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The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding
"Knowing how we know" is the subject of this book. Its authors present a new view of cognition that has important social and ethical implications, for, they assert, the only world we humans can have is the one we create together through the actions of our coexistence. Written for a general audience as well as for students, scholars, and scientists and abundantly illustrated with examples from biology, linguistics, and new social and cultural phenomena, this revised edition includes a new afterword by Dr. Varela, in which he discusses the effect the book has had in the years since its first publication.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
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About the author
Humberto R. Maturana
24 books181 followersHumberto Maturana is a Chilean biologist. Many consider him a member of a group of second-order cybernetics theoreticians such as Heinz von Foerster, Gordon Pask, Herbert Brün and Ernst von Glasersfeld.
Maturana, along with Francisco Varela and Ricardo B. Uribe, is particularly known for creating the term "autopoiesis" about the self-generating, self-maintaining structure in living systems, and concepts such as structural determinism and structure coupling. His work has been influential in many fields, mainly the field of systems thinking and cybernetics. Overall, his work is concerned with the biology of cognition
Maturana, along with Francisco Varela and Ricardo B. Uribe, is particularly known for creating the term "autopoiesis" about the self-generating, self-maintaining structure in living systems, and concepts such as structural determinism and structure coupling. His work has been influential in many fields, mainly the field of systems thinking and cybernetics. Overall, his work is concerned with the biology of cognition
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February 7, 2010
Interested in cybernetics, theoretical biology, and philosophy but still find Dan Brown novels to require mental gymnastics? Put on your philosophical training wheels and give "Tree of Knowledge" a spin!
A mixture of dated scientific ideas, profound frameworks for thinking about living organisms, and unnecessarily complicated jargon, ToK is essentially the children's menu version of Maturana and Varela's Autopoiesis and Cognition papers on living organisms, communication, and consciousness.
I highly recommend reading ToK before Autopoiesis and Cognition and possibly even foregoing Autopoiesis and Cognition altogether. ToK is not only more clearly written but is laden with examples, something lacking in the uncompromisingly sterile Autopoiesis and Cognition.
The rest of this review is a summary of the deep and profound wisdom I gleaned from the Chileans, so you may want to skip it if you haven't read the book yet.
ToK's more gentle approach (along with post-reading conversations with a Chilean economist and Italian physicist) helped clear up a question I had after Autopoiesis and Cognition: if a unity is so deeply coupled with its environment, how does one uniquely define its morphological boundaries? It may seem obvious to look at me, carve a 2D surface over my skin, and call me a closed system, but give me a week without a consistent supply of low-entropy energy and I'll quickly succumb to the second law of thermodynamics. The key trick is this: unique boundaries there are not. "Everything said is said by an observer." An observer selects the features by which a unity will be defined through their shared domain of interactions. Different observers (and even the same observer at different times with different goals) will have different domains of interactions and will define a unity in a different way. For example, a given university may be a set of assets and liabilities, a collection of students, a football team, a physical space, or some combination of these things, depending on who you ask.
Some more notes:
Referring to a unity implies an act of distinction.
Replication, copy, and reproduction can be distinguished by the amount of historicity in each process. Replication (repeated generation) is ahistorical. Copy (creation from a mold) is historical if iterated. Reproduction (the fracture of a unity to create two unities of the same class), however, is necessarily historical.
Heredity and variation are strongly complementary features. Heredity is the preservation of structure in a historical series of unities. Variation are the differences of structure in that series. Different components of a unity may exhibit different degrees of heredity and variation.
Unities may couple via inclusion (think organelles) or recurrent coupling with the maintenance of individual identities (individual humans).
The environment does not instruct an organism; it only triggers internal dynamics. To phrase it differently, the space of possible reactions to an environment is defined in the internal structure of an organism; the environment does not inject behavioral commands into an organism in any way. To phrase it differently yet again, environmental stimuli modulate, they do not control. Environmental input is imply one more "voice" in the "conversation" of internal dynamics.
Organisms must exhibit variance of the time scale of their environment (and in a complementary "direction") in order to adapt (remain coupled).
Adaptation in response to a single change in the environment affects the organism in a global way. A small change in structure may occur to accommodate one new feature of the environment, but through an internal domino effect, alter the way an organism interacts with other features.
The simplest neural systems allow detection of correlations between inputs on a sensory surface.
A nervous system expands our possible behaviors by inserting a network with a huge range of possible patterns between our sensory and motor surfaces.
A mixture of dated scientific ideas, profound frameworks for thinking about living organisms, and unnecessarily complicated jargon, ToK is essentially the children's menu version of Maturana and Varela's Autopoiesis and Cognition papers on living organisms, communication, and consciousness.
I highly recommend reading ToK before Autopoiesis and Cognition and possibly even foregoing Autopoiesis and Cognition altogether. ToK is not only more clearly written but is laden with examples, something lacking in the uncompromisingly sterile Autopoiesis and Cognition.
The rest of this review is a summary of the deep and profound wisdom I gleaned from the Chileans, so you may want to skip it if you haven't read the book yet.
ToK's more gentle approach (along with post-reading conversations with a Chilean economist and Italian physicist) helped clear up a question I had after Autopoiesis and Cognition: if a unity is so deeply coupled with its environment, how does one uniquely define its morphological boundaries? It may seem obvious to look at me, carve a 2D surface over my skin, and call me a closed system, but give me a week without a consistent supply of low-entropy energy and I'll quickly succumb to the second law of thermodynamics. The key trick is this: unique boundaries there are not. "Everything said is said by an observer." An observer selects the features by which a unity will be defined through their shared domain of interactions. Different observers (and even the same observer at different times with different goals) will have different domains of interactions and will define a unity in a different way. For example, a given university may be a set of assets and liabilities, a collection of students, a football team, a physical space, or some combination of these things, depending on who you ask.
Some more notes:
Referring to a unity implies an act of distinction.
Replication, copy, and reproduction can be distinguished by the amount of historicity in each process. Replication (repeated generation) is ahistorical. Copy (creation from a mold) is historical if iterated. Reproduction (the fracture of a unity to create two unities of the same class), however, is necessarily historical.
Heredity and variation are strongly complementary features. Heredity is the preservation of structure in a historical series of unities. Variation are the differences of structure in that series. Different components of a unity may exhibit different degrees of heredity and variation.
Unities may couple via inclusion (think organelles) or recurrent coupling with the maintenance of individual identities (individual humans).
The environment does not instruct an organism; it only triggers internal dynamics. To phrase it differently, the space of possible reactions to an environment is defined in the internal structure of an organism; the environment does not inject behavioral commands into an organism in any way. To phrase it differently yet again, environmental stimuli modulate, they do not control. Environmental input is imply one more "voice" in the "conversation" of internal dynamics.
Organisms must exhibit variance of the time scale of their environment (and in a complementary "direction") in order to adapt (remain coupled).
Adaptation in response to a single change in the environment affects the organism in a global way. A small change in structure may occur to accommodate one new feature of the environment, but through an internal domino effect, alter the way an organism interacts with other features.
The simplest neural systems allow detection of correlations between inputs on a sensory surface.
A nervous system expands our possible behaviors by inserting a network with a huge range of possible patterns between our sensory and motor surfaces.
Read
September 12, 2025Die Kapitelübersicht ist in einem kreisförmigen Weg angelegt.
Es startet mit der zellulären Autopoiese – zur Organisation der Metazeller und deren Verhaltensweise – zur operationalen Geschlossenheit des Nervensystems, bishin zur Sprache, über die wir die Erklärung für das Erkennen des Erkennens erzeugen können.
Es gibt keinen festen Bezugspunkt oder Ausgangspunkt von wo das Erkennen startet. Maturana möchte damit veranschaulichen, dass wir von Interaktion zu Interaktion in diesen Kreis verwoben sind, der unser Sein in einem Werden charakterisiert.
Mit dem Begriff der Autopoiesis steigt Maturana früh im Buch ein und liefert DEN Begriff, der Luhmann's Systemtheorie durchzieht.
"Die eigentümlichste Charakteristik eines autopoietischen Systems ist, daß es sich sozusagen an seinen eigenen Schnürsenkeln emporzieht und sich mittels seiner eigenen Dynamik als unterschiedlich vom umliegenden Milieu konstituiert."
…
"Ein Lebewesen ist durch seine autopoietische Organisation charakterisiert."
…
"So spezifizieren die autopoietischen Einheiten die biologische Phänomenologie als die ihnen eigene Phänomenologie mit Charakteristika, die von denen der physikalischen Phänomenologie verschieden sind. Dies ist nicht etwa so, weil die autopoietischen Einheiten irgendeinem Aspekt der physikalischen Phänomenologie widersprechen; da sie molekulare Komponenten haben, müssen sie auch die gesamte physikalische Gesetzlichkeit erfüllen. Vielmehr hängen die Phänomene, die autopoietische Einheiten in ihrem Operieren erzeugen, von der Organisation der Einheit ab und von der Art, wie diese verwirklicht wird, und nicht von den physikalischen Eigenschaften ihrer Bestandteile, welche nur den Raum ihrer Existenz bestimmen.
Wenn deshalb eine Zelle mit einem Molekül X interagiert und es in ihre Prozesse einbezieht, ist die Konsequenz dieser Interaktion nicht durch die Eigenschaften des Moleküls X bestimmt, sondern durch die Art, wie dieses Molekül von der Zelle bei dessen einbeziehen in ihrer autopoietischen Dynamik gesehen beziehungsweise genommen wird."
