Maturana is a biologist. He makes it very clear that he speaks and writes only as a biologist. Others may apply his work to other spheres; however he himself does not. This paper is based on notes taken during a three day lecture given by Humberto Maturana in St Kilda, ...

To consider the implications of the operation of the nervous sys- tem – and of the constitution of cultures as closed networks of languaging and emotioning – for how we understand and generate so-called “virtual realities.”

| The Biological Foundations of Virtual Realities and Their Implications for Human Existence

My purpose in this essay is to explain cognition as a biological phenomenon, and to show, in the process, how language arises and gives origin to self consciousness, revealing the ontological foundations of the physical domain of existence as a limiting cognitive domain. In order to do this I shall ...

| Ontology of Observing

The answers to these two questions would have been obvious years ago: Human beings, of course, machines are instruments of human design! But now days when we speak so much of progress, science and technology as if progress, science and technology were in themselves values to be venerated, there are ...

I am not a linguist, I am a biologist. Therefore, I shall speak about language as a biologist, and address myself to two basic biological questions, namely: 1. What processes must take place in an organism for it to establish a linguistic domain with another organism? 2. What processes take ...

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 ...

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 ...

| Oikos

As people have had opportunities to encounter different ideas and ways of thinking, many have developed increased awareness of the stories, myths and legends of humankind.

We subscribe to the view, expressed by Maturana and others, that a satisfying experience of understanding does not result from invoking objectivity, the truth, or a compelling argument, to achieve agreement by the force of reason, nor from a process of information exchange, but from some other qualities of the ...

Uncertainty about funding; difficulty in determining research priorities; and concern about technology transfer (the lack of application of research results): these words stand out in the language of scientific/industrial research and development, today. So-called technology transfer seems to be the central issue because the criteria for determining research priorities and ...