"When one puts objectivity in parenthesis, all views, all verses in the multiverse are equally valid. Understanding this, you lose the passion for changing the other. One of the results is that you look apathetic to people. Now, those who do not live with objectivity in parentheses have a passion for changing the other. So they have this passion and you do not. For example, at the university where I work, people may say, ‘Humberto is not really interested in anything,’ because I don’t have the passion in the same sense that the person that has objectivity without parentheses. And I think that this is the main difficulty. To other people you may seem too tolerant. However, if the others also put objectivity in parentheses , you discover that disagreements can only be solved by entering a domain of co-inspiration, in which things are done together because the participants want to do them. With objectivity in parentheses, it is easy to do things together because one is not denying the other in the process of doing them."

Humberto Maturana - Interview 1985. 

BIOGRAPHY

Humberto Maturana [1928] - Biologist, Cybernetician, Scientist - invented his theory of autopoiesis following in the pathways of Bateson, Wittgenstein, the social ‘ricorso’ of Vico, the self-production notion of Paul Weiss, and many others. He has spent his career elaborating this theory within a biological research programme in his laboratory in Santiago [above which was written ‘Experimental Epistemology Lab’]. Known world-wide as Humberto {except in Italy where he is ‘Umberto’}, he continues to elaborate his theory generating experimental evidence for the thesis that reality is a consensual communal construction while appearing to be ‘objectively’ existing. The notion of ‘objectivity’ is replaced by that of ‘constructivism’.

 

IDIOSYNCRASIES

Never seen without his long, self-reknitting beatnik scarf; Speaking in circularities to hypnotise his audience; Infuriating colleagues by not referencing anyone other than himself [Maturana’s theory of ‘self-reference’].  

 

ARTICLES

On the Subject of Autopoiesis and it's Boundaries: Does The Subject Matter? by Vincent Kenny [05.22.99]

Autopoiesis, Culture and Society by Humberto Mariotti [05.22.99]

Life, the Multiverse and Everything: An Introduction to the Ideas of Humberto Maturana by Vincent Kenny [03.04.98]

Distinguishing the Observer: An Attempt at Interpreting Maturana by Ernst von Glasersfeld [12.19.97]

 

LINKS

 

FRANCISCO VARELA