Autopoiesis: Ein System das sich selbst hervorbringt und selbst erhält. Es grenzt sich von seiner Umwelt ab. Und hier, denke ich, ist der Kerngedanke der, dass dies durch die innere Dynamik geschieht. Es gibt kein Außen, dass bestimmt welche Veränderungen statt finden.
Das Buch erarbeitet, die strukturelle Koppelung von Umwelt und Lebewesen. Die Umwelt löst Störungen (Pertubationen) aus, die zu Veränderungen in der Funktionsweise oder Struktur führt.
Umgekehrt löst der Organismus im Mileu Veränderungen aus, ohne es zu bestimmen.
Beide Seiten lösen Strukturveränderungen aus, die aber die jeweilige Eigenständigkeit bewahren.
"Solange die Einheit nicht in eine destruktive Interaktion mit ihrem Milieu eintritt, werden wir als Beobachter zwischen der Struktur des Milieus und derjenigen der Einheit eine Verträglichkeit (Kompatibilität bzw. Kommensurabilität) feststellen. Solange diese Verträglichkeit vorliegt, wirken Milieu und Einheit füreinander als gegenseitige Quellen von Perturbation, und sie lösen gegenseitig beim jeweils anderen Zustandsveränderungen aus - ein ständiger Prozeß, den wir als strukturelle Koppelung bezeichnet haben."
Seine Sichtweise auf Evolution war dementsprechend für mich erhellend.
Die Zitate im folgenden untermauen nochmals den zuvor erwähnten Gedanken, dass die Umwelt nicht deterministisch wirkt, sondern es immer darum geht die eigene Organisation aufrecht zu erhalten.
Und auch nicht der gewinnt und überlebt, der qualitativ das Beste Gesamtpaket mitbringt.
Das wäre nämlich wieder eine Beurteilung eines Beobachters, der mit Werten und einer bestimmten Beziehung rumjongliert, die außer Acht lässt, dass nur die innere Organisation des Lebewesens bestimmt, wie es auf seine Umwelt reagiert.
Es geht nur darum sich anzupassen. Wie, ist völlig egal. Lebt der Organismus? Ja. Dann ist er angepasst.
"Jede Ontogenese als die individuelle Geschichte strukturellen Wandels ist ein Driften von Strukturveränderung unter Konstanthaltung der Organisation und daher unter Erhaltung der Anpassung."
...
"Wir sehen die Evolution hier als ein strukturelles Driften bei fortwährender phylogenetischer Selektion. Dabei gibt es keinen «Fortschritt» im Sinne einer Optimierung der Nutzung der Umwelt, sondern nur die Erhaltung der Anpassung und Autopoiese in einem Prozeß, in dem Organismus und Umwelt in dauernder Strukturkoppelung bleiben."
…
"Fassen wir zusammen: Die Evolution ist ein natürliches Driften, ein Ergebnis der Erhaltung von Autopoiese und Anpassung. Wie im Fall der Wassertropfen ist keine äußere lenkende Kraft notwendig, um die von uns gesehene Vielfalt und Komplementarität zwischen Organismus und Milieu zu erzeugen. Wir müssen auch keine lenkende Kraft annehmen, damit wir die Richtung der Variationen innerhalb einer Abstammungslinie erklären können. Und schließlich ist es auch nicht so, daß im Verlauf der Evolution irgendeine besondere Qualität der Lebewesen optimiert wird.
Die Evolution ähnelt eher einem wandernden Künstler, der auf der Welt spazierengeht und hier einen Faden, da eine Blechdose, dort ein Stück Holz aufhebt und diese derart zusammenstellt, wie ihre Struktur und die Umstände es erlauben, ohne einen weiteren Grund zu haben, als den daß er sie so zusammenstellen kann. Und so entstehen während seiner Wanderung die kompliziertesten Formen aus harmonisch verbundenen Teilen, Formen, die keinem Entwurf folgen, sondern einem natürlichen Driften entstammen. Genau so sind wir alle entstanden, ohne einem anderen Gesetz zu folgen, als dem der Erhaltung einer Identität und der Fähigkeit zur Fortpflanzung."
Maturana plädiert dafür das Nervensystem als „durch ihre internen Relationen definierte Einheit, als eine Einheit mit operationaler Geschlossenheit“ zu betrachten.
Damit stellt er sich gegen den repräsentatorischen Ansatz.
Dh. die Störung von Außen ist keine Information die empfangen wird, die beim Lernen verinnerlicht wird.
Von außen betrachtet sieht es so aus, als hätte das Nervensystem etwas aufgenommen oder gelernt. Aber das ist nur unsere Beobachterbeschreibung. Im System selbst gibt es kein Abbild der Umwelt, sondern nur fortlaufende Anpassung durch innere Veränderungen.
Er schließt seine Gedanken im Kapitel über das Nervensystem mit einem Aphorismus:
"Leben ist Erkennen (Leben ist effektive Handlung im Existieren als Lebewesen).
Im Prinzip reicht dies aus, um die Beteiligung des Nervensystems an allen kognitiven Dimensionen zu beschreiben."
Mein Merksatz: Menschliches Erkennen als wirksames Handeln.
Am Ende kommt er auf die Kommunikation und soziale Systeme zu sprechen.
Die Sprache ist die Eigenheit eines soziales System. Sie erweitert die Eigenschaften der Mitglieder.
Handeln wird über Sprache koordiniert. Und hierüber findet soziales Lernen statt.
Maturana bezeichnet Sprache als "neue Dimension der operationalen Kohärenz unseres gemeinsamen In-der-Sprache-Seins […], das was wir als Bewusstsein oder als unseren Geist und unser Ich erfahren."
Auch hier wird wieder klar, dass Kommunikation kein Empfangen und Senden von Informationen darstellt, sondern dass sie Teil eines fortlaufenden gemeinsamen Veränderungsprozesses ist, in dem wir miteinander verbunden sind und unser Handeln aufeinander abstimmen.
Und in diesem Abstimmen der Handlungen entsteht die Erfahrung. Meist merken wir erst wie sehr die Erfahrung von der Verbindung zur Kommunikation abhängt, wenn Kommunikation misslingt.
Wenn also die Koppelung zusammenbricht.
Durch Sprache bringen wir laut Maturana eine Welt hervor, die wir miteinander teilen.
Es startet mit der zellulären Autopoiese – zur Organisation der Metazeller und deren Verhaltensweise – zur operationalen Geschlossenheit des Nervensystems, bishin zur Sprache, über die wir die Erklärung für das Erkennen des Erkennens erzeugen können.
Es gibt keinen festen Bezugspunkt oder Ausgangspunkt von wo das Erkennen startet. Maturana möchte damit veranschaulichen, dass wir von Interaktion zu Interaktion in diesen Kreis verwoben sind, der unser Sein in einem Werden charakterisiert.
Mit dem Begriff der Autopoiesis steigt Maturana früh im Buch ein und liefert DEN Begriff, der Luhmann's Systemtheorie durchzieht.
"Die eigentümlichste Charakteristik eines autopoietischen Systems ist, daß es sich sozusagen an seinen eigenen Schnürsenkeln emporzieht und sich mittels seiner eigenen Dynamik als unterschiedlich vom umliegenden Milieu konstituiert."
…
"Ein Lebewesen ist durch seine autopoietische Organisation charakterisiert."
…
"So spezifizieren die autopoietischen Einheiten die biologische Phänomenologie als die ihnen eigene Phänomenologie mit Charakteristika, die von denen der physikalischen Phänomenologie verschieden sind. Dies ist nicht etwa so, weil die autopoietischen Einheiten irgendeinem Aspekt der physikalischen Phänomenologie widersprechen; da sie molekulare Komponenten haben, müssen sie auch die gesamte physikalische Gesetzlichkeit erfüllen. Vielmehr hängen die Phänomene, die autopoietische Einheiten in ihrem Operieren erzeugen, von der Organisation der Einheit ab und von der Art, wie diese verwirklicht wird, und nicht von den physikalischen Eigenschaften ihrer Bestandteile, welche nur den Raum ihrer Existenz bestimmen.
Wenn deshalb eine Zelle mit einem Molekül X interagiert und es in ihre Prozesse einbezieht, ist die Konsequenz dieser Interaktion nicht durch die Eigenschaften des Moleküls X bestimmt, sondern durch die Art, wie dieses Molekül von der Zelle bei dessen einbeziehen in ihrer autopoietischen Dynamik gesehen beziehungsweise genommen wird."
Autopoiesis: Ein System das sich selbst hervorbringt und selbst erhält. Es grenzt sich von seiner Umwelt ab. Und hier, denke ich, ist der Kerngedanke der, dass dies durch die innere Dynamik geschieht. Es gibt kein Außen, dass bestimmt welche Veränderungen statt finden.
Das Buch erarbeitet, die strukturelle Koppelung von Umwelt und Lebewesen. Die Umwelt löst Störungen (Pertubationen) aus, die zu Veränderungen in der Funktionsweise oder Struktur führt.
Umgekehrt löst der Organismus im Mileu Veränderungen aus, ohne es zu bestimmen.
Beide Seiten lösen Strukturveränderungen aus, die aber die jeweilige Eigenständigkeit bewahren.
"Solange die Einheit nicht in eine destruktive Interaktion mit ihrem Milieu eintritt, werden wir als Beobachter zwischen der Struktur des Milieus und derjenigen der Einheit eine Verträglichkeit (Kompatibilität bzw. Kommensurabilität) feststellen. Solange diese Verträglichkeit vorliegt, wirken Milieu und Einheit füreinander als gegenseitige Quellen von Perturbation, und sie lösen gegenseitig beim jeweils anderen Zustandsveränderungen aus - ein ständiger Prozeß, den wir als strukturelle Koppelung bezeichnet haben."
