What The Frogs Eye Tells The Frogs Brain / Maturana, Humberto -- Lettvin, Jy -- McCulloch, W.S. -- Pitts, W.H.

In: Corning, William C., Balaban, Martin: The Mind: „Biological Approaches to its Functions“. Interscience Publishers. - s. 233-258. - 1968

What are the consequences of this work? Fundamentally, it shows that the eye speaks to the brain in a language already highly organized and interpreted, instead of transmitting some more or less accurate copy of the distribution of light on the receptors. As a crude analogy, suppose we have a man watching the clouds and reporting them to a weather station.

Hesla: maturanovská neurobiologie

Viz též: PŘEKLAD

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Objektivita. Argument příkazu / Maturana, Humberto -- Lorenzová, Jitka (překlad)

Originální název: La objetividad. Un argumento para obligar

In: DOLMEN EDICIONES SA, Santiago de Chile. - s. 7-47. - 1997

Je možné být skutečně objektivní? Je to možné alespoň v sociální, politické, ekonomické analýze? Jestliže ne, znamená to, že zůstáváme na pospas nejkrajnějšímu relativismu? Je toto hlavní příčina našich obtíží při zlepšování světa?

Hesla: autopoiesa ; nová biologie

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Gregory Bateson, Systems Theory, and Autopoiesis / Hallbom, Kristine

Bateson and Maturana, both contemporary philosophers and systemic thinkers, spent a good part of their academic careers searching for the "Patterns of Life";. Both men have strong backgrounds in cybernetics and were colleagues of the great cybernetician Heinz Von Foerester, who originated the legendary Macy conferences in the 1950's in which cybernetics developer Norbert Wiener played a great part in.

Hesla: systémová teorie

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The Biological Foundations of Virtual Realities and Their Implications for Human Existence / Maturana, Humberto

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.”

Viz též: The Biological Foundations of Virtual Realities and Their Implications for Human Existence

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Ontology of Observing / Maturana, Humberto

In: Texts in Cybernetics, American Society For Cibernetics Conference, Felton, CA. 18-23 October, 1988. - - 1998

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 start from two unavoidable experiential conditions that are at the same time my problems and my explanatory instruments, namely: a), that cognition, as is apparent in the fact that any alteration of the biology of our nervous system alters our cognitive capacities, is a biological phenomenon that must be explained as such; and b), that we, as is apparent in this very same essay, exist as human beings in laguage using language for our explanations. These two experiential conditions are my starting point because I must be in them in any explanatory attempt; they are my problems because I choose to explain them, and they are my unavoidable instruments because I must use cognition and language in order to explain cognition and language.

Viz též: Ontology of Observing

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Metadesign / Maturana, Humberto

In: Instituto de Terapia Cognitiva. - - 1998

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 many people that think that machines as they become more and more complex and intelligent through human design, may in fact become alive so that they may supplant us as a natural outcome of that very venerated progress and expansion of intelligence. Also many people seems to think that evolution is changing its nature so that technology is becoming the guiding force in the flow of the cosmic change in relation to us. I do not hold this view. I do not look at progress, science or technology as if they were values in themselves, nor do I think that biological or cosmic evolution is changing its nature or character. I think that the question that we human beings must face is that of what do we want to happen to us, not a question of knowledge or progress. The question that we must face is not about the relation of biology with technology, or about the relation between art and technology, nor about the relation between knowledge and reality, nor even about whether or not metadesign shapes our brains. I think that the question that we must face at this moment of our history is about our desires and about whether we want or not to be responsible of our desires.

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Biology of Language: The Epistemology of Reality / Maturana, Humberto

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. - s. 27-63. - 1978

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 place in a linguistic interaction that permit an organism (us) to describe and to predict events that it may experience?

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Autopoiesis, Structural Coupling and Cognition: A history of these and other notions in the biology of cognition / Maturana, Humberto

In: Cybernetics & Human Knowing. - č. 3-4, s. 5-34. - 2002

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 & Varela, 1980, 1988), and I shall present notions"that once they are said appear as obvious truisms. Moreover, I shall refine or expand the meaning of such notions, or even modify them. Yet, in any case, the reader is not invited to attend to the truisms, or to what seems to be obvious, rather he or she is invited to attend to the consequences that those notions entail for the understanding of cognition as a biological process. After all, explanations or demonstrations always become self evident once they are understood and accepted, and the purpose of this essay is the expansion of understanding in all dimensions of human existence.

Hesla: autopoiesa

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Distinguishing Ernst von Glasersfeld’s “Radical Constructivism” from Humberto Maturana’s “Radical Realism” / Kenny, Vincent

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.

Hesla: kritická úvaha ; radikální konstruktivismus

Viz též: Oikos

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Konstruktivistické úvahy o lásce / Luhmann, Niklas -- Strnad, Vratislav (překlad) -- Maturana, Humberto

ISZ, 1996.

Originální název: Überlegungen über die LiebeLiebe als Passion – Zur Codierung von Intimität

Vybral jsem pro Vás dva nezkrácené texty H. Maturany a N. Luhmanna, první z roku 1985, druhý (v prvním vydání) z roku 1982. Důvodem takové volby pro mě bylo jejich propojení společným tématem "lásky" – tématem, jež se zdá být tak vzdálené chladnému jazyku konstruktivistů. Dalším důvodem je odlišnost přístupu obou autorů k danému tématu, která – jak bude ukázáno – nebrání přítomnosti kontroverzního jednotícího prvku. Pro biologa Maturanu je láska "spontánním biologickým jevem, bez něhož není žádná socializace možná". Nevysvětluje sice, jak je možné žít bez lásky a přesto zůstat biologickou bytostí, ale to mu můžeme odpustit a klidně si položit otázku, proč potřebuje do své představy koevoluce hominidů vnášet ještě další výkladový prvek – lásku. Na jiném místě nám ale sám odpovídá: "Jsme současně zvířata, která si skrze rozum a řeč uvědomují své emoce, a tak mohou prožívat jejich změny."

Různé: Poznámky překladatele

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