Humberto R. Maturana, Francisco J. Varela: Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (1972–) [ES, EN, IT]

“What makes a living system a living system? What kind of biological phenomenon is the phenomenon of cognition? These two questions have been frequently considered, but, in this volume, the authors consider them as concrete biological questions. Their analysis is bold and provocative, for the authors have constructed a systematic theoretical biology which attempts to define living systems not as objects of observation and description, nor even as interacting systems, but as self-contained unities whose only reference is to themselves. The consequence of their investigations and of their living systems as self-making, self-referring autonomous unities, is that they discovered that the two questions have a common answer: living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. The result of their investigations is a completely new perspective of biological (human) phenomena. During the investigations, it was found that a complete linguistic description pertaining to the ‘organization of the living’ was lacking and, in fact, was hampering the reporting of results. Hence, the authors have coined the word ‘autopoiesis’ to replace the expression ‘circular organization’. Autopoiesis conveys, by itself, the central feature of the organization of the living, which is autonomy.”

Spanish edition
Translated by Carmen Cienfuegos
Publisher Editorial Universitaria, Santiago de Chile, 1972

English edition
With a preface by Stafford Beer
Publisher D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht/Boston/London, 1980
Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume 42
ISBN 9027710163
147 pages

Autopoiesis on Wikipedia (EN)

De máquinas y seres vivos: Una teoría sobre la organización biológica (Spanish, trans. Carmen Cienfuegos, 4th ed., 1972/1998, updated on 2020-4-17)
Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (English, 1980, updated on 2012-7-18)
Autopoiesi e cognizione: la realizzazione del vivente (Italian, trans. Alessandra Stragapede, 1985, added on 2020-4-17)

See also Varela, Maturana, Uribe, Autopoiesis, 1974. (added on 2014-6-2)

Journal of Neuro-Aesthetic Theory, No 1-5 (1997-2011)

Journal of Neuro-Aesthetic Theory #5 (2007-11)
Neurobiopolitics, Pluripotentiality and Cognitive Capitalism, a work in progress…
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Journal of Neuro-Aesthetic Theory #4 (2005-07)
Conference of Neuroaesthetics
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Journal of Neuro-Aesthetic Theory #3 (2003-04)
Buildings, Movies and Brains.
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Journal of Neuro-Aesthetic Theory #2 (2000-02)
Cinema and the Brain
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Journal of Neuro-Aesthetic Theory #1 (1997-99)
Introduction to Neuro-Aesthetic Theory
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Contributors: Warren Neidich, Charles T. Wolfe, Andrew Patrizio, Philippe Rahm, Meena Alexander, Michael Madore, Martina Wicklein, Martina Siebert, Norman M. Klein, Michael Salcman, Nicholas Wade, Nicholas Chase, Nathalie Angles, Martha Trivizas, Nicola Diamond, Mark Cohen, Lev Manovich, Laura U. Marks, Lucy Steeds, Mark Bishop, Olafur Eliasson, Margarita Gluzberg, Marcos Novak, M. A. Greenstein, Marquard Smith, Paul D. Miller -DJ Spooky, Vivian Sobchack, W. H. Zangemeister, Thyrza Goodeve, Warren Sack, Zoe Beloff, Yann Beauvais, William Hirstein, Stuart Brisley, Peter Brugger, Ralph Greenspan, Penny Starfield, Kodwo Eshun, Sarat Maharaj, Scott Lash, Steven Holl, Karen Beckman, Colin Gardner, Conerly Casey, Christiane Paul, Chloe Vaitsou, Daniel Blaufuks, Diana Thater, Ken Jacobs, Dennis Balk, David J. McGonigle, Charlie Gere, Armen Avanessian, Arnold H. Modell, Anjan Chatterjee, Andreas Roepstorff, Barbara Marie Stafford, Brian Massumi, Bernard Andrieu, Beau Lotto, Elizabeth Cohen and Michael Talley, John Welchman, Janet Sternburg, Elizabeth S. CohenJonathan Green, Joseph Kosuth, Andrea Grunert, Juli Carson and Lindi Emoungu, Jules Davidoff, Isabelle Moffat, Israel Rosenfeld, Francois Bucher, Eric Duyckaerts, Ellen K. Levy and David E. Levy, gruppo A12 and Francisca Insulza, Gregg Lambert and Gregory Flaxman

Initiated by Warren Neidich

Gordon Pask: Conversation, Cognition and Learning. A Cybernetic Theory and Methodology (1975)

“The work on which the content of this book is centred took place over more than a decade. It started, in the middle fifties, with the construction of adaptive training machines, with superficially disconnected studies of chemical computing systems, and, towards 1960, with experiments on machine-monitored small group inter-action. Since that period an underlying theory has emerged from a gaggle of prescient concepts. It owes a great deal of its present shape to the ideation and criticism of friends and colleagues, only some of whom can be mentioned directly.

First of all, it is noteworthy that parallel work has gone on in two places; my own laboratory at System Research Ltd and in Heinz Von Foerster’s Biological Computer laboratory, at the University of Illinois. Both endeavours were encouraged by Warren McCulloch; the reader will detect the influence of his ideas and guidance appearing repeatedly throughout the discussion. Apart from this, the parallel development was not specially contrived and it was sustained by irregular personal liason. Hence, it is gratifying to find that recent publications from the Biological Computer Laboratory image our own conclusions, differing, chiefly, in the notation employed and the area of application. People familiar with the field will probably find the threads of mutualism quite obvious; for the benefit of others, a few of these threads are picked out. For example, Loefgren worked with Von Foerster whilst refining the formalism on which the currently-used type of abstract reproductive and evolutionary process is founded; Maturana (whose theory of autopoietic systems is the analogue, in a biologist’s mind, for certain stable cognitive organisations in the present theory) worked there as well; Maturana’s theory is to appear in a subsequent monograph in this series. Both Ashby, the system theorist, and Gunther, the philosopher, taught and researched with Von Foerster; much of the present theory hinges upon their ideas.

On home ground, the theory, and the experiments as well, owe a great deal to two colleagues of long standing: Brian Lewis and Bernard Scott. Prof. Lewis and I shared a common interest in cognition since early in the 1960s and brooded jointly (as we still do) over problems of learning and teaching. Bernard Scott came to the laboratory at the time when Lewis went off to study education in the large and since that time we have maintained a comparably symbiotic intellectual relationship. At about the time I started to write this manuscript (having discarded many previous drafts of it as inadequate) both circumstance and research interest brought all of us into close contact again and we were joined, in the last year, by Dionysious Kallikourdis (who contributes one Appendix, explicitly).” (Gordon Pask, from Preface)

With appendices by B.C.E. Scott and D. Kallikourdis, glossary by M. Macdonald-Ross and index by B.C.E. Scott
Publisher Elsevier, Amsterdam/Oxford/New York, 1975
ISBN 0444411933, 9780444411938
570 pages
via pangaro.com

PDF (updated on 2012-7-16)