Francisco Javier Varela García (September 7, 1946 – May 28, 2001) was a Chilean

biologist A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual Cell (biology), cell, a multicellular organism, or a Community (ecology), community of Biological inter ...

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

cybernetician A cyberneticist or a cybernetician is a person who practices cybernetics. Heinz von Foerster once told Stuart Umpleby that Norbert Wiener preferred the term "cybernetician" rather than "cyberneticist", perhaps because Wiener was a mathematician ...

, and neuroscientist who, together with his mentor

Humberto Maturana Humberto Maturana Romesín (September 14, 1928 – May 6, 2021) was a Chilean biologist and philosopher. Many consider him a member of a group of second-order cybernetics theoreticians such as Heinz von Foerster, Gordon Pask, Herbert Brün a ...

, is best known for introducing the concept of autopoiesis to biology, and for co-founding the Mind and Life Institute to promote dialog between science and

Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...

Life and career

Varela was born in 1946 in Talcahuano in Chile, the son of Corina María Elena García Tapia and Raúl Andrés Varela Rodríguez. After completing secondary school at the Liceo Alemán del Verbo Divino in

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whose ...

(1951–1963), like his mentor

, Varela temporarily studied medicine at the

Pontifical Catholic University of Chile The Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (''PUC or UC Chile'') ( es, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) is one of the six Catholic Universities existing in the Chilean university system and one of the two pontifical universities i ...

and graduated with a degree in biology from the University of Chile. He later obtained a Ph.D. in biology at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. His thesis, defended in 1970 and supervised by Torsten Wiesel, was titled ''Insect Retinas: Information processing in the compound eye''. After the 1973 military coup led by Augusto Pinochet, Varela and his family spent 7 years in

exile Exile is primarily penal expulsion from one's native country, and secondarily expatriation or prolonged absence from one's homeland under either the compulsion of circumstance or the rigors of some high purpose. Usually persons and peoples suf ...

in the United States before he returned to Chile to become a professor of biology at the Universidad de Chile. Varela became familiar, by practice, with

Tibetan Buddhism Tibetan Buddhism (also referred to as Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Lamaism, Lamaistic Buddhism, Himalayan Buddhism, and Northern Buddhism) is the form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet and Bhutan, where it is the dominant religion. It is also in majo ...

in the 1970s, initially studying, together with Keun-Tshen Goba (''né'' Ezequiel Hernandez Urdaneta), with the meditation master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, founder of

Vajradhatu Vajradhatu was the name of the umbrella organization of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, one of the first Tibetan Buddhist lamas to visit and teach in the West. It served as the vehicle for the promulgation of his Buddhist teachings, and was also the na ...

and

Shambhala Training Shambhala Training is a secular approach to meditation developed by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa and his students. It is based on what Trungpa calls Shambhala Vision, which sees enlightened society as not purely mythical, but as reali ...

, and later with

Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche (1920A Brief Biography of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche
– ...

. In 1986, he settled in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

, where he first taught cognitive science and epistemology at the

École Polytechnique École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

, and later neuroscience at the

University of Paris , image_name = Coat of arms of the University of Paris.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of Arms , latin_name = Universitas magistrorum et scholarium Parisiensis , motto = ''Hic et ubique terrarum'' (Latin) , mottoeng = Here and a ...

. From 1988 until his death, he led a research group, as Director of Research at the

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 ...

(Centre National de Recherche Scientifique). In 1987, Varela, along with

R. Adam Engle R. Adam Engle (born February 17, 1942 in Yonkers, NY, U.S.A.) is an American social entrepreneur who initiated and developed the Mind and Life Dialogues between the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet and panels of prominent scientists in the 1980s. Over the ...

, founded the Mind and Life Institute, initially to sponsor a series of dialogues between scientists and the Dalai Lama about the relationship between modern science and

. The Institute continues today as a major nexus for such dialog as well as promoting and supporting multidisciplinary scientific investigation in mind sciences, contemplative scholarship and practice and related areas in the interface of science with

meditation Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally cal ...

and other contemplative practices, especially

Buddhist practices Buddhism (Pali and sa, बौद्ध धर्म ''Buddha Dharma'') is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the B ...

. Varela died in 2001 in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

Hepatitis C Hepatitis C is an infectious disease caused by the hepatitis C virus (HCV) that primarily affects the liver; it is a type of viral hepatitis. During the initial infection people often have mild or no symptoms. Occasionally a fever, dark urine, a ...

after having written an account of his 1998 liver transplant. Varela had four children, including the actress, environmental spokesperson, and model

Leonor Varela Leonor Magdalena Varela Palma (; born 29 December 1972) is a Chilean actress. She played the Cleopatra, title role in the 1999 television film ''Cleopatra (1999 film), Cleopatra'', and vampire princess Nyssa Damaskinos in the 2002 Marvel Comics ...

Work and legacy

Varela was trained as a biologist, mathematician and philosopher through the influence of different teachers,

and Torsten Wiesel. He wrote and edited a number of books and numerous journal articles in

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

neurology Neurology (from el, wikt:νεῦρον, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix wikt:-logia, -logia, "study of") is the branch of specialty (medicine), medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of co ...

, cognitive science,

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

, and

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

. He founded, with others, the

Integral Institute Integral theory is a synthetic metatheory developed by Ken Wilber. It attempts to place a wide diversity of theories and models into one single framework. The basis is a "spectrum of consciousness," from archaic consciousness to ultimate spiri ...

