Autopoiesis and the Biology of Cognition attributes a practical and connotative role to language but also gives importance to emotions which together with language braid in forming the consensual domain of conversations of living organisms. This paper outlines the biology of cognition���s view that language has a connotative nature together with the claim that language’s role is a practical coordination of coordination of actions. In poetry, language becomes the medium for producing aesthetic events that grasp the domain of emotions of writer and reader. Reflecting on the type of language that poetry uses as a medium for its creation/poiesis, it is speculated that language expressed in the written form a poem seems to have both denotative and connotative nature which gives the description of the object the immediacy of both beauty and emotion. The paper argues that language in poetry does cease to have the practical role attributed by autopoiesis.

Key words: autopoiesis, language, cognition, poetry, biology of cognition.

The present paper introduces two documents written separately by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, which describe their early scientific and intellectual collaboration in the formulation of the idea of autopoiesis and reflect on how that idea impacted on the wider intellectual community up to the mid-1990s. The paper invites consideration of these papers in the context of the history of science as a rich narrative as to the way in which social, personal and historical factors deeply impact on any such work.

Key words: autopoiesis, constitution of the living, systemic, structural determinism, biology of cognition, epistemology, enaction

Epistemology of Systems Thinking (ST) has undergone important changes throughout the twentieth century and has gradually gained ground in scientific investigations and interventions in different contexts. Understanding its epistemological principles has been a challenge in undergraduate and graduate courses of different areas, and it is sine qua non for the implementation of systemic research and interventions. Thus, this article aims to present the historical and epistemological development of ST in the twentieth century and the contributions of Humberto Maturana for the advancement of postmodern science, with Biology of Cognition and Cultural Biology. It describes the paradigm shift from traditional science to postmodern science, as well as the basic assumptions that characterize them. We used a historical and epistemological spiral, along with the concept of recursion, to facilitate the understanding of the interconnections between researchers and theories that have contributed to the development of ST. The main concepts of the systemic theories that are recognized and well-known in the scientific community were presented, namely, the General Systems Theory, Cybernetics, the Communication Theory. Our conclusion is that the epistemology of ST has provided significant advances to science, because it integrates the epistemological assumptions of complexity, instability and inter-subjectivity in phenomena analysis, in research and interventions in different contexts.

Key words: epistemology, cybernetics, systemic thinking.

Today in the scientific circle Humberto Romensin Maturana is considered the creator of the so-called Santiago School of Biology (also known as Biology of Cognition). Biology of Cognition is a research programme seeking an explanation of the phenomenon of cognitive functions of living organisms through the concepts of self-organization (from dynamical systems theory) and structural coupling (from cybernetics). Maturana’s novel view is based upon research conducted with such prominent scientists like Warren McCulloch, Francisco J. Varela or Heinz von Foerster. After many years of study of complex organic systems the research resulted in formulation of the following theories: autopoiesis of living systems (with F. J. Varela) and the evolutionary metaphor of natural drift (with J. Mpodozis). Theory of autopoiesis (self-production) shows how organic cells organize themselves in producing inner organic self components needed for maintaining homeostatis, natural barriers and remaining cognitive at the molecular level. By contrast, the metaphor of natural drift can be understood as the history of diversification and adaptation of species in relation to many structural levels of the environment. The following article constitutes a brief introduction to a critical way of thinking of the said Chilean theoretical biologist and philosopher, established during his long-lasting research. The paper will outline the basic concepts and theoretical implications relevant to modern biological sciences, with particular emphasis on the classical theory of evolution.

Key words: Santiago School of Biology, self-organization, principles of biological autonomy, structural coupling, enactive approach.

Open peer commentary on the article “Maturanian Observer-Dependent Immunology” by Nelson Monteiro Vaz. Abstract: I comment on the scientific contributions of the immunologist, Nelson Monteiro Vaz, with whom I have been working over the last 20 years. Inspired by the work of Maturana, Vaz has spent 50 years in an ongoing research effort towards what can be considered a paradigm shift in immunology. This has repercussions on how we understand physiology and pathophysiology, nutrition and diet, the microbiome and the very way we explain health and disease. The paradigmatic change is grounded in Maturana’s biology of cognition and evolution through natural drift, and demonstrates the wide-reaching implications of the premises under which we do science by noting how these have consequences for public health and medical disease theories.

In traditional descriptions immunological activity is neither systemic nor historical and is never “physiological.” Since it is dominated by reductionist, teleological and cognitivist approaches. After deconstructing hegemonic immunology way of seeing, we proposed previously a constructivist explanation to immunological physiology, namely, The Conservative Physiology of the Immune System (Vaz NM Clin Dev Immunol 2006), theory based on our own experimental evidences and referenced on Humberto Maturana’s Biology of Cognition. In this paper we propose an immanent mechanism for immunological pathophysiology and disease development.

Maturana’s notion of languaging is deeply rooted in his “Biology of cognition��� and in the epistemological orientation provided by the “autopoietic systems” theory developed with Varela. Within this framework, language is traced to its operational and interactional matrix. In this paper, I show how pursuing such a “bio-logically” grounded approach allows a shift from traditional conceptions of language, in particular with regards to its role in the achievement of communication and joint activities. In order to make explicit the constitutive conditions underlying linguistic activity, I address both languaging as embodied activity and the interindividual coordination within which such an embodied activity takes place. To this end, I focus on the relation between individual languaging behaviour and the domain of coordination, as two complementary aspects underlying all classes of phenomena in human communication. Some linguistic and cognitive implications of the framework will be subsequently discussed.