Seine Sichtweise auf Evolution war dementsprechend für mich erhellend.
Die Zitate im folgenden untermauen nochmals den zuvor erwähnten Gedanken, dass die Umwelt nicht deterministisch wirkt, sondern es immer darum geht die eigene Organisation aufrecht zu erhalten.
Und auch nicht der gewinnt und überlebt, der qualitativ das Beste Gesamtpaket mitbringt.
Das wäre nämlich wieder eine Beurteilung eines Beobachters, der mit Werten und einer bestimmten Beziehung rumjongliert, die außer Acht lässt, dass nur die innere Organisation des Lebewesens bestimmt, wie es auf seine Umwelt reagiert.
Es geht nur darum sich anzupassen. Wie, ist völlig egal. Lebt der Organismus? Ja. Dann ist er angepasst.
"Jede Ontogenese als die individuelle Geschichte strukturellen Wandels ist ein Driften von Strukturveränderung unter Konstanthaltung der Organisation und daher unter Erhaltung der Anpassung."
...
"Wir sehen die Evolution hier als ein strukturelles Driften bei fortwährender phylogenetischer Selektion. Dabei gibt es keinen «Fortschritt» im Sinne einer Optimierung der Nutzung der Umwelt, sondern nur die Erhaltung der Anpassung und Autopoiese in einem Prozeß, in dem Organismus und Umwelt in dauernder Strukturkoppelung bleiben."
…
"Fassen wir zusammen: Die Evolution ist ein natürliches Driften, ein Ergebnis der Erhaltung von Autopoiese und Anpassung. Wie im Fall der Wassertropfen ist keine äußere lenkende Kraft notwendig, um die von uns gesehene Vielfalt und Komplementarität zwischen Organismus und Milieu zu erzeugen. Wir müssen auch keine lenkende Kraft annehmen, damit wir die Richtung der Variationen innerhalb einer Abstammungslinie erklären können. Und schließlich ist es auch nicht so, daß im Verlauf der Evolution irgendeine besondere Qualität der Lebewesen optimiert wird.
Die Evolution ähnelt eher einem wandernden Künstler, der auf der Welt spazierengeht und hier einen Faden, da eine Blechdose, dort ein Stück Holz aufhebt und diese derart zusammenstellt, wie ihre Struktur und die Umstände es erlauben, ohne einen weiteren Grund zu haben, als den daß er sie so zusammenstellen kann. Und so entstehen während seiner Wanderung die kompliziertesten Formen aus harmonisch verbundenen Teilen, Formen, die keinem Entwurf folgen, sondern einem natürlichen Driften entstammen. Genau so sind wir alle entstanden, ohne einem anderen Gesetz zu folgen, als dem der Erhaltung einer Identität und der Fähigkeit zur Fortpflanzung."
Maturana plädiert dafür das Nervensystem als „durch ihre internen Relationen definierte Einheit, als eine Einheit mit operationaler Geschlossenheit“ zu betrachten.
Damit stellt er sich gegen den repräsentatorischen Ansatz.
Dh. die Störung von Außen ist keine Information die empfangen wird, die beim Lernen verinnerlicht wird.
Von außen betrachtet sieht es so aus, als hätte das Nervensystem etwas aufgenommen oder gelernt. Aber das ist nur unsere Beobachterbeschreibung. Im System selbst gibt es kein Abbild der Umwelt, sondern nur fortlaufende Anpassung durch innere Veränderungen.
Er schließt seine Gedanken im Kapitel über das Nervensystem mit einem Aphorismus:
"Leben ist Erkennen (Leben ist effektive Handlung im Existieren als Lebewesen).
Im Prinzip reicht dies aus, um die Beteiligung des Nervensystems an allen kognitiven Dimensionen zu beschreiben."
Mein Merksatz: Menschliches Erkennen als wirksames Handeln.
Am Ende kommt er auf die Kommunikation und soziale Systeme zu sprechen.
Die Sprache ist die Eigenheit eines soziales System. Sie erweitert die Eigenschaften der Mitglieder.
Handeln wird über Sprache koordiniert. Und hierüber findet soziales Lernen statt.
Maturana bezeichnet Sprache als "neue Dimension der operationalen Kohärenz unseres gemeinsamen In-der-Sprache-Seins […], das was wir als Bewusstsein oder als unseren Geist und unser Ich erfahren."
Auch hier wird wieder klar, dass Kommunikation kein Empfangen und Senden von Informationen darstellt, sondern dass sie Teil eines fortlaufenden gemeinsamen Veränderungsprozesses ist, in dem wir miteinander verbunden sind und unser Handeln aufeinander abstimmen.
Und in diesem Abstimmen der Handlungen entsteht die Erfahrung. Meist merken wir erst wie sehr die Erfahrung von der Verbindung zur Kommunikation abhängt, wenn Kommunikation misslingt.
Wenn also die Koppelung zusammenbricht.
Durch Sprache bringen wir laut Maturana eine Welt hervor, die wir miteinander teilen.
December 10, 2009
This is the book that inspired me to give up fighting what I saw as mainstream unenlightened biological determinism in psychology, and enrol as a mature age student in psychology while a single parent of four. The language is difficult and challenging and the concepts complex, it took me many attempts to get it, but worth the effort. A classic, an all time favorite. I read it twenty years ago, after having the privelege of attending a workshop with the author, a delightful shamen of a man. His ultimate message is that human beings are biologically programmed for love, and that love and relationship in language is what makes us human.
January 31, 2017
This is the best book I've read probably since I began to read. Undoubtedly, it is at least the conceptual cherry in the proverbial intellectual cake I've been cooking for at least the past two years as I reflected upon and studied about justice, political philosophy, sociology, anthropology, psychology, as well as, most notably recently, systems theory, complexity and cognitive science.
Through existing we "put forth a world" that is a result not of direct contact with "objective external reality" (thus not a representational mind) nor a fantasy of our imagination (thus not a solipsistic dreamland). We experience reality as autonomous unities in "structural coupling" with the environment which, for each of us, include other beings as well.
The main takeaway of this view, for myself, lies in short in its ability to present incredible insights into human cognition and behavior while making it clear how they are absolutely incompatible with traditional notions of 'objectivity vs. subjectivity', free will/agency, 'nature vs. nurture', certainty, reason, and education. To accept it as credible (and the core of this theory is all but incredible - indeed, once one "creeds" it, it is impossible to dispel of one's mind without being aware one is refusing to think > and that is 'knowing how we know'); to accept it as credible is to necessarily accept a most drastic notion of equality: one's view of the world is unique, a result of one's own social/nurtural (ontogenic) history and one's biological/natural (philogenic) history. That means we are equal in our uniqueness of limitation. The world we perceive and think about cannot be any other than the one we put forth through our own cognition. Thus, the world a 21st century American woman perceives and lives in, though 'objectively' the same, is filled with values, notions (or lack thereof) of right, wrong, old, new, roles, goals, that are for the most part wildly different than the ones through which, say, a native Mongolian in the 15th century perceived.
It is not just that we are different because we learned different things. Our brains quite literally are unable to perceive (or rather, should I say 'produce'?) the same meanings in reality. We are who we are born, but also (and _that_ is why we disagree so much everywhere) who we become as we live - one is indissociable from another. Autonomy/freedom is only perceived as a phenomenon through our social coupling, and such social coupling only comes about through our biological/embodied reality, from whence we can never escape, for it is who we are, and to escape it would mean to be something else.
I could spend hours talking about it, but that might be mostly pointless - it is usually easier for one to read the book itself, and besides what I took away from it is not a result of the book by itself and my 'interpretation' of it, but rather -in fashion with the book itself- of my past experiences, that have helped shape my awareness of such ideas.
But please, do read this.
It is highly accessible, requires no prior understanding of its subjects (beyond basic high school biology), and will enable you, if you give yourself into it, to become someone new - or, rather, to be more aware of what you are, and what you are not.
The following passage from the last chapter of the book helps illustrate my amazement a little, and will close this review:
"The knowledge of knowledge compels. It compels us to adopt an attitude of permanent vigilance against the temptation of certainty. It compels us to realize that the world everyone sees is not *the* world but *a* world which we bring forth with others. It compels us to see that the world will be different only if we live differently. It compels us because, when we know that we know, we cannot deny (to ourselves or to others) that we know.
That is why everything we said in this book, through our knowledge of our knowledge, implies an ethics that we cannot evade, an ethics that has its reference point in the awareness of the biological and social structure of human beings, an ethics that springs from human reflection and puts human reflection right at the core as a constitutive social phenomenon. If we know that our world is necessarily the world we bring forth with others, every time we are in conflict with another human being *with whom we want to remain in coexistence*, we cannot affirm what for us is certain (an absolute truth) because that woudl negate the other person. If we want to coexist with the other person, we must see that *his certainty - however undesirable it may seem to us - is as legitimate and valid as our own* because, like our own, that certainty expresses his conservation of structural coupling in a domain of existence - however undesirable it may seem to us. Hence, the only possibility for coexistence is to opt for a broader perspective, a domain of existence in which both parties fit in the bringing forth of a common world. A conflict is always a mutual negation. It can never be solved in the domain where it takes place if the disputants are 'certain.' A conflict can go away only if we move to another domain where coexistence takes place. The knowledge of this knowledge constitutes the social imperative for a human-centered ethics."
