathered together in a room because that particular room provides us with a certain view of our individual areas of interest - a view that may have been previously obscured. We are visiting the house of biology in the hope that we may see more clearly things that we each find baffling about our particular field of work in education, research, or daily living. It is the biology of Humberto Maturana [1] - and the contributions of other scientists, philosophers, educators, therapists that we may choose to associate with Maturana's work - which provides a common thread throughout the papers published here. We invite you to browse for a while in biology's room with a view and perhaps to look upon some long-familiar territory with a new perspective. There is one note of caution: in certain situations, the window may become a mirror

This paper is based on a presentation made by Humberto Maturana at the Society for Organizational Learning Member's Meeting, Amherst MA in June, 1998. It is not a transcript, rather it is a re-creation by Pille Bunnell, reorganized with changes, deletions, and additions intended to make it more coherent as a written document. The first person voice of Dr. Maturana is retained, but any mis-representation of what he intended is the responsibility of Dr. Bunnell.

We propose that to understand the biological and neurophysiological processes that give rise to human mental phenomena it is necessary to consider them as behavioral relational phenomena. In particular, we propose that: a) these phenomena take place in the relational manner of living that human language constitutes, and b) that they arise as recursive operations in such behavioral domain. Accordingly, we maintain that these phenomena do not take place in the brain, nor are they the result of a unique operation of a human brain, but arise with the participation of the brain as it generates the behavioral relational dynamics that constitutes language.

This page is devoted to studying and communicating developments in theory, research and practice of the Biological Theory of Cognition of Dr. Humberto Maturana.

That we cognite seems to us self-evident. In the very process of doing what I am doing, cognition appears to me as my immediate experience. I perform an act of knowledge when I act in a manner that I describe as a manipulation or handling of the world in which I exist. The cogito ergo sum of Descartes grasps this and gives to the experience of knowledge a central role: the cogito, the act of cognition, is for Descartes the starting point. Or, in other words, cognition is a human property and no question arises about cognition as a phenomenon. This I wish to change. I wish to present the way in which I make cognition a problem, and how I answer the question, "What phenomenon is the phenomenon of cognition?".

Durante cerca de un año, los autores de este artículo –diseñadores y profesores del curso Diseño y Gestión de Sí Mismo– han venido reflexionando sobre la educación desde una perspectiva crítica a los enfoques tradicionales, que focalizan el proceso educativo en la dimensión cognitiva. En esta conversación editada los autores proponen una mirada sistémica de la educación, en la cual esta es vista como un proceso de transformación en la convivencia entre padres e hijos en el hogar y entre profesores y alumnos en la escuela. El foco de este proceso debe ser, según los autores, la transformación gradual de los niños y jovenes en adultos autónomos, democráticos, conscientes de sí mismos y de su entorno, colaboradores, respetuosos, responsables, imaginativos, abiertos al cambio y comprometidos con la preservación y ampliación de los espacios de convivencia. Se argumenta que ello requiere dignificar y refundar la función educacional instalando en el país un proceso de formación y reformación de profesores centrado en el incremento de las capacidades necesarias para ser facilitadores de la dinámica de transformación integral de los niños y jóvenes: capacidad de vivir en la aceptación, capacidad de escuchar, confianza en sí mismos, dominio de los conocimientos y prácticas de las disciplinas en que se desenvuelven y comprensión de los fenómenos pedagógicos, entre otras. Se argumenta que la educación así entendida genera también, en contra de lo que normalmente se piensa, las capacidades requeridas por la empresa y las organizaciones modernas en el marco de la globalización y el vértigo del cambio: trabajo en equipo, capacidad y espíritu para emprender e innovar, búsqueda de la calidad y la productividad, entre otras.

"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

En el presente trabajo se intenta describir los presupuestos del paradigma sistémico-cibernético, fundamento de la terapia sistémica, desde la segunda mitad del siglo XX hasta nuestros días. Teniendo en cuenta la dificultad de un análisis exhaustivo de las múltiples variables que configuran este paradigma se han tomado los conceptos más representativos de la Teoría General de los Sistemas, la Teoría de la Comunicación, la Cibernética, y los aportes de Gregory Bateson, Heinz von Foerster y Humberto Maturana, renombrados científicos cuyas ideas constituyen los cimientos del pensamiento sistémico.