Key words: languaging, linguistic activity, bio-logical approach, recursive consensual coordination, conversation, dialogicity.

This article addresses the question of the coherence of enactivism as a research perspective by making a case study of enactivism in mathematics education research. Main theoretical directions in mathematics education are reviewed and the history of adoption of concepts from enactivism is described. It is concluded that enactivism offers a ‘grand theory’ that can be brought to bear on most of the phenomena of interest in mathematics education research, and so it provides a sufficient theoretical framework. It has particular strength in describing interactions between cognitive systems, including human beings, human conversations and larger human social systems. Some apparent incoherencies of enactivism in mathematics education and in other fields come from the adoption of parts of enactivism that are then grafted onto incompatible theories. However, another significant source of incoherence is the inadequacy of Maturana’s definition of a social system and the lack of a generally agreed upon alternative.

Key words: enactivism, biology of cognition, mathematics education, theories of learning, autopoiesis, cognitive systems, social systems.

Excerpt: Anders als der “Tractatus” ist […] die “Biology of Cognition��� zusammen mit dem “Autopoiesis”-Aufsatz von Varela, Maturana und Uribe aus dem Jahre 1974 ein Weg, der weitergegangen werden kann und muß. Zum einen betrifft dies Weitergehen die inhaltliche Ausführung und Ausfüllung des Maturana-/Varela-Konzepts der Autopoiese und der Kognition, die die Autoren selbst bisher nicht geleistet haben, die aber erst die Basis einer wirklich fruchtbaren Anwendung in den Wissenschaften darstellt, und zum anderen die Korrektur einer Reihe von erheblichen Brüchen und Inkonsistenzen. Beides nimmt jedoch der ursprünglichen Theorie nichts von ihrer überragenden Bedeutung. Ich kann im vorliegenden Aufsatz nur andeuten, in welche Richtungen dies Weiter- und Hinausgehen erfolgen muß, und zwar besonders im Hinblick auf die Übertragbarkeit der Theorie auf nichtbiologische, im wesentlichen psychologische und sozialwissenschaftliche Disziplinen. Der Leser sei auf zwei umfangreichere Arbeiten zur Biosystemtheorie und zur Wahrnehmungstheorie vertröstet, die zur Zeit in Zusammenarbeit mit anderen Kollegen entstehen. Ich werde mich bei meinen Ausführungen im wesentlichen mit den Aufsätzen beschäftigen, die von Maturana allein oder zusammen mit Varela geschrieben wurden. Die neueren eigenständigen Arbeiten Varelas verdienen eine eigene Würdigung, die aber hier nicht geleistet werden kann. Wenn ich also im folgenden abkürzend von der Theorie Maturanas spreche, so ist in Hinblick auf das Konzept der Autopoiese der wesentliche Anteil Varelas hieran mitgemeint.

Constructivist biosemiotics foundations (CBF) imply the first-person basis of cognition. CBF are developed by the biology of cognition, relational biology, enactive approach, ecology of mind, second order cybernetics, genetic epistemology, gestalt, ecological perception and affordances, and active inference by minimization of free energy. CBF reject the idea of an objective independent reality to be represented (cognitivism) by information processing (computationalism) in order to be the fittest (adaptationism). CBF assumes that perception is the behavioral configuration of an object and objects are tokens for eigen-behaviors. Cognition takes place in the organism-environment structural coupling during the ontogeny and phylogeny of all biological unities including unicellular organisms. Therefore, if exogenous DNA particles (virus or trans-sequence) are just tokens for the cell signalling eigen-behaviors, if there is no ‘information’ in the DNA sequence, how can we explain that the same virus or trans- sequence is associated with a similar phenotype? We call this ‘exogenomic problem’. With this basic example, but sufficiently generic to the whole biological world, we agree respectively with Autopoiesis, (Metabolism, Repair)-system, and Gaia theory: i) ‘Information, code and meaning’ in the DNA sequence belong to the domain of the observer’s description. ii) Genetic ‘information’ is not a program or algorithmic software in DNA sequence. Rather it is a microphysical observable mode of eigen-behaviors in biological unities. iii) The transfer and acquisition of DNA particles is a biospheric phenomenon that maintains its homeorhesis, symbiotic and biosemiotic entailment. Based on the theoretical and experimental results of these theories, it is concluded that genetic ‘information’ is not a genomic sequence, nor any kind of information (algorithmic or semantic), but for the cell DNA must embody physical forcing. Genetic characters are the effects and not the cause of phenotype and DNA particles do not ‘use or manipulate’ cellular metabolism. Rather, any cellular configuration change that occurred before or during DNA perturbation (coincident or not with the observation of certain phenotype) is determined on the basis of the cellular standpoint.

Key words: cell cognition, (m, r)-system, autopoiesis, gaia theory, open systems, configuration change, genetic ‘information’, closed to efficient causation, genomic modified organisms (gmos), biosemiotic entailment.