Skip to main content

Humberto Maturana, a biologist into psychology.

  Humberto Maturana is a biologist dedicated to the study of relations between life systems. He was born on September 14, 1928 (like my mother, except for the year) and he made all his theoretical and experimental work in Universidad de Chile. The most relevant work of Humberto Maturana is contained in his works The tree of knowledge and Autopoiesis and cognition. Nowadays, Maturana and his collaborators represent the idiosyncratic area known as biology of knowing.
  With the collaboration of his student Francisco Varela, Maturana created and described the concept of “autopoiesis”, the one that basically consists in the feature of a system to maintain and reproduce itself. Maturana y Varela (1973, p. 69) defined autopoiesis:

  “An autopoietic machine is a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network”.

  In psychology, he has contributed to the systemic and constructivist scientific research program, specifically to the conceptions of a) the human like a live system, in relation/connection to the other live systems and b) the human like builder of multiple realities (trough the language we could build multiverses).  

  Finally, I would like to say a cliché phase of Maturana, that represent his legacy: Everything said is said by someone.

Reference: Maturana, H. & Varela, F. 1973. De máquinas y  seres vivos. Editorial Universitaria, Santiago, Chile

.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A selfish biography

Hello, i am Horacio Andrés Román Navarro i came from Curacaví, Santiago and i have lived there all my life: a "born and raised". I was born in November, therefore i am Scorpio (It was a premature birth, and unfortunately I could have been Sagittarius). I like to say that I am a timid person, however, your impression relating me it could be different. Finally, like a particularity, I am an only child. In my free time, I enjoy read, especially Hispano-American literature (my favourite author until now is José Donoso) and dramaturgy in his classic and emergent version. Also, I like to go to the theater and cinema, and then do critical texts about it (visit in web the page “Jóvenes Críticos GAM”). Besides, my favourites bands are Belle and Sebastian and Camera Obscura , which coincidently came from Glasgow, Scotland. 
Post a Comment
Read more

A big decision

  First of all, I would like to mention that my vocational decision to enter to the University was too hard. I had so many interests (and I’m still having it). For that reason, I think that the system of postgraduate studies is made for me (an egocentric perspective) because I could choose different courses and subjects that would complement my base career. Also, I think that when I finish Psychology I would like to study other Program.   The variety is dangerous for me. When I think in my postgraduate studies I feel confused again. However, nowadays the interrelation between different areas of knowledge has good “status” (multidisciplinary). If I had to choose today, I would like to study courses like drama, literature or ecology. If you are wondering why I don’t consider subjects in a direct relation to the Psychology, I’m doing it too.     I think that the postgraduate studies are the best opportunity to travel to other places, because your academic training...
1 comment
Read more

Sunny food

  Hello, today I’m going to talk about my favorite food of all the times. In first place, I have to say that I’m not so good at making decisions. So, I’m going to pick three of the mouth-watering foods that exist to me: porotos granados, humitas y pastel de choclo. In my grandma’ house there is a vegetable garden where she grows beans, corn, basil, pumpkins, etc.   All these products are the basic substrates to make the marvelous home-cooked food. In this sense, I have to recognize that I eat my fist favorite food (porotos Granados) every weekend in summer. Also, in that season I enjoy the humitas frequently in despite of the difficulty of cooking this (and many flies fly around them).    When I changed my diet to the vegetarian one, I was afraid because that decision would generate that, for example, I couldn’t eat my third favorite food. But my grandma showed up like a super heroin and made a Pastel de choclo with a base of soy.   Unbelievably, the...
3 comments
Read more