Francisco Varela
Francisco Varela | |
|---|---|
Mind and Life Institute | |
| Thesis | Insect retinas; visual processing in the compound eye (1970) |
| Doctoral advisor | Torsten Wiesel |
Francisco Javier Varela García (September 7, 1946 – May 28, 2001) was a
Life and career
Varela was born in 1946 in Talcahuano in Chile, the son of Corina María Elena García Tapia and Raúl Andrés Varela Rodríguez.[1][2] After completing secondary school at the Liceo Alemán del Verbo Divino in Santiago (1951–1963), like his mentor Humberto Maturana, Varela temporarily studied medicine at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and graduated with a degree in biology from the University of Chile. He later obtained a Ph.D. in biology at Harvard University. His thesis, defended in 1970 and supervised by Torsten Wiesel, was titled Insect Retinas: Information processing in the compound eye.
After the 1973 military coup led by Augusto Pinochet, Varela and his family spent 7 years in exile in the United States before he returned to Chile to become a professor of biology at the Universidad de Chile.
Varela became familiar, by practice, with
In 1986, he settled in
In 1987, Varela, along with
Varela died in 2001 in Paris of Hepatitis C after having written an account of his 1998 liver transplant.[5] Varela had four children, including the actress, environmental spokesperson, and model Leonor Varela.
Work and legacy
Varela was trained as a biologist, mathematician and philosopher through the influence of different teachers, Humberto Maturana and Torsten Wiesel.
He wrote and edited a number of books and numerous journal articles in
Varela supported
Varela's work popularized within the field of neuroscience the concept of neurophenomenology. This concept combined the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, with "first-person science." Neurophenomenology requires observers to examine their own conscious experience using scientifically verifiable methods.
In the 1996 popular book The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems, physicist Fritjof Capra makes extensive reference to Varela and Maturana's theory of autopoiesis as part of a new, systems-based scientific approach for describing the interrelationships and interdependence of psychological, biological, physical, social, and cultural phenomena.[7] Written for a general audience, The Web of Life helped popularize the work of Varela and Maturana, as well as that of Ilya Prigogine and Gregory Bateson.[8]
Varela's 1991 book The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, co-authored with
Publications
Varela wrote numerous books and articles:[11]
Books
- 1979. Principles of Biological Autonomy. North-Holland.
- 1980 (with Humberto Maturana). Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Boston: Reidel.
- 1987 (rev 1992, 1998) (with ISBN 978-0877736424
- 1988. Connaître:Les Sciences Cognitives, tendences et perspectivess. Éditions du Seuil, Paris.
- 1991 (rev 2017) (with ISBN 978-0-262-72021-2
- 1992 (with P. Bourgine, eds.). Towards a Practice of Autonomous Systems: The First European Conference on Artificial Life. MIT Press.
- 1992 (with J. Hayward, eds.). Gentle Bridges: Dialogues Between the Cognitive Sciences and the Buddhist Tradition. Boston: Shambhala Press. [Reprinted, 2014, as Gentle Bridges: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on the Sciences of Mind.]
- 1993 (with W. Stein, eds.). Thinking About Biology: An Introduction to Theoretical Biology. Addison-Wesley, SFI Series on Complexity. [Reprinted, 2018, as Thinking About Biology: An Invitation to Current Theoretical Biology, CRC Press.]
- 1997 (ed.). Sleeping, Dreaming and Dying: An Exploration of Consciousness with the Dalai Lama. Boston: Wisdom Books.
- 1999. Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom and Cognition. Stanford University Press.
- 1999 (with J. Shear, eds.). The View from Within: First-Person Methodologies in the Study of Consciousness. London: Imprint Academic.
- 1999 (with J. Petitot, B. Pachoud, and J-M. Roy, eds.). Naturalizing Phenomenology: Contemporary Issues in Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Stanford University Press.
Notable articles
- 2002 (with A. Weber). 'Life after Kant: Natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations of biological individuality'. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences I:97–125, 2002.
See also
- Autopoiesis
- Buddhism
- Cartesian anxiety
- Charles Laughlin
- Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki
- Dan Zahavi
- Eleanor Rosch
- Enactivism
- Embodied cognition
- Gerald Edelman
- Humberto Maturana
- Jakob von Uexküll
- Jerome Bruner
- Lawrence Barsalou
- Meaning making
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty
- Molecular Cellular Cognition
- Phenomenology
- Neurophenomenology
- Neurodynamics
- Umwelt
- Vittorio Gallese
- Vittorio Guidano
- Wolfgang Prinz
References
- ^ "Andrs-Varela - User Trees - Genealogy.com". www.genealogy.com.
- PMID 12795203.
- ^ "History". Mind & Life Institute.
- ^ "Mission". Mind & Life Institute.
- ^ "Intimate Distances - Fragments for a Phenomenology of Organ Transplantation Archived 2016-09-26 at the Wayback Machine"
- ISBN 0-262-72021-3
- ISBN 978-0385476768.
- ^ London, Scott (1998). "THE WEB OF LIFE: Book Review". Scottlondon.com. Retrieved 9 Dec 2018.
- ^ Walmsley, Lachlan Douglas (2 May 2017). "Review - The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience Revised Edition". Metapsychology Online. Metapsychology (Volume 21, Issue 18). Retrieved 10 Dec 2018.
- )
- ^ Comprehensive bibliography by Randall Whitaker.
Further reading
External links
- Intimate Distances An autobiographical essay written shortly before his death
- Francisco Varela: In memoriam:
- The Embodied Mind:
- Evan Thompson Archived 2006-02-16 at the Wayback Machine, coauthor.
- Eleanor Rosch, coauthor.
- Daniel Dennett, 1993, "Review of The Embodied Mind," American Journal of Psychology 106: 121–26.
- "Escher, enaction & intersubjectivity."
- "Why the mind is not in the head" The Cosmos Letter, Expo'90 Foundation, Japan
- Franz Reichle, 2004. Film Monte Grande - What is Life?