This article is written from the view of Humberto R. Maturana and was developed under the title of Biology of Cognition. The biology of cognition arises in the process of accepting that cognition is a biological phenomenon, and that it has to be explained as such. To do so entails asking the question, how do we do what we do as observers while we operate as living systems? Accepting such a question entails accepting all questions about how do we do what we do as living systems and as human beings. But it also entails that any explanatory answer that we may propose must be embedded in the understanding that living systems are structure determined systems, and that all that happens in them, to them, or with them, must happen in their continuous realization as structure determined systems

Humberto Maturana revolucionó el mundo de la ciencia con su teoría biológica del conocimiento, que afirma, entre muchas cosas, que no se puede hacer referencia a una realidad independiente del hombre. Su laboratorio en la Facultad de Ciencias de la Universidad de Chile queda a trasmano. Y para entrar en él hay que tocar una campana. El mismo abre la puerta. Y es un mundo distinto el que hay tras la puerta de madera. Un pizarrón rayado con signos ininteligibles, muchos libros, armarios antiguos. Humberto Maturana conversa con un colega. Parece otro idioma. Imposible entender de qué hablan con tanto entusiasmo. Es canoso, ruliento, de andar armonioso y cuerpo menudo. Su mirada es algo inquieta. Viva. Comienza una frase, se silencia un momento, y de pronto le comienzan a brillar los ojos y cuenta algo increíble. Una historia mágica, que parece que recién hubiera inventado. Y sus manos se mueven, los ojos de niño miran desafiantes y sus palabras, precisas y moduladas, transportan a una realidad insólita. Es mágico Humberto Maturana, con esa pinta de genio loco, de sabio griego, de niño grande. Pero lo es sin querer serlo. Muy natural, muy cálido, muy acogedor es este biólogo-genio, destacadísimo conocido en todo el mundo por sus teorías.

VERSIONE ITALIANA BIOGRAPHY ARTICLES BIBLIOGRAPHY IDIOSYNCRASIES LINKS TO THE WWW FRANCISCO VARELA

Este trabajo intenta presentar las más importantes contribuciones de Humberto Maturana R. al campo de la psicología, en un esfuerzo de revelarlas directamente. La principal conclusión es que Maturana expande el entendimiento de lo humano y la terapia a través de revelar la biología del observador. Palabras clave: sistémico, autopoiesis, determinismo estructural, lenguaje, emocionar.

Para acceder al texto completo de este articulo es necesario registrarse gratuitamente en psiquiatria.com

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.

El objetivo de este artículo es exponer algunas de las ideas más importantes de Humberto Maturana, y relacionarlas brevemente con la psicología y la psicoterapia.

En conclusion Esta manera de concebir lo humano de Humberto Maturana puede tener consecuencias en un cambio en el experimentar de lo humano que puede conducir a que se le de mayor importancia a la afectividad y a las emociones y menos enfasis a la eficiencia, los logros y la tecnologia que son tan apreciados por la modernidad

Insituto de Formación Matríztica donde participa Humberto Maturana.

INTRODUCTION, THE NATURE OF REALITY, Explanations The role of the observer, Domains of explanations Bringing forth, Some implications of Maturana's position, Some implications for education, LIVING SYSTEMS, Some educational implications, Structure and organisation, Reproduction and lineage. Ontogeny Possible educational implications COGNITION AND KNOWLEDGE Some possible implications for education CONCLUSION Appendix 1 References

We present here a theoretical framework about the nervous system's operation that explains the origin of coordinated behaviour without violating the structural determinism inherent to the constitutive autonomy of living systems. At the same time we will show that cognition is not the outcome of a computational task, as it is envisaged by the traditional paradigm that considers the brain an information processing device, but rather is the result of the spontaneous structural coupling that takes place ontogenically and phylogenically between a living system and its circumstances of living

Prof. Dr. Humberto Maturana Romesín. Premio Nacional de Ciencias 1995. Departamento de Biología. Facultad de Ciencias. Universidad de Chile

It is said that we human beings are rational animals. On account of this, we devalue emotions and exalt rationality so much that, whenever we see some complex behavior in a non-human animal, we want to ascribe rational thinking to it. In this process, we have made the notion of objective reality a reference to something that we deem universal and independent of what we do, and which we use as an argument aimed at compelling someone to do something against his or her will. As an analysis of this, the article concerns the ontology of reality and is a reflection on the social and ethical consequences that understanding such an ontology may have

It is said that we human beings are rational animals. On account of this, we devalue emotions and exalt rationality so much that, whenever we see some complex behavior in a non-human animal, we want to ascribe rational thinking to it. In this process, we have made the notion of objective reality a reference to something that we deem universal and independent of what we do, and which we use as an argument aimed at compelling someone to do something against his or her will. As an analysis of this, the article concerns the ontology of reality and is a reflection on the social and ethical consequences that understanding such an ontology may have.