Through existing we "put forth a world" that is a result not of direct contact with "objective external reality" (thus not a representational mind) nor a fantasy of our imagination (thus not a solipsistic dreamland). We experience reality as autonomous unities in "structural coupling" with the environment which, for each of us, include other beings as well.
The main takeaway of this view, for myself, lies in short in its ability to present incredible insights into human cognition and behavior while making it clear how they are absolutely incompatible with traditional notions of 'objectivity vs. subjectivity', free will/agency, 'nature vs. nurture', certainty, reason, and education. To accept it as credible (and the core of this theory is all but incredible - indeed, once one "creeds" it, it is impossible to dispel of one's mind without being aware one is refusing to think > and that is 'knowing how we know'); to accept it as credible is to necessarily accept a most drastic notion of equality: one's view of the world is unique, a result of one's own social/nurtural (ontogenic) history and one's biological/natural (philogenic) history. That means we are equal in our uniqueness of limitation. The world we perceive and think about cannot be any other than the one we put forth through our own cognition. Thus, the world a 21st century American woman perceives and lives in, though 'objectively' the same, is filled with values, notions (or lack thereof) of right, wrong, old, new, roles, goals, that are for the most part wildly different than the ones through which, say, a native Mongolian in the 15th century perceived.
It is not just that we are different because we learned different things. Our brains quite literally are unable to perceive (or rather, should I say 'produce'?) the same meanings in reality. We are who we are born, but also (and _that_ is why we disagree so much everywhere) who we become as we live - one is indissociable from another. Autonomy/freedom is only perceived as a phenomenon through our social coupling, and such social coupling only comes about through our biological/embodied reality, from whence we can never escape, for it is who we are, and to escape it would mean to be something else.
I could spend hours talking about it, but that might be mostly pointless - it is usually easier for one to read the book itself, and besides what I took away from it is not a result of the book by itself and my 'interpretation' of it, but rather -in fashion with the book itself- of my past experiences, that have helped shape my awareness of such ideas.
But please, do read this.
It is highly accessible, requires no prior understanding of its subjects (beyond basic high school biology), and will enable you, if you give yourself into it, to become someone new - or, rather, to be more aware of what you are, and what you are not.
The following passage from the last chapter of the book helps illustrate my amazement a little, and will close this review:
"The knowledge of knowledge compels. It compels us to adopt an attitude of permanent vigilance against the temptation of certainty. It compels us to realize that the world everyone sees is not *the* world but *a* world which we bring forth with others. It compels us to see that the world will be different only if we live differently. It compels us because, when we know that we know, we cannot deny (to ourselves or to others) that we know.
That is why everything we said in this book, through our knowledge of our knowledge, implies an ethics that we cannot evade, an ethics that has its reference point in the awareness of the biological and social structure of human beings, an ethics that springs from human reflection and puts human reflection right at the core as a constitutive social phenomenon. If we know that our world is necessarily the world we bring forth with others, every time we are in conflict with another human being *with whom we want to remain in coexistence*, we cannot affirm what for us is certain (an absolute truth) because that woudl negate the other person. If we want to coexist with the other person, we must see that *his certainty - however undesirable it may seem to us - is as legitimate and valid as our own* because, like our own, that certainty expresses his conservation of structural coupling in a domain of existence - however undesirable it may seem to us. Hence, the only possibility for coexistence is to opt for a broader perspective, a domain of existence in which both parties fit in the bringing forth of a common world. A conflict is always a mutual negation. It can never be solved in the domain where it takes place if the disputants are 'certain.' A conflict can go away only if we move to another domain where coexistence takes place. The knowledge of this knowledge constitutes the social imperative for a human-centered ethics."
July 20, 2021
A comprehensive outline of how living systems are also mental systems; that self-organizing, autopoietic, living systems are the basis of mind and sentience.
Following from earlier work in second-order cybernetics such as Gregory Bateson's and Heinz Von Forester's work, the authors follow a circle from first-person lived experience through the objective third-person facts of the evolution of complexity and back again to lived experience to reveal a view of how consciousness and mind are embedded and embodied in a living world. This was an early study in what is now a more mainstream embodied mind approach to cognitive science and other investigations such as biological phenomenology, the correlative study of first- and third-person modes of mind, body, and environment. An excellent follow up study is Evan Thompson's Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. See also my GoodReads list entitled Embodied Cognition.
Following from earlier work in second-order cybernetics such as Gregory Bateson's and Heinz Von Forester's work, the authors follow a circle from first-person lived experience through the objective third-person facts of the evolution of complexity and back again to lived experience to reveal a view of how consciousness and mind are embedded and embodied in a living world. This was an early study in what is now a more mainstream embodied mind approach to cognitive science and other investigations such as biological phenomenology, the correlative study of first- and third-person modes of mind, body, and environment. An excellent follow up study is Evan Thompson's Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. See also my GoodReads list entitled Embodied Cognition.
January 21, 2018
Kitabın bölümlerinin devamlılığı ve şekilerde anlatımı okumada kolaylık sağlıyor.çeviri çok başarılı. Bilgiye farklı bakış açısı.
August 19, 2024
Con este libro no haré una reseña como suelo hacerlo porque de hecho creo que tendré que releerlo pronto. Lo conocí en bachillerato y leí unos capítulos en su momento, ahora lo leí entero dentro de una pequeña campaña que estoy haciendo por leer más no ficción e ir educándome sobre distintos temas.
No fue una lectura sencilla y no porque fuera una prosa complicada, sino que era difícil de interiorizar lo que decía. Por más que iba leyendo con cuidado, entendía, pero después me daba cuenta de que no terminaba de comprender. Creo que Maturana usaba unos ejemplos buenísimos que de verdad ayudaban mucho y, de hecho, era bastante claro para explicar algunas cosas. Sin embargo, es un libro que se va construyendo capítulo a capítulo como si fuera una torre y es necesario ir entendiendo las bases para seguir y quizá ahí fallé un poco, porque no terminé de comprender las bases. Por eso planeo volver a leerlo ahora que ya tengo nociones generales para terminar de interiorizar sus conceptos.
No me siento lo suficientemente capacitada para decir esto, pero creo que es un gran libro que analiza el concepto de la vida a nivel celular para poder llegar a entender el conocimiento mismo. Es capaz de hacerlo desde un nivel celular y luego llevarlo a los humanos, me gustó el cómo todo podía ir ampliándose en escalas y seguía siendo válido. En especial, me gustó que todo lo que propueso era muy sencillo (en esencia) y autosustentable en sus propias ideas.
No fue una lectura sencilla y no porque fuera una prosa complicada, sino que era difícil de interiorizar lo que decía. Por más que iba leyendo con cuidado, entendía, pero después me daba cuenta de que no terminaba de comprender. Creo que Maturana usaba unos ejemplos buenísimos que de verdad ayudaban mucho y, de hecho, era bastante claro para explicar algunas cosas. Sin embargo, es un libro que se va construyendo capítulo a capítulo como si fuera una torre y es necesario ir entendiendo las bases para seguir y quizá ahí fallé un poco, porque no terminé de comprender las bases. Por eso planeo volver a leerlo ahora que ya tengo nociones generales para terminar de interiorizar sus conceptos.
No me siento lo suficientemente capacitada para decir esto, pero creo que es un gran libro que analiza el concepto de la vida a nivel celular para poder llegar a entender el conocimiento mismo. Es capaz de hacerlo desde un nivel celular y luego llevarlo a los humanos, me gustó el cómo todo podía ir ampliándose en escalas y seguía siendo válido. En especial, me gustó que todo lo que propueso era muy sencillo (en esencia) y autosustentable en sus propias ideas.
August 12, 2024
Lo leí joven, creo no haber entendido casi nada pero aún así me cambió la vida.
March 21, 2017
The authors present a unified theory of cognition and concept formation, that can be extended to explain knowledge, knowing, social interactions. The basic concept is autopoiesis, "Our proposition is that living beings are characterized in that, literally, they continually self-producing. We indicate this process when we call the organizations that defines them an autopoietic organization. " (page 43). Then on page 48, "We are proposing that the mechanism that makes living beings autonomous systems is autopoiesis. This characterizes them as autonomous systems." The book is easy reading, although the concepts are not easily understandable, it is necessary some background.
August 11, 2020
This was a fairly expansive book. I would imagine that it is incredibly hard because it is interdisciplinary in scope. The authors do a good job of jumping away from representationalism in the sciences -- and a pretty good job at outlining how knowledge can be understood as a series of "plateaus" layered on one another -- but they do miss some of the more esoteric applications. In some way this book can be compared to one chapter of Deleuze and Guattari's "1000 Plateaus" under "geophilosophy" and there is much to be said for how these authors, Maturana and Varela, are able to present something that isn't confusingly philosophical but walks right up to it in the language of popular science.
I think for the book to be truly amazing, they would have to uproot themselves around so that they can consider the "biological roots of knowledge" itself as being composed in a more general presentation of how information and knowledge can work as symbolizations that can have consistent axial mappings to each of their "represented domain" but how that itself, while a strength of human cognition (being able to model things that are largely arbitrary) is also a weakness because we can confuse ourselves with illegitimate mappings.
They ultimately eschew a post-structural reading in that they insist on a fundamental biology of social phenomenon -- that there must be an emotional basis otherwise it doesn't really map onto our biology as "meaningful". Interesting, this sentiment, about the nature of meaning necessitating an emotional content that makes, for Varela and Maturana, knowledge as a biological root of a human understanding -- and perhaps not the fact that humans are of biological machinery. Of course, it is arguable if machines could understand anything at all, but this book does not dive into that detail.
