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

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the eas ...

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 ...

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 r ...

, and

neuroscientist A neuroscientist (or neurobiologist) is a scientist who has specialised knowledge in neuroscience, a branch of biology that deals with the physiology, biochemistry, psychology, anatomy and molecular biology of neurons, neural circuits, and glial ...

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 The term autopoiesis () refers to a system capable of producing and maintaining itself by creating its own parts. The term was introduced in the 1972 publication '' Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living'' by Chilean biologists ...

to biology, and for co-founding the

Mind and Life Institute The Mind & Life Institute is a US-registered, not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1991 to establish the field of contemplative sciences. Based in Charlottesville, Va., the institute “brings science and contemplative wisdom togeth ...

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 ...

Life and career

Varela was born in 1946 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, whos ...

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 (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 ...

and graduated with a degree in biology from the

University of Chile The University of Chile ( es, Universidad de Chile) is a public research university in Santiago, Chile. It was founded on November 19, 1842, and inaugurated on September 17, 1843.

. 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 highe ...

. His thesis, defended in 1970 and supervised by

Torsten Wiesel Torsten Nils Wiesel (born 3 June 1924) is a Swedish neurophysiologist. With David H. Hubel, he received the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for their discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system; the prize was ...

, was titled ''Insect Retinas: Information processing in the compound eye''. After the 1973 military coup led by

Augusto Pinochet Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (, , , ; 25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean general who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, first as the leader of the Military Junta of Chile from 1973 to 1981, being declared President of ...

, 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 and Shambhala Training, and later with Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, a Tibetan meditation master of higher

tantra Tantra (; sa, तन्त्र, lit=loom, weave, warp) are the esoteric traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism that developed on the Indian subcontinent from the middle of the 1st millennium CE onwards. The term ''tantra'', in the India ...

s. In 1986, he settled in France, 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 31,63 ...

(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

, 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 calm ...

and other contemplative practices, especially Buddhist practices. 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. Si ...

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, ...

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 title role in the 1999 television film ''Cleopatra'', and vampire princess Nyssa Damaskinos in the 2002 Marvel Comics film '' Blade II''. Early lif ...

Work and legacy

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

and

. 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 ...

neurology Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal ...

, 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. ...

. He founded, with others, the Integral Institute, 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 or ...

dedicated to the cross-fertilization of ideas and disciplines. Varela supported

embodied philosophy 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 ...

, 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, though ...

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. This concept combined the phenomenology of

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 Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty. (; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest an ...

, 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 Fritjof Capra (born February 1, 1939) is an Austrian-born American physicist, systems theorist and deep ecologist. In 1995, he became a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California. He is on the faculty of Schumacher ...

makes extensive reference to Varela and Maturana's theory of

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 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 ...

. 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 We ...

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

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''. Editions du Seuil, Paris. * 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 (Ken Wilber) 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 École Polytechnique faculty Research directors of the French National Centre for Scientific Research