Abstract: This paper provides an overview of the major body of work in the biology of cognition produced by the Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. In addition to a review of their work together, Varela’s “enactive” approach to cognition is discussed. Insights from these studies are related to the field of media ecology. In their early work together Maturana and Varela developed the idea of “autopoiesis” (self- production) as the primary feature that distinguishes living things from non-living things. From their theory of autopoiesis in biology, they develop a naturalistic, non-transcendental and observer-dependent interpretation of cognition, language, and consciousness. They argue against any absolutely objective world; instead they claim that we bring forth a world with others through the process of our living in human created worlds that arise through language and the coordination of social interaction. Implications of this view for media ecology are considered.
Notes: I first read Maturana and Varela's work as an undergraduate student of design (thanks to Fernando Shultz mainly), and what surprises me today, twenty years later, is how marginal these ideas still are, across science and in design circles. For example, even in a South American online forum where design issues are discussed, a simple comparison is quite telling:
- 39 results for "philippe starck" site:foroalfa.org
- 4 results for "humberto maturana" site:foroalfa.org
In other words, a clown is ten times more popular with designers than an intellectual who has deep contributions for understanding fundamental issues behind humans and design.
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