Whereas more contemporary structuralist and post-structuralist readings often locate the impetus for human understanding in culture, the essentialist bent in this book is that such impetus is castrated unless humans have a fundamentally emotional root to grok whatever happens to them. Perhaps the authors take this sentiment as matter-of-fact because they do not go deeper into this line of thinking, instead, grounding the essence of our social phenomenon in emotions, with love as the primary force that unifies us in a shared co-existence. This is claim is not more explored in this book, but it is interesting that a book that began as biology resolves to end its conclusion in "love" as being what makes everything go around, and what makes meaning for humans ontologically a matter of biology.
I think for the book to be truly amazing, they would have to uproot themselves around so that they can consider the "biological roots of knowledge" itself as being composed in a more general presentation of how information and knowledge can work as symbolizations that can have consistent axial mappings to each of their "represented domain" but how that itself, while a strength of human cognition (being able to model things that are largely arbitrary) is also a weakness because we can confuse ourselves with illegitimate mappings.
They ultimately eschew a post-structural reading in that they insist on a fundamental biology of social phenomenon -- that there must be an emotional basis otherwise it doesn't really map onto our biology as "meaningful". Interesting, this sentiment, about the nature of meaning necessitating an emotional content that makes, for Varela and Maturana, knowledge as a biological root of a human understanding -- and perhaps not the fact that humans are of biological machinery. Of course, it is arguable if machines could understand anything at all, but this book does not dive into that detail.
Whereas more contemporary structuralist and post-structuralist readings often locate the impetus for human understanding in culture, the essentialist bent in this book is that such impetus is castrated unless humans have a fundamentally emotional root to grok whatever happens to them. Perhaps the authors take this sentiment as matter-of-fact because they do not go deeper into this line of thinking, instead, grounding the essence of our social phenomenon in emotions, with love as the primary force that unifies us in a shared co-existence. This is claim is not more explored in this book, but it is interesting that a book that began as biology resolves to end its conclusion in "love" as being what makes everything go around, and what makes meaning for humans ontologically a matter of biology.
August 3, 2010
This book came out of a series of lectures given by the writers as a contribution to a decision in 1980 by the Organization of Anerican States to research the many difficulties confronted in social communication and knowledge transfer.
It begins by unmasking the 'temptation of certainty' in all branches of knowledge and proceeds thence to present 'a coherent formulation of the foundation of communication as the biological being of man."
Clearly illustrated with diagrams, pictures and blocks of key points, the concluding chapter sums up the enterprise:
We began with the features of our experience common to our shared social life. From that starting point we moved on to cellular autopoiesis, the organization of metacellulars and their behavioral domains, the operational closure of the nervous system, the linguistic domains, and language. Along the way, we put together the building blocks of an explanatory system capable of showing how the phenomena proper to living beings arise. We came to see how social phenomena founded on a linguistic coupling give rise to language and how language, from our daily experience of cognition, enables us to explain its origin. The beginning is the end.
We have thus completed the task we set for ourselves, namely, that a theory of knowledge ought to show how knowing generates the explanation of knowing. This situation is very different from what we usually find, where the phenomenon of explaining and the phenomenon explained belong to different domains.
This quotation and the entire final chapter can be found at http://www.mindfire.ca/The%20Tree%20o.... I've read that and am working through the book which, as well as anything else, is a useful primer for a layperson on cell formation, reproduction, evolutionary 'drift' and this will form the basis of a progression to more human behavioural and sociolinguistic phenomena with this biological base.
It begins by unmasking the 'temptation of certainty' in all branches of knowledge and proceeds thence to present 'a coherent formulation of the foundation of communication as the biological being of man."
Clearly illustrated with diagrams, pictures and blocks of key points, the concluding chapter sums up the enterprise:
We began with the features of our experience common to our shared social life. From that starting point we moved on to cellular autopoiesis, the organization of metacellulars and their behavioral domains, the operational closure of the nervous system, the linguistic domains, and language. Along the way, we put together the building blocks of an explanatory system capable of showing how the phenomena proper to living beings arise. We came to see how social phenomena founded on a linguistic coupling give rise to language and how language, from our daily experience of cognition, enables us to explain its origin. The beginning is the end.
We have thus completed the task we set for ourselves, namely, that a theory of knowledge ought to show how knowing generates the explanation of knowing. This situation is very different from what we usually find, where the phenomenon of explaining and the phenomenon explained belong to different domains.
This quotation and the entire final chapter can be found at http://www.mindfire.ca/The%20Tree%20o.... I've read that and am working through the book which, as well as anything else, is a useful primer for a layperson on cell formation, reproduction, evolutionary 'drift' and this will form the basis of a progression to more human behavioural and sociolinguistic phenomena with this biological base.
November 25, 2012
I purposefully read this book three times in order to better comprehend as much as possible. If you are interested in cybernetics, whole systems, evolution, epistemology, or any related discipline then this book would be at home on your bookshelf. If you are at all interested in how we "work" .. we human beans, read this book, and whatever else you can find by Maturana and his protege Varela. Make a label for your bookshelf: Neurophilosophy, Etc. Put this book there after you've done reading it.
"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.
"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.
Read
November 9, 2021Este clásico de Maturana y Varela es una de las mejores introducciones a una ciencia cognitiva contemporánea, compleja y detallada de mucho interés también para la filosofía. A su vez es una gran obra divulgadora sobre algunos de los conceptos básicos de la bioquímica, la biología evolutiva y la neurología. Es conjunto, es un libro científicamente riguro y pertiente, filosóficamente significativo y muy claro en todas sus explicaciones y afirmaciones.
January 7, 2016
I like reading these technical books but I can never quite hang on to enough of the wow moments and 'penny drops' to keep it in my consciousness or communicate it to others properly but I'll give it a go.
I think the big concept is autopoiesis, which is that in living things there is an internal unity and divider between the living thing and the environment. This condition gives rise to possibilities of interaction, that in many lineages give rise to behaviour, and in some language, and in currently one circumstance knowledge of the actions the organism is doing (as well as much action that is structural and uncontrolled by the consciousness- especially our cellular goings on that give rise to that ability to know).
Another big idea here is the idea that adaptation is a conserved feature of living things. I like how this places competition and 'selection' (which the book also teases out nicely) in a broader context, and makes adaptation, rather than competition, the compelling feature of life.
Sooo... In the end we happen, with our consciousness and we are obliged to bring it forth in a way that allows others to share it. This is because allowing others to share in it allows both us and them to retain knowledge and to retain their adaptation to the environment.
I am a Christian, so I guess it probably sits well with me to have a moral system encouraging relationship, 'being in the now', and supporting altruism seemingly spring out of nature. I am not saying this justifies anything of my faith (which I really don't know how to justify) but it does sit well. Aside from that, I can see the power of the systematic and scientifically framed discussion of the origins, limitations, and possibilities of cognition and think this is an awesome book.
I think the big concept is autopoiesis, which is that in living things there is an internal unity and divider between the living thing and the environment. This condition gives rise to possibilities of interaction, that in many lineages give rise to behaviour, and in some language, and in currently one circumstance knowledge of the actions the organism is doing (as well as much action that is structural and uncontrolled by the consciousness- especially our cellular goings on that give rise to that ability to know).
Another big idea here is the idea that adaptation is a conserved feature of living things. I like how this places competition and 'selection' (which the book also teases out nicely) in a broader context, and makes adaptation, rather than competition, the compelling feature of life.
Sooo... In the end we happen, with our consciousness and we are obliged to bring it forth in a way that allows others to share it. This is because allowing others to share in it allows both us and them to retain knowledge and to retain their adaptation to the environment.
I am a Christian, so I guess it probably sits well with me to have a moral system encouraging relationship, 'being in the now', and supporting altruism seemingly spring out of nature. I am not saying this justifies anything of my faith (which I really don't know how to justify) but it does sit well. Aside from that, I can see the power of the systematic and scientifically framed discussion of the origins, limitations, and possibilities of cognition and think this is an awesome book.
November 12, 2007
El Árbol de Conocimiento, escrito por Humberto Maturana y por el inolvidable biólogo y maestro budista Francísco Varela, fue un libro que me marcó hace años, cuando comenzaba a conocer esta cultura de estudios y comprensión de la mente y el conocimiento. El conocimiento como forma de hacer, partiendo de formas de vida simples hasta el conocimiento humano y la formación de sistemas.
Es un libro que logra superar la visión reduccionista y mecánica de la mente como máquina de informaición, y poner la conexión con el cuerpo que conoce haciendo en su medio como adaptaciones prácticas.
Junto con el Conocer y El Cuerpo Presente de Francisco Varela, son trabajos que me dieron una nueva comprensión de mi propio aprendizaje, pensamiento y mi acercamiento a mi trabajo como desarrollo de transformaciones de visiones y prácticas sociales, laborales y corporativas, partiendo por la transformación de los individuos, lo que también me va transformando en el caminar de esos procesos.
Es un libro que logra superar la visión reduccionista y mecánica de la mente como máquina de informaición, y poner la conexión con el cuerpo que conoce haciendo en su medio como adaptaciones prácticas.
Junto con el Conocer y El Cuerpo Presente de Francisco Varela, son trabajos que me dieron una nueva comprensión de mi propio aprendizaje, pensamiento y mi acercamiento a mi trabajo como desarrollo de transformaciones de visiones y prácticas sociales, laborales y corporativas, partiendo por la transformación de los individuos, lo que también me va transformando en el caminar de esos procesos.