, a

thinktank A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmental o ...

dedicated to the cross-fertilization of ideas and disciplines. Varela supported embodied philosophy, viewing human

cognition Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...

and

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...

in terms of the enactive structures in which they arise. These comprise the body (as a biological system and as personally experienced) and the physical world which it enacts. Varela's work popularized within the field of neuroscience the concept of

neurophenomenology Neurophenomenology refers to a scientific research program aimed to address the hard problem of consciousness in a pragmatic way. It combines neuroscience with phenomenology in order to study experience, mind, and consciousness with an emphasis on ...

. This concept combined the

phenomenology Phenomenology may refer to: Art * Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties Philosophy * Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...

Edmund Husserl , thesis1_title = Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung (Contributions to the Calculus of Variations) , thesis1_url = https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:58535/bdef:Book/view , thesis1_year = 1883 , thesis2_title ...

and of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, with "first-person science." Neurophenomenology requires observers to examine their own conscious experience using scientifically verifiable methods. In the 1996 popular book ''The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems'', physicist Fritjof Capra makes extensive reference to Varela and Maturana's theory of autopoiesis as part of a new, systems-based scientific approach for describing the interrelationships and interdependence of psychological, biological, physical, social, and cultural phenomena. Written for a general audience, ''The Web of Life'' helped popularize the work of Varela and Maturana, as well as that of

Ilya Prigogine Viscount Ilya Romanovich Prigogine (; russian: Илья́ Рома́нович Приго́жин; 28 May 2003) was a physical chemist and Nobel laureate noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility. Biogra ...

and

Gregory Bateson Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904 – 4 July 1980) was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician, and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. His writings include '' Steps to an ...

. Varela's 1991 book ''The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience'', co-authored with

Evan Thompson Evan Thompson (born 1962) is a professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia. He writes about cognitive science, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and cross-cultural philosophy, especially Buddhist philosophy in dialogue with W ...

and Eleanor Rosch, is considered a classic in the field of cognitive science, offering pioneering phenomenological connections and introducing the Buddhism-informed

enactivist Enactivism is a position in cognitive science that argues that cognition arises through a dynamic interaction between an acting organism and its environment. It claims that the environment of an organism is brought about, or enacted, by the active ...

and

embodied cognition Embodied cognition is the theory that many features of cognition, whether human or otherwise, are shaped by aspects of an organism's entire body. Sensory and motor systems are seen as fundamentally integrated with cognitive processing. The cognit ...

approach. A revised edition of ''The Embodied Mind'' was published in 2017, featuring substantive introductions by the surviving authors, as well as a preface by

Jon Kabat-Zinn Jon Kabat-Zinn (born Jon Kabat, June 5, 1944) is an American professor emeritus of medicine and the creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medi ...

Publications

Varela wrote numerous books and articles:Comprehensiv
bibliography
by Randall Whitaker.

Books

* 1979. ''Principles of Biological Autonomy''. North-Holland. * 1980 (with

). ''Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living''. Boston: Reidel. * 1987 (rev 1992, 1998) (with Maturana). ''The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding''. Boston: Shambhala Press. * 1988. ''Connaître:Les Sciences Cognitives, tendences et perspectivess''. Éditions du Seuil,

. * 1991 (rev 2017) (with

and Eleanor Rosch). ''The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience''. MIT Press. * 1992 (with P. Bourgine, eds.). ''Towards a Practice of Autonomous Systems: The First European Conference on Artificial Life''. MIT Press. * 1992 (with J. Hayward, eds.). ''Gentle Bridges: Dialogues Between the Cognitive Sciences and the Buddhist Tradition''. Boston: Shambhala Press. eprinted, 2014, as ''Gentle Bridges: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on the Sciences of Mind''.* 1993 (with W. Stein, eds.). ''Thinking About Biology: An Introduction to Theoretical Biology''. Addison-Wesley, SFI Series on Complexity. eprinted, 2018, as ''Thinking About Biology: An Invitation to Current Theoretical Biology'', CRC Press.* 1997 (ed.). ''Sleeping, Dreaming and Dying: An Exploration of Consciousness with the Dalai Lama''. Boston: Wisdom Books. * 1999. ''Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom and Cognition''. Stanford University Press. * 1999 (with J. Shear, eds.). ''The View from Within: First-Person Methodologies in the Study of Consciousness''. London: Imprint Academic. *1999 (with J. Petitot, B. Pachoud, and J-M. Roy, eds.). ''Naturalizing Phenomenology: Contemporary Issues in Phenomenology and Cognitive Science''. Stanford University Press.

Notable articles

* 2002 (with A. Weber). 'Life after Kant: Natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations of biological individuality'. ''Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences'' I:97–125, 2002.

References

External links

Intimate Distances
An autobiographical essay written shortly before his death * Francisco Varela: In memoriam: *

*

*''The Embodied Mind'': *
Evan Thompson
, coauthor. *

coauthor. **

Daniel Dennett Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relat ...

, 1993,
Review of The Embodied Mind
" ''American Journal of Psychology 106'': 121–26. *
Escher, enaction & intersubjectivity.
*

The Cosmos Letter, Expo'90 Foundation, Japan * Franz Reichle, 2004
Film Monte Grande - What is Life?
{{DEFAULTSORT:Varela, Francisco 1946 births 2001 deaths People from Santiago Tibetan Buddhists from Chile Chilean biologists Chilean people of Galician descent Chilean philosophers Chilean scientists Complex systems scientists Converts to Buddhism Consciousness researchers and theorists Cyberneticists Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Integral theory Systems scientists Theoretical biologists Colegio del Verbo Divino alumni French National Centre for Scientific Research scientists Pontifical Catholic University of Chile alumni University of Chile alumni Deaths from hepatitis 20th-century American writers 20th-century Chilean philosophers Researchers of artificial life 20th-century biologists Academic staff of École Polytechnique Research directors of the French National Centre for Scientific Research