Humberto Maturana
Humberto Maturana (born September 14, 1928, in Santiago, Chile) is a Chilean biologist and philosopher. He is considered a member of the second wave of cybernetics, known for developing a theory of autopoiesis about the nature of reflexive feedback control in living systems.[1] His work has been influential in many fields, mainly the field of systems thinking. Overall, his work is concerned with the biology of cognition. [2]
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[edit] Biography
After completing secondary school at the Liceo Manuel de Salas in 1947, Maturana enrolled at the University of Chile, studying first medicine then biology. In 1954, he obtained a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation to study anatomy and neurophysiology at University College London. He obtained a PhD in biology from Harvard University in 1958.
He works in neuroscience at the University of Chile, in the research center "Biología del Conocer" (Biology of Knowledge). Maturana's work has been developed and integrated into the work on Ontological coaching done by Fernando Flores and Julio Olalla.
As of the year 2000, professor Maturana established his own reflection and research center: the Instituto de Formación Matriztica.
[edit] Work
Maturana's 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 perculiear 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 iteslf." This paradigm of autonomy formed the basis of his studies and work. [3] Maturana's work extends to philosophy and cognitive science and even to family therapy. He was early inspired by the work of the biologist Jakob von Uexküll.
[edit] Constructivist epistemology
Maturana and his student Francisco Varela were the first to define and employ the concept of autopoiesis. Aside from making important contributions to the field of evolution, Maturana is also a founder of constructivist epistemology or radical constructivism, an epistemology built upon empirical 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."[4]
[edit] Cultural biology
At the Instituto de Formación Matríztica Maturana has contributed extensively to the Biology of knowledge and the biology of loving. At this point, Maturana has formulated new perspectives about human life and continues to do so. Psychology, the use of language, experience, and the general impulse to understand serve as explanatory bases for the depiction of human ways of life. In this way, they are proposing the notion of "Cultural biology" as the intertwinement and dynamic of the biology of knowledge and the biology of loving as a manner to present both cultural and biological bases of human existence.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Johh lechte (1994). "Humberto Maturana". in: Fifty key contemporary thinkers: from structuralism to postmodernity. Routledge ISBN 0514326948. p.339-344
- ^ Systems Thinkers, by Magnus Ramage, Karen Shipp
- ^ Systems Thinkers, by Magnus Ramage, Karen Shipp
- ^ Maturana, Humberto R./Varela, Francisco J. (1980): Autopoiesis and Cognition. The Realization of the Living. Dordrecht: Reidel, p. 13.
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[edit] External links
- The official site of Humberto Maturana
- Cultural Biology Certification - Brazil
- Webpage of the Biology of Cognition laboratory, at Universidad de Chile
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