December 14, 2018
Bu konuda çok okuma yapmamış olduğum için mi, türdeşlerine kıyasla inanılmaz etkileyici alternatif fikirler ileri sürüldüğünden mi, bana çok açık algılı ve yüksek farkındalıklı insanlar olarak geldikleri için hayranlığımdan fikirlerinin sorgulanmayacak fikirler olduğunu hissettiğimden mi, alternatif fikirleri sorgusuz sualsiz reddediyor olmak kendime kapalı fikirli olduğumu hissettireceğinden mi, yoksa böyle insanların varlığı beni çok mutlu ettiği (kendileri için bu algı açıklığıyla hayatlarının çok zor olduğunu düşünmeme rağmen) için bencilce hayran kaldığımdan mı bilmiyorum, fakat, sonuç itibariyle hayatımın en verimli zamanını geçirmiş olabilirim. Keşke diğer kitapları da Türkçeye çevrilse, İngilizcesine ulaşmak bu kadar pahalı olmasa ve PDF olarak okuma yeteneğine sahip olsam. Bu fikirlerin devamlılığına sadece dil veya para bariyeri yüzünden erişemiyor olmak çok üzücü. Her neyse, çok güzel insanlarsınız. Şerefe!
December 12, 2013
This book introduces an extremely complex topic ‘autopoeisis’... which, simply rendered means... something like... intensely relational co-self-mergence into being, sensing and existence. But my definition pales.
This describes an entirely new direction in understanding living symmetries and relational hypersystems. Our minds, ideas, and life on Earth are explicit examples of such systems.
Astonishing, and requires a few readings over years to get the ideas clearly. If -realized- they turn minds into prodigy. This, however, is much more rare.
This describes an entirely new direction in understanding living symmetries and relational hypersystems. Our minds, ideas, and life on Earth are explicit examples of such systems.
Astonishing, and requires a few readings over years to get the ideas clearly. If -realized- they turn minds into prodigy. This, however, is much more rare.
May 31, 2014
"Humm... I'm going to bring my cabbages to someone who understands my needs."
June 16, 2021
Explicar cómo los seres humanos adquirimos y empleamos el conocimiento es una tarea que se remonta a nuestras bases biológicas y evolutivas. A lo largo de diez capítulos que se van construyendo como una pirámide, el autor empieza hablando de cómo se crearon los seres celulares y de su reproducción para acabar hablando de nuestro lenguaje y nuestra necesaria inserción social.
No es un libro nada fácil de analizar, la verdad. En primer lugar, porque sigo sin tener claro cuál es su objetivo. Desde luego, no es explicar el conocimiento humano - para ello, dicho sea de paso, el libro resulta pobre y apenas se puede considerar una introducción al asunto -, aspecto que el título ya señala cuando se refiere a las bases biológicas del mismo. Para ello hay algún soporte científico de teoría clásica y de experimentos etológicos, pero esa es la parte minoritaria. Lo que hay es mucha filosofía, algo importante que debería dejar claro que no es un libro estrictamente de biología.
Me atrevo a decir que el objetivo del libro tiene bastante más que ver con la forma en la que está escrito. La narración empieza desde ni más ni menos que la creación del Universo y de la vida en la Tierra, un pretexto en el que no se profundiza apenas pero que promueve una idea nuclear en el libro, que es la de la asociación recíproca. A partir de ese ejemplo, va aplicando una y otra capa cada vez más complejas sobre la capa anterior, describiendo los seres pluricelulares, la función de reproducción y el sistema nervioso. (Incido, porque me parece curioso, que en Compórtate se utiliza esta misma estructura de avance, pero está mucho mejor lograda). Otra de las ideas transversales del libro es que nuestra aproximación al conocimiento marca el conocimiento mismo.
Como punto novedoso, el libro en sí resulta novedoso en el planteamiento filosófico de ver las bases biológicas como un sistema de conocimiento más que en desarrollar la propia biología. Lógicamente, un libro de filosofía se pertrecha bien de términos filosóficos a desentrañar. La estructura tuvo que ser novedosa en su día, ya lo creo. Como puntos a mejorar, el libro se repite mucho a sí mismo y da la impresión de desaprovechar muchos de sus recursos gráficos y estudios científicos casi en un sentido decorativo. Es una lectura que aporta más preguntas de las que resuelve, simplemente quiere cambiar el enfoque y precisa de tratados posteriores que desarrollen su tesis.
No es un libro nada fácil de analizar, la verdad. En primer lugar, porque sigo sin tener claro cuál es su objetivo. Desde luego, no es explicar el conocimiento humano - para ello, dicho sea de paso, el libro resulta pobre y apenas se puede considerar una introducción al asunto -, aspecto que el título ya señala cuando se refiere a las bases biológicas del mismo. Para ello hay algún soporte científico de teoría clásica y de experimentos etológicos, pero esa es la parte minoritaria. Lo que hay es mucha filosofía, algo importante que debería dejar claro que no es un libro estrictamente de biología.
Me atrevo a decir que el objetivo del libro tiene bastante más que ver con la forma en la que está escrito. La narración empieza desde ni más ni menos que la creación del Universo y de la vida en la Tierra, un pretexto en el que no se profundiza apenas pero que promueve una idea nuclear en el libro, que es la de la asociación recíproca. A partir de ese ejemplo, va aplicando una y otra capa cada vez más complejas sobre la capa anterior, describiendo los seres pluricelulares, la función de reproducción y el sistema nervioso. (Incido, porque me parece curioso, que en Compórtate se utiliza esta misma estructura de avance, pero está mucho mejor lograda). Otra de las ideas transversales del libro es que nuestra aproximación al conocimiento marca el conocimiento mismo.
Como punto novedoso, el libro en sí resulta novedoso en el planteamiento filosófico de ver las bases biológicas como un sistema de conocimiento más que en desarrollar la propia biología. Lógicamente, un libro de filosofía se pertrecha bien de términos filosóficos a desentrañar. La estructura tuvo que ser novedosa en su día, ya lo creo. Como puntos a mejorar, el libro se repite mucho a sí mismo y da la impresión de desaprovechar muchos de sus recursos gráficos y estudios científicos casi en un sentido decorativo. Es una lectura que aporta más preguntas de las que resuelve, simplemente quiere cambiar el enfoque y precisa de tratados posteriores que desarrollen su tesis.
April 1, 2023
Precisei ler "A Árvore do Conhecimento" para uma apresentação na disciplina de Epistemologia no meu mestrado. Embora tenha sentido inicialmente um pouco de dificuldade, logo me vi fascinado pelos autores Francisco Varela e Humberto Maturana, e pelo modo como ambos abordam o ato de "conhecer o conhecer" nessa obra. Temos aqui ideias importantes propostas pelos autores, como o conceito de autopoiese, a importância da linguagem para nos definir, e das emoções.
Foi uma experiência marcante, e um livro do qual lembrarei constantemente.
Foi uma experiência marcante, e um livro do qual lembrarei constantemente.
January 8, 2022
An interesting and important premise, with an attempt to incremental clear and logical reasoning throughout every chapter, but which gets lost in repetitive abstract phrasing and lack of concrete examples. This puts much burden on even the friendly reader, and the final chapters or perhaps the whole book needs rereading to ascertain to what extent the arguments are fully convincing, or whether other theories would provide better explanation. With a writing and argumentative style of say Dawkins or Dennett the book would have been clearer in order to be able to make a judgement of the value of the book's message. As of now I wouldn't make the effort but rather continue to other books in the same domain.
September 26, 2020
An extremely unique synthesis of the process of human cognition from the biological basis. Helps to widen our thinking process and understanding the world around us.
Read
April 2, 2021Kitap, çok önemli bir gerçeğe işaret ediyor;
"...sadece başkalarıyla birlikte oluşturduğumuz bir dünyamız olduğu ve ancak sevginin bu dünyayı oluşturmamızı sağladığı gerçeğine."
(s.244)
Sibernetiği, biyolojiyi, antropolojiyi, psikolojiyi iç içe bir şekilde bulabileceğimiz kitap her ne kadar; isminden de anlaşılacağı gibi insan anlayışının biyolojik temellerine odaklansa da, o kadar çok konuyu içermektedir ki okuru genel anlamda her konuda bir fikir sahibi yapacak denli konu çeşitliliğine sahip. En çok beğendiğim şeylerden birisi -daha önce bir örneğini Baskın Oran'ın editörlüğünü yaptığı Türk Dış Politikası kitaplarında gördüğüm- bilgi kutucukları. Bir konuya başladığınızda o konuyla ilgili her türlü kavramı bilgi kutucuları aracılığıyla detaylı anlattığı yetmezmiş gibi kitabın sonuna da ayrıca sözlük iliştirmişler. Bu sayede okurun kafasında hiçbir boşluk kalmaması hedeflenmiş.
Zaman algımızı, mekan algımızı, dünümüzü bugünümüzü bütünüyle sorgulatan bir kitap aynı zamanda:
"Oluşumuz, özerk canlı sistemleri olma biçimlerimizin bir ifadesidir ve bunu belirleyen de bilişsel döngüdür.
