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 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

Changes are changes

Hello, today I’m going to write about my wishes around the changes of my study program. In this time, our program of Psychology is being reformulated thinking in the future students. The team in charge of is the Curricular Innovation team , and they seem very interested in modify the study program in pursuit of the comprehensive training and the well-being. If the work of transform my study program would depend on me, the changes that I would make to my study program are: I would reduce the homework that the subjects take into account, because we need time to read the texts that are essential to win knowledge. The homework is a big thing in our study program: sometimes we have to do tests in our homes. In the specialization period, I would add new subjects, especially about some areas of psychology that are “hidden” in our academic trainings; these are: juridical and communitarian psychology. Also, I would like to question the bad habit of our University to normalize the high...
1 comment
Read more

The new project of "Belle and Sebastian"

  Exactly three months ago Belle and Sebastian launched a new single called We were beautiful , a song that get closer to the classic style of the band than their latest album Girls in Peacetime Want To Dance . Two weeks ago, a new surprise: a warm song called I’ll be your pilot . What does mean the media movements of the band?   Like an attempt to calm the vehement questions of the fans; Stuart Murdoch, the vocalist of the band, report in an interview that three new EP’s going to arrive soon (the first EP going to be available on December 8 th ); and each one of them will contain approximately five songs. In an adorable gesture, Belle and Sebastian included the faces of lucky (and British, of course) fans in the sleeves of the little albums (that will conform a big album called How to solve our human problems ).   I have many expectations about the content and rhythms of the songs (I especially hope a song performed by Sarah Martin, my favorite member of the band)...
1 comment
Read more