Humberto Maturana Romesín (September 14, 1928 – May 6, 2021) 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, a multicellular organism, or a community of interacting populations. They usually specialize in ...

and

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 ...

. Many consider him a member of a group of second-order cybernetics theoreticians such as Heinz von Foerster, Gordon Pask, Herbert Brün and

Ernst von Glasersfeld Ernst von Glasersfeld (March 8, 1917, Munich – November 12, 2010, Leverett, Franklin County, Massachusetts) was a philosopher, and emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Georgia, research associate at the Scientific Reasonin ...

. Maturana, along with Francisco Varela and Ricardo B. Uribe, was particularly known for creating the term " autopoiesis" about the self-generating, self-maintaining structure in living systems, and concepts such as structural determinism and structural coupling. His work was influential in many fields, mainly the field of systems thinking and cybernetics. Overall, his work is concerned with the biology of cognition.Magnus Ramage, Karen Shipp (2012) ''Systems Thinkers'' Maturana (2002) insisted that autopoiesis exists only in the molecular domain, and he did not agree with the extension into sociology and other fields:

The molecular domain is the only domain of entities that through their interactions give rise to an open ended diversity of entities (with different dynamic architectures) of the same kind in a dynamic that can give rise to an open ended diversity of recursive processes that in their turn give rise to the composition of an open ended diversity of singular dynamic entities.

Life and career

Maturana was born in

Santiago, Chile Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital (political), 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 Regions of Chile, region, t ...

. After completing secondary school at the Liceo Manuel de Salas in 1947, he enrolled at the University of Chile, studying first medicine in Santiago, then biology in London and Cambridge, Mass. In 1954, he obtained a scholarship from the

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...

to study anatomy and neurophysiology with

J. Z. Young John Zachary Young FRS (18 March 1907 – 4 July 1997), generally known as "JZ" or "JZY", was an English zoologist and neurophysiologist, described as "one of the most influential biologists of the 20th century". Biography Young went to scho ...

(who later wrote the foreword to ''The Tree of Knowledge'') at University College London. He obtained a

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in biology from Harvard University in 1958. He worked in neuroscience at the University of Chile, in the ''Biología del Conocer'' (Biology of Knowing) research center. Maturana's work has been developed and integrated into the work on ontological coaching developed by Fernando Flores and Julio Olalla. In 1994, he received Chile's National Prize for Natural Sciences. Maturana established his own reflection and research center, the Instituto de Formación Matriztica. In 2020 he was awarded an honorary fellowship of the Cybernetics Society. Maturana died in Santiago on May 6, 2021, at age 92, due to pneumonia.

Work

Maturana's research interest concerns concepts like cognition, autopoiesis, languaging, zero time cybernetics and structural determined systems. Maturana's work extends to

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 ...

and cognitive science and even to

family therapy Family therapy (also referred to as family counseling, family systems therapy, marriage and family therapy, couple and family therapy) is a branch of psychology and clinical social work that works with families and couples in intimate relationsh ...

. He was inspired by the work of the biologist Jakob von Uexküll. His inspiration for his work in cognition came while he was a medical student and became seriously ill with tuberculosis. Confined in a sanatorium with very little to read, he spent time reflecting on his condition and the nature of life. What he came to realize was "that what was peculiar to living systems was that they were discrete autonomous entities such that all the processes that they lived, they lived in reference to themselves ... whether a dog bites me or doesn't bite me, it is doing something that has to do with itself." This paradigm of autonomy formed the basis of his studies and work. Maturana and his student Francisco Varela were the first to define and employ the concept of " autopoiesis", which was Maturana's original idea. Aside from making important contributions to the field of evolution, Maturana is associated with an epistemology built upon

empirical Empirical evidence for a proposition is evidence, i.e. what supports or counters this proposition, that is constituted by or accessible to sense experience or experimental procedure. Empirical evidence is of central importance to the sciences and ...

findings of neurobiology. Maturana and Varela wrote in their Santiago Theory of Cognition: " Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. This statement is valid for all organisms, with or without a nervous system."

Reflections on life and association with Francisco Varela

In an article in ''Constructivist Foundations''. Maturana described the origins of the concept of autopoiesis and his collaboration with Varela.

In popular culture

Maturana influenced — and appears in coded form as a character in the novel ''Replay'' by German author Benjamin Stein.

Publications

The initial paper which stands as a prelude to all that followed:
''Biology of Cognition''
Humberto R. Maturana. Biological Computer Laboratory Research Report BCL 9.0. Urbana IL: University of Illinois, 1970. As Reprinted in: ''Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living.'' Dordecht: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1980, pp. 5–58.

Books

* 1979 '' Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living'' With Francisco Varela. (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science). ISBN 90-277-1015-5. * 1984 ''The tree of knowledge. Biological basis of human understanding''. With Francisco Varela Revised edition (92) The Tree of Knowledge: Biological Roots of Human Understanding. * 1990 ''Biology of Cognition and epistemology''. Ed Universidad de la Frontera. Temuco, Chile. * 1992 ''Conversations with Humberto Maturana: Questions to biologist Psychotherapist''. With K. Ludewig. Ed Universidad de la Frontera. Temuco, Chile. 1992. * 1994 ''Reflections and Conversations''. With Kurt Ludewig. Collection Family Institute. FUPALI Ed. Cordova. 1994 * 1994 ''Democracy is a Work of Art''. Collection Roundtable. Linotype Ed Bogota Bolivar y Cia. * 1997 ''Objectivity - An argument to force''. Santiago de Chile: Ed Dolmen. * 1997 ''Machines and living things. Autopoiese to do Organização Vivo''. With Francisco Varela Porto Alegre: Medical Arts, 1997. * 2004 ''From Being to Doing, The Origins of the Biology of Cognition.'' With Bernhard Poerksen. Paperback, 2004 * 2009 ''The Origins of humanness in the Biology of Love''. With Gerda Verden-Zoller and Pille Bunnell. * 2004 ''From biology to psychology''. Paperback. * 2009 ''Sense of humanity''. Paperback. * 2008 ''Habitar humano en seis ensayos de biología-cultural''. With Ximena Dávila. * 2012 ''The Origin of Humanness in the Biology of Love.'' With Gerda Verden-Zöller. Edited by Pille Bunnell. Philosophy Document Center, Charlottesville VA; Exeter UK: Imprint Academic, Imprint Academic. * 2015 ''El árbol del vivir''. With Ximena Dávila. * 2019 ''Historia de nuestro vivir cotidiano''. With Ximena Dávila.-->

References

External links

Humberto Maturana official websiteCultural Biology Certification - BrazilBiology of Cognition Lab websiteAppreciation of Maturana's work and philosophy
(in Spanish with English subtitles) {{DEFAULTSORT:Maturana, Humberto 1928 births 2021 deaths 20th-century Chilean non-fiction writers 20th-century Chilean male writers 21st-century Chilean non-fiction writers 21st-century Chilean male writers 20th-century Chilean philosophers 21st-century philosophers Chilean biologists Chilean scientists Consciousness researchers and theorists Cyberneticists Systems biologists Systems psychologists Systems scientists Theoretical biologists Harvard University alumni Alumni of University College London People from Santiago Members of the Chilean Academy of Sciences Deaths from pneumonia in Chile Chilean non-fiction writers