Autopoiesis and cognition : the realization of the living / Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela ; with a pref. to "Autopoiesis" by Stafford Beer. [E-book]

Includes index.

Bibliography: p. 139-140.

Table Of Contents
Front
EDITORIAL PREFACE
GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
BIOLOGY OF COGNITION
TABLE OF CONTENTS
III. COGNITIVE FUNCTION
IV. COGNITIVE FUNCTION IN PARTICULAR
V. PROBLEMS IN THE NEUROPHYSIOLOGY OF COGNITION
VI. CONCLUSIONS
POST SCRIPTUM
AUTOPOIESIS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
ON MACHINES, LIVING AND OTHERWISE
DISPENSABILITY OF TELEONOMY
EMBODIMENTS OF AUTOPOIESIS
DIVERSITY OF AUTOPOIESIS
PRESENCE OF AUTOPOIESIS
APPENDIX
GLOSSARY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX OF NAMES
BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

This is a bold, brilliant, provocative and puzzling work. It demands a radical shift in standpoint, an almost paradoxical posture in which living systems are described in terms of what lies outside the domain of descriptions. Professor Humberto Maturana, with his colleague Francisco Varela, have undertaken the construction of a systematic theoretical biology which attempts to define living systems not as they are objects of observation and description, nor even as in­ teracting systems, but as self-contained unities whose only reference is to them­ selves. Thus, the standpoint of description of such unities from the 'outside', i. e. , by an observer, already seems to violate the fundamental requirement which Maturana and Varela posit for the characterization of such system- namely, that they are autonomous, self-referring and self-constructing closed systems - in short, autopoietic systems in their terms. Yet, on the basis of such a conceptual method, and such a theory of living systems, Maturana goes on to define cognition as a biological phenomenon; as, in effect, the very nature of all living systems. And on this basis, to generate the very domains of interac­ tion among such systems which constitute language, description and thinking.