Bu süreğen yineleme yoluyla, oluşturulan her dünya muhakkak ki kökenini gizler. Şu anda yaşarız; geçmiş ve gelecek şu anda olmanın biçimleridirir." (s.238)
En ilginç bulduğum bölüm 9. bölüm oldu. Bu bölümdeki şempanze deneyleri daha önce Frans de Waal'in kitaplarında okuduğum örneklerin benzerleri. Bana bazı gerçekleri yeniden hatırlattı; kainatın merkezinde insançocuğu yoktur. Dünya bizim etrafımızda dönmüyor. Aynı bölüm içerisindeki Zihinsel Yaşantıya Deneysel Bakışlar isimli bölümdeki epilepsi deneyleri hala sürekli kullandığımız bazı soyut kavramların nasıl eskide kaldığını, insan benliğinin aslında ne kadar da basit bazı yapısal bozulmalar karşısında yitip gidebileceğini dolayısıyla yalnızca beyinde ve bedende vücuda geldiğini bir defa daha hatırlattı bana.
"Bilme, bilen kişinin eylemidir; kökleri, kişinin canlı varlığında organizasyonundadır." (s.63)
M. Baran
28.11.2018
Mersin
https://agacingovdesi.com/2021/04/02/...
Sibernetiği, biyolojiyi, antropolojiyi, psikolojiyi iç içe bir şekilde bulabileceğimiz kitap her ne kadar; isminden de anlaşılacağı gibi insan anlayışının biyolojik temellerine odaklansa da, o kadar çok konuyu içermektedir ki okuru genel anlamda her konuda bir fikir sahibi yapacak denli konu çeşitliliğine sahip. En çok beğendiğim şeylerden birisi -daha önce bir örneğini Baskın Oran'ın editörlüğünü yaptığı Türk Dış Politikası kitaplarında gördüğüm- bilgi kutucukları. Bir konuya başladığınızda o konuyla ilgili her türlü kavramı bilgi kutucuları aracılığıyla detaylı anlattığı yetmezmiş gibi kitabın sonuna da ayrıca sözlük iliştirmişler. Bu sayede okurun kafasında hiçbir boşluk kalmaması hedeflenmiş.
Zaman algımızı, mekan algımızı, dünümüzü bugünümüzü bütünüyle sorgulatan bir kitap aynı zamanda:
"Oluşumuz, özerk canlı sistemleri olma biçimlerimizin bir ifadesidir ve bunu belirleyen de bilişsel döngüdür.
Bu süreğen yineleme yoluyla, oluşturulan her dünya muhakkak ki kökenini gizler. Şu anda yaşarız; geçmiş ve gelecek şu anda olmanın biçimleridirir." (s.238)
En ilginç bulduğum bölüm 9. bölüm oldu. Bu bölümdeki şempanze deneyleri daha önce Frans de Waal'in kitaplarında okuduğum örneklerin benzerleri. Bana bazı gerçekleri yeniden hatırlattı; kainatın merkezinde insançocuğu yoktur. Dünya bizim etrafımızda dönmüyor. Aynı bölüm içerisindeki Zihinsel Yaşantıya Deneysel Bakışlar isimli bölümdeki epilepsi deneyleri hala sürekli kullandığımız bazı soyut kavramların nasıl eskide kaldığını, insan benliğinin aslında ne kadar da basit bazı yapısal bozulmalar karşısında yitip gidebileceğini dolayısıyla yalnızca beyinde ve bedende vücuda geldiğini bir defa daha hatırlattı bana.
"Bilme, bilen kişinin eylemidir; kökleri, kişinin canlı varlığında organizasyonundadır." (s.63)
M. Baran
28.11.2018
Mersin
https://agacingovdesi.com/2021/04/02/...
June 5, 2011
I loved it!
There are a few things I didn't like about it, though.
For instance, the overall tone of the book was extremely arrogant. I know that may seem like a petty complaint, given the nature of the book, but this is major leagues conceit we are talking about. The author explicitly states at the beginning of the book that he intends to reform the totality of the scientific method, and not only that, the totality of knowledge as well, by establishing a new all-encompassing conceptual framework based on the fallibility of human perception as evidenced by the fact that we have a blind spot 40 cm from our face, 24/7, and don't even realize it because our brain just makes up what it can't perceive.
I'd have been cool with it if he had had the results and methods to back it up (like Newton did, only he wasn't such a dick about it), but he didn't.
As it is, the book comes across as an armchair philosopher's extremely flamboyant attempt to reform science, which is weird, because I know the author is a fairly renowned scientist, who has published a decent number of pretty relevant empirically-based books (such as "The Biology of Cognition").
On a lighter note, it's funny to see orthodox scientist having their minds blown by stuff philosophers have been talking about since Hume, like the fact that conscience is not, by any means, a unified whole, but rather a "bundle of perceptions" made coherent by self-regulating mechanisms. I guess it goes to show that armchair-ing does have its uses too.
Addendum: the author knows nothing about computers. That's a minus in my book.
All in all, a book that's almost quite completely entirely unlike a something that is superficially similar to a masterpiece.
Good introduction to System theory, though, autopoiesis for the win (It never ceases to amaze me how stupid some of the acronyms we use are).
There are a few things I didn't like about it, though.
For instance, the overall tone of the book was extremely arrogant. I know that may seem like a petty complaint, given the nature of the book, but this is major leagues conceit we are talking about. The author explicitly states at the beginning of the book that he intends to reform the totality of the scientific method, and not only that, the totality of knowledge as well, by establishing a new all-encompassing conceptual framework based on the fallibility of human perception as evidenced by the fact that we have a blind spot 40 cm from our face, 24/7, and don't even realize it because our brain just makes up what it can't perceive.
I'd have been cool with it if he had had the results and methods to back it up (like Newton did, only he wasn't such a dick about it), but he didn't.
As it is, the book comes across as an armchair philosopher's extremely flamboyant attempt to reform science, which is weird, because I know the author is a fairly renowned scientist, who has published a decent number of pretty relevant empirically-based books (such as "The Biology of Cognition").
On a lighter note, it's funny to see orthodox scientist having their minds blown by stuff philosophers have been talking about since Hume, like the fact that conscience is not, by any means, a unified whole, but rather a "bundle of perceptions" made coherent by self-regulating mechanisms. I guess it goes to show that armchair-ing does have its uses too.
Addendum: the author knows nothing about computers. That's a minus in my book.
All in all, a book that's almost quite completely entirely unlike a something that is superficially similar to a masterpiece.
Good introduction to System theory, though, autopoiesis for the win (It never ceases to amaze me how stupid some of the acronyms we use are).
March 23, 2021
Profundo, completo, critico, disruptivo, revelador. Fascinante.
Maturana y Varela hacen un hermoso recorrido tautológico que nos lleva por las bases fundacionales de la vida y el conocer, recorriendo desde el inicio de las galaxias hasta el fenómeno de conocer el conocer en el ser humano, pasando por la deriva onto y filogenética de los organismos así como el acoplamiento estructural y social en los seres vivos, todo desde una perspectiva científica.
Sin lugar a dudas una integración humilde y profunda de diversas áreas del conocer humano, que finalmente nos llevan a formulaciones éticas, epistemológicas y filosóficas muy poderosas.
No profundiza demasiado en el concepto de la autopoiesis, la fenomenología o la cibernética. Tampoco en conceptos matemáticos o en simulaciones de la vida o de los fenómenos cognoscitivos como hace Varela en otros de sus libros.
Es un libro a modo de viaje de lectura simple, con terminología y cierta rigurosidad científica.
Definitivamente un placer de lectura y un libro obligado para quien quiere entender que es.
Maturana y Varela hacen un hermoso recorrido tautológico que nos lleva por las bases fundacionales de la vida y el conocer, recorriendo desde el inicio de las galaxias hasta el fenómeno de conocer el conocer en el ser humano, pasando por la deriva onto y filogenética de los organismos así como el acoplamiento estructural y social en los seres vivos, todo desde una perspectiva científica.
Sin lugar a dudas una integración humilde y profunda de diversas áreas del conocer humano, que finalmente nos llevan a formulaciones éticas, epistemológicas y filosóficas muy poderosas.
No profundiza demasiado en el concepto de la autopoiesis, la fenomenología o la cibernética. Tampoco en conceptos matemáticos o en simulaciones de la vida o de los fenómenos cognoscitivos como hace Varela en otros de sus libros.
Es un libro a modo de viaje de lectura simple, con terminología y cierta rigurosidad científica.
Definitivamente un placer de lectura y un libro obligado para quien quiere entender que es.
December 14, 2019
Excellent read that explains the incredible auto-organisation of life from the simplest molecules and cells up to something as utterly complex as human ethics and social norms. Few card-carringly biologistic books come across as this charming, and its probably due to the authors knowledge in both fields of Epistemology and Biology.
It comes with the conclusion that the organisation of all life allows us to recognize it which brings us into the moral position to question our own interaction and take responsibility not only for our selves but for our loved ones and society as a whole.
The most convincing argumentation for an upright and affirmative look on life and oneself.
The writing style is comparably sophisticated, so I would recommend it mostly for people who already have basic knowledge in both biology, in particular theory of evolution, and philosophy
10/10
It comes with the conclusion that the organisation of all life allows us to recognize it which brings us into the moral position to question our own interaction and take responsibility not only for our selves but for our loved ones and society as a whole.
The most convincing argumentation for an upright and affirmative look on life and oneself.
The writing style is comparably sophisticated, so I would recommend it mostly for people who already have basic knowledge in both biology, in particular theory of evolution, and philosophy
10/10
November 20, 2025
Very interesting book! Part of the reason I'm inclined to rate it so highly is because its presentation reminds me of some of the illustrated science books I used to look at as a kid at the library (though obviously communicating some more complicated info); for this reason, it was nostalgic and grew on me as I read.
