veryard projects - innovation for demanding change

about Maturana and Varela

veryard projects > people > maturana/varela
about Maturana and Varela key concepts books internet
Important thinkers about systems in biology with much broader relevance. Introduced the notion of Autopoiesis. Autopoiesis

Closure

Knowledge

Structural Coupling

Whole/Part Relationship

There are two books by Maturana & Varela. Autopoiesis and Cognition (currently out of print) is deeper and harder to read, while the Tree of Knowledge is an easier and more popular work.

Francisco Varela Principles of Biological Autonomy New York: Elsevier Science Publishers, 1979.

Varela, Thompson & Rosch. The Embodied Mind (MIT 1991) is a dialogue between cognitive science and Buddhist meditative psychology
Oikos Website


veryard projects - innovation for demanding change

The Tree of Knowledge

veryard projects > people > maturana/varela > tree of knowledge

tree of knowledge H. Maturana and Francisco Varela, The Tree of Knowledge Shambala 1992. Provides a hihgly readable discussion of the notion of closure in biology (and elsewhere). 

A more theoretical presentation of their ideas can be found in H. Maturana & F. Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The realization of the living. D. Reidel, 1980.

buy from amazon.com
buy from amazon uk

veryard projects - innovation for demanding change

Maturana/Varela on Autopoiesis

veryard projects > people > maturana/varela > autopoiesis

This notion, introduced by Maturana and Varela, refers to autonomous systems that are self-creating, self-organizing and self-preserving. It is commonly applied to biological organisms, and also to human organizations.
 
more Resistance in Self-Organizing Systems

veryard projects - innovation for demanding change

Maturana/Varela on Knowledge

veryard projects > people > maturana/varela > knowledge


Maturana & Varela deny the conventional distinction between knowledge and action. Instead they say: ‘All doing is knowing, and all knowing is doing.’
source: Tree of Knowledge
In data processing, this denial has implications for the conventional distinction between data and operations.
 
more Knowledge Management and Organizational Intelligence

veryard projects - innovation for demanding change

Maturana/Varela on Structural Coupling

veryard projects > people > maturana/varela > structural coupling


Maturana and Varela introduced the notion of structual coupling as a essential component of identity.
 
more Topology Notions

veryard projects - innovation for demanding change

Varela on Whole/Part Relationship

veryard projects > people > maturana/varela > whole/part


In many fields of science and technology, the relationship between the whole (holism) and the part (reductionism) is crucial. Flemons describes this relationship as complementary,
source: Douglas Flemons, Completing Distinctions, p 33


"On the one hand. one can move down a level and study the properties of the components, disregarding their mutual interconnection as a system. On the other hand, one can disregard the detailed structure of the components, treating their behaviour only as contributing to that of a larger unit. ... We cannot conceive of components if there is no system from which they are abstracted; and there cannot be a whole unless there are constitutive elements."

source: Varela, Principles of Biological Autonomy, p 102
more Articulation

veryard projects - innovation for demanding change veryard projects > people > maturana/varela
This page last updated on November 15th, 2003
Copyright © 2003 Veryard Projects Ltd
http://www.veryard.com/people/maturanavarela.htm