I claim that the most central question that humanity faces today is the question of reality. And I claim that this is so, regardless of whether we are aware of it or not, because every thing that we do as modern human beings, either as individuals, as social entities, or as members of some non-social human community, entails an explicit or implicit answer to this question as a foundation for the rational arguments that we use to justify our actions. Even nature, as we bring it forth in the course of our lives as human beings, depends on our explicit or implicit answer to this question. Indeed, I claim that the explicit or implicit answer that each one of us gives to the question of reality determines how he or she lives his or her life, as well as his or her acceptance or rejection of other human beings in the network of social and non-social systems that he or she integrates. Finally, since we know from daily life that the observer is a living system because its cognitive abilities are altered if its biology is altered, I maintain that its not possible to have an adequate understanding of social and non-social phenomena in human life if this question is not properly answered, and that this question can be properly answered only if observing and cognition are explained as biological phenomena generated through the operation of the observer as a living human being.

I claim that the most central question that humanity faces today is the question of reality. And I claim that this is so, regardless of whether we are aware of it or not, because every thing that we do as modern human beings, either as individuals, as social entities, or as members of some non-social human community, entails an explicit or implicit answer to this question as a foundation for the rational arguments that we use to justify our actions. Even nature, as we bring it forth in the course of our lives as human beings, depends on our explicit or implicit answer to this question. Indeed, I claim that the explicit or implicit answer that each one of us gives to the question of reality determines how he or she lives his or her life, as well as his or her acceptance or rejection of other human beings in the network of social and non-social systems that he or she integrates. Finally, since we know from daily life that the observer is a living system because its cognitive abilities are altered if its biology is altered, I maintain that it its not possible to have an adequate understanding of social and non-social phenomena in human life if this question is not properly answered, and that this question can be properly answered only if observing and cognition are explained as biological phenomena generated through the operation of the observer as a living human being.

Seized by Agreement, Swamped by Understanding edited by L. Fell, D. Russell & A.Stewart A collection of papers to celebrate the visit to Australia in August 1994 by Humberto Maturana. Hawkesbury Printing, University of Western Sydney.

Autopoietic Theory is one of the most serious attempts to characterize life and living entities in contemporary biology. However, its foundation lies on operations of distinction so sharp and adamantine that cannot be realized in the concrete work of a biologist. The cases of biomembranes and of the cell are discussed, showing the inexcapable limits of observative distinctions. A proposal of reconsidering the relation between life and autopoiesis is finally advanced

The theories of living systems pertain to the coherences of the observer, the observers experiences as he or she lives them in the praxis (doing) of living in language with other observers as biological living systems. As such we distinguish boundaries in daily life in two domains - as a structural and relational interface between the operation of the biology and the domain of relations in which the organism/system co-exists in its medium

In this short article I would like to address the question: How is that math ematical formalisms per mit us to com pute re la tions in the do main of what we call nat u ral phe nom ena?

Maturana's site

Video Documents from the Lecture

The notion "radical constructivism" (RC) was coined by Ernst von Glasersfeld in 1974 in order to emphasize that from an epistemological perspective any constructivism has to be complete (or "radical") in order not to relapse into some kind of fancy realism. The basic tenet of RC is that any kind of knowledge is constructed rather than perceived through senses. As such, RC does not present a metaphysics in the strict sense as it does not make statements about an outside reality ("No statement" means neither confirming nor denying reality. The subject of much criticism, RC equals solipsism, doesn't therefore apply). Now, the idea itself does not originate in EvG. Forerunners of the RC movement in the 18th century were Giambatista Vico, whose dictum "verum ipsum factum" already points in the direction of knowledge construction, and George Berkeley whose claim "esse est percipi" challenges metaphysics.

El autor se hace cargo de la pregunta ¿dónde está la mente?, contestándola a través de una reflexión sobre lo humano. Muestra porque explicar no es reduccionismo, se pregunta por el lenguaje mostrando su constitución. Habla de la doble mirada del observador, en la unidad y en su relación con el medio. En el proceso muestra que las emociones se constituyen como dominio de acciones, revelando el fundamento emocional de la razón. Plantea el conversar como el espacio de la experiencia humana. Toca lo espiritual y lo psíquico mostrando cómo no están en el cerebro sino en el espacio de las relaciones en lenguaje, contestando la pregunta inicial. Finalmente muestra que lo que constituye lo humano es la conversación de un modo de vida en el lenguaje, que surge en la convivencia desde la emoción que funda lo social, el amor.