As for the topic itself: the central question that Maturana and Varela are asking in The Tree of Knowledge is fairly straightforward but presents significant philosophical challenges for them - namely, the question of how knowledge is generated. How, as an observer always-already existing within language, can we account for our origins scientifically, including the generation of language and our first-person point of view, without invoking a circular argument? It's sticky, to be sure. So they decide to break this daunting problem down into two sub-problems that, once solved, they reason, should answer the bigger question, which are: "(1) the need for a nonrepresentationist view of knowledge based on the sense-making capacity of an autonomous living system and (2) the need to close the circle between what is valid as a mechanism for animals and machines and what pertains to our own experience, including doing science." (254)
Do they deliver on these? To my estimation, yes on 1, no on 2. Their novel insights in the domain of 1 are staggering for the time, from what they term "autopoiesis" or the self-producing nature of living systems to the idea that the nervous system does not represent an outside world at all but merely maintains detailed internal correlations that conserve the identity and adaptability of the organism it is integrated in. The latter has incredible implications because it suggests that there is really no such thing as a "world out there", only living systems with detailed internal lives, the mechanisms of which can only be observed and accounted for by living systems external to those living systems, and so on and so on ad nauseam. They give the wonderful analogy of a person watching a submarine operator come to shore, remarking that they were adept at avoiding the various reefs and rocks on the way to the beach and questioning how they did it. But the submarine operator is confused - what is a reef? what is a rock? From their perspective, all they were doing was adjusting dials and notches according to internal indicators of danger. In this way, the nervous system does not "represent" anything or "process information" - it only responds in the form of triggers to perceived environmental perturbations. I thought, in explaining this, that the authors were setting up for an entirely new ontology of being in which this implication is fully accounted for.
But Maturana and Varela slip up in chapter 9 when attempting to describe the origins of language. Their aim, of course, is to demonstrate that language is a result of the "co-ontogenic coordination of [human] actions," (209) rooting language in evolutionary biology, and they go over the mechanism for this in a dedicated section - which is all good and compelling, and I was hooked, until I realized that when they moved on and started talking more about human evolution, they had only told the story from the man on the beach and not the man in the submarine. How does our internal experience of language, meaning, and a world composed of narratives correlate with the semantic world of explanations we just generated for biological systems? They don't provide an answer. The circle (subproblem #2) remains open.
As such, their own aphorism from chapter 1, "Everything said is said by someone" (26), kind of goes ignored by the time chapter 9 rolls around. Their approach insists that objects and structures are not independent givens but linguistic distinctions, and that even "biological processes" are descriptions we generate - this to me is good, because it incorporates the idea of situated knowledges into a scientific framework. The problem is that they don't go anywhere with this. They don't take the idea to its logical conclusion and explain the internal experience of language as it relates to external mechanisms of biological change.
If I had to guess, I think their original idea was to take more of a phenomenological stance and illustrate how none of these levels of explanation (cellular, metacellular, social, linguistic, etc.) are more privileged than any other and are only different ways of "bringing forth worlds", as they like to term it. This is reflected in the circular nature of the book chapters and their conclusion in which they describe the natural world as a sort of recursive painting (243). Like I said, they just didn't manage to follow through with this, so the conclusion presents as a kind of non-sequitur. They directly use their materialist explanation of language to try to justify that a chimpanzee exists in our experiential linguistic domain (215). How we get from that picture to the recursive one is anyone's guess.
Don't get me wrong, I fully agree with their rather idealist conclusion. It's something I've seen explored in other formats that I have come to really sympathize with (e.g. Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse). I just don't think Maturana and Varela convincingly got there while preserving all of their assumptions.
So! At the end of the review, do I recommend The Tree of Knowledge? Yes. Please go read it for yourself to see if you agree or disagree with my analysis. It's only what I noticed, and I could have made an error. And regardless of whether or not their thesis questions get answered, the book is seriously loaded with insights. They are plentiful, and I will probably be exploring the authors' other works to see where their conclusions take them.
As for the topic itself: the central question that Maturana and Varela are asking in The Tree of Knowledge is fairly straightforward but presents significant philosophical challenges for them - namely, the question of how knowledge is generated. How, as an observer always-already existing within language, can we account for our origins scientifically, including the generation of language and our first-person point of view, without invoking a circular argument? It's sticky, to be sure. So they decide to break this daunting problem down into two sub-problems that, once solved, they reason, should answer the bigger question, which are: "(1) the need for a nonrepresentationist view of knowledge based on the sense-making capacity of an autonomous living system and (2) the need to close the circle between what is valid as a mechanism for animals and machines and what pertains to our own experience, including doing science." (254)
Do they deliver on these? To my estimation, yes on 1, no on 2. Their novel insights in the domain of 1 are staggering for the time, from what they term "autopoiesis" or the self-producing nature of living systems to the idea that the nervous system does not represent an outside world at all but merely maintains detailed internal correlations that conserve the identity and adaptability of the organism it is integrated in. The latter has incredible implications because it suggests that there is really no such thing as a "world out there", only living systems with detailed internal lives, the mechanisms of which can only be observed and accounted for by living systems external to those living systems, and so on and so on ad nauseam. They give the wonderful analogy of a person watching a submarine operator come to shore, remarking that they were adept at avoiding the various reefs and rocks on the way to the beach and questioning how they did it. But the submarine operator is confused - what is a reef? what is a rock? From their perspective, all they were doing was adjusting dials and notches according to internal indicators of danger. In this way, the nervous system does not "represent" anything or "process information" - it only responds in the form of triggers to perceived environmental perturbations. I thought, in explaining this, that the authors were setting up for an entirely new ontology of being in which this implication is fully accounted for.
But Maturana and Varela slip up in chapter 9 when attempting to describe the origins of language. Their aim, of course, is to demonstrate that language is a result of the "co-ontogenic coordination of [human] actions," (209) rooting language in evolutionary biology, and they go over the mechanism for this in a dedicated section - which is all good and compelling, and I was hooked, until I realized that when they moved on and started talking more about human evolution, they had only told the story from the man on the beach and not the man in the submarine. How does our internal experience of language, meaning, and a world composed of narratives correlate with the semantic world of explanations we just generated for biological systems? They don't provide an answer. The circle (subproblem #2) remains open.
As such, their own aphorism from chapter 1, "Everything said is said by someone" (26), kind of goes ignored by the time chapter 9 rolls around. Their approach insists that objects and structures are not independent givens but linguistic distinctions, and that even "biological processes" are descriptions we generate - this to me is good, because it incorporates the idea of situated knowledges into a scientific framework. The problem is that they don't go anywhere with this. They don't take the idea to its logical conclusion and explain the internal experience of language as it relates to external mechanisms of biological change.
If I had to guess, I think their original idea was to take more of a phenomenological stance and illustrate how none of these levels of explanation (cellular, metacellular, social, linguistic, etc.) are more privileged than any other and are only different ways of "bringing forth worlds", as they like to term it. This is reflected in the circular nature of the book chapters and their conclusion in which they describe the natural world as a sort of recursive painting (243). Like I said, they just didn't manage to follow through with this, so the conclusion presents as a kind of non-sequitur. They directly use their materialist explanation of language to try to justify that a chimpanzee exists in our experiential linguistic domain (215). How we get from that picture to the recursive one is anyone's guess.
Don't get me wrong, I fully agree with their rather idealist conclusion. It's something I've seen explored in other formats that I have come to really sympathize with (e.g. Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse). I just don't think Maturana and Varela convincingly got there while preserving all of their assumptions.
So! At the end of the review, do I recommend The Tree of Knowledge? Yes. Please go read it for yourself to see if you agree or disagree with my analysis. It's only what I noticed, and I could have made an error. And regardless of whether or not their thesis questions get answered, the book is seriously loaded with insights. They are plentiful, and I will probably be exploring the authors' other works to see where their conclusions take them.
June 10, 2017
This book is most likely going to totally change your perspective on what it means to know. Extremely well structured and well explained. I find it amazing how the authors are able to fit so many different topics into a meaningful cascade of concepts and theories that fits perfectly to their main conclusions, of cognitive processes as circular biological, social and linguistic phenomena inherent of living beings. The two biologists go well beyond their original disciplines, delving into philosophy, spirituality and psychology, as examples of overlapping domains in this such essential but overlooked (perhaps due to its complexity) concept of cognition. Indispensable!
May 15, 2016
An interesting book as it presupposes almost no knowledge and tries to explain a theory of cognition rooted in biology. It therefore needs to cover a lot of ground before arriving at the good parts.
For me the good parts constitute the last two chapters and the afterword. The rest does have some nice insights but consists mostly of rather dry material sprinkled with some examples. Other people who don't have previous experience with biology and sociology might enjoy it, but still I would have liked to see more addressing of higher logical types in these sections.
For me the good parts constitute the last two chapters and the afterword. The rest does have some nice insights but consists mostly of rather dry material sprinkled with some examples. Other people who don't have previous experience with biology and sociology might enjoy it, but still I would have liked to see more addressing of higher logical types in these sections.
June 24, 2010
Amazing book on the building of complexity in biological beings. Complexity in inherent of living things, how simple unicelular being evolved to more complex ones and how the nervous system works. I was not aware that a portuguese version was available, so I´ve bought this book based on the recommendation I´ve found in Daniel Dennet books. This book is cited in many other ones and should be read by everyone looking for a better understanding of biology basics.
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