Humberto Maturana
(1928-)
Maturana is a Chilean neuroscientist who earned his PH.D. in biology from Harvard in 1958 (the year the author came to Harvard). Today his work is in the philosophy of biology and cognitive science.
He was inspired by
Jacob Johann von Uexküll, the founder of
biosemiotics.
Maturana and his student
Francisco Varela were the first to define and employ the concept of "autopoiesis," the ideas of self-organization and self-assembly that are characteristic of living things. In their Santiago Theory of Cognition, they say "Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. This statement is valid for all organisms, with or without a nervous system."
Our
information philosophy model of a living system is one that communicates signals between all of its parts to maintain
homeostasis. Cellular signaling is the most basic requirement for a cognitive system.
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