Context: For many people, religion and/or spiritual experiences are an important part of their daily lives - shaping their thinking and actions. Studying these experiences relies on qualitative religious studies (RS) research that engages respondents on a deeply personal level. Problem: Researchers are unable to provide an apolitical, value-free approach to research. There lacks a rigorous methodological approach to qualitative RS research that addresses this epistemological obstacle. This is particularly relevant when studying a cohort with radically different beliefs from the researcher. Method: Researcher coupling is presented as a topic that defines the researcher and her participants as a systemic entity. By demonstrating how the researcher’s worldview is tied to her research, an argument for personalised and relational observer-dependent research is presented. Five reflexive questions are proposed as a starting point for personalised research to demonstrate the relational and intersubjective nature of this activity. Results: By linking the researcher to her research and changing the goal of research from independent and objective research to one that is relational and contextual, the scholar can report on her research in an ethical and socially just manner by linking her worldview to her research. Implications: The traditional research activity is redefined as one that should embrace the scholar’s worldview instead of attempting to hide it. The scientific ideals of independence and objectivity are replaced by interdependence and hence a proposal is made for personalised research that embraces the intersubjective nature of this activity. This proposal is meant to alleviate some of the epistemological weaknesses in RS. This paradigm shift promotes rigour as a qualifier for methodology including changes to how research is categorised. Constructivist content: Margaret Mead’s ideas of observer dependence in anthropological research and how the observer constructs her research findings are discussed. The circularity that exists in this relational context is analysed according to Bradford Keeney’s ideas on recursion and resultant future behavioural correction. Ranulph Glanville’s ideas of intersubjectivity and his concept of “in the between” are used as a foundation for the researcher-participant relationship. Ross Ashby’s notion of experimenter coupling is used as a basis for researcher coupling.

Key words: Epistemology, ethics, personalised and relational research, religious studies, rigour, research methodology, worldview.

Open peer commentary on the article “Circularity and the Micro-Macro-Difference” by Manfred Füllsack. Upshot: The target article defends the fundamental role of circularity for systems sciences and the necessity to develop a conceptual and methodological approach to it. The concept of circularity, however, is multifarious, and two of the main challenges in this respect are to provide distinctions between different forms of circularities and explore in detail the roles they play in organizations. This commentary provides some suggestions in this direction with the aim to supplement the perspective presented in the target article with some insights from theoretical biology.

I claim that concepts such as competition, evolution of the fittest and regulation through hierarchical constructs are all attributions we make to nature based on our culture. I think these concepts, and others of like ilk, are the results of a particular manner of emotioning, sensing and acting that is now common to most of our modern cultures. Once attributed to nature, we use these concepts as grounding premises, or as justification, to continue the manner of emotioning, sensing and acting which gave rise to them. I see this as a disquieting circularity, a blindness, that results in a way of being that we do not want, but feel compelled to. However, since we have the ability to reflect on our beliefs and to consider whether we want the consequences of maintaining them, I also see the possibility of living in a manner that we find more ethical and more pleasurable.

Key words: competition, culture, purpose, evolution, natural drift.

Context: Humberto Maturana’s theory of autopoiesis and cognition, developed in collaboration with Francisco Varela, forms the very core of a new systemic understanding of life, integrating life’s biological and cognitive dimensions. Problem: The divide between mind, matter and life has persisted through human history and led to endless schisms philosophically and academically. Though Maturana’s work provides the epistemological and ontological basis for a unification between these distinctions, this is not fully recognized or acknowledged. Method: I review the historical development of Maturana’s ideas, including his early collaboration with Varela. Thereby, I show the path from understanding the circularity of life to the necessary structurally mediated relationship with the environment as the basis of cognition. Also, I draw attention to parallels with the work of Gregory Bateson, Ilya Prigogine, and Geoffrey Chew. Results: Maturana’s great achievement is presenting a scientific theory that overcomes the Cartesian division of mind and matter, as it shows that, at all levels of life, mind and matter, process and structure, are inseparably connected. Implications: Maturana presented a path for the unification of mind, matter and life that will enable researchers in each field to support one another while reducing the fragmentation of the sciences. However, further work is required to determine the proper applicability of autopoiesis so that it can be used in various disciplines. Many details remain to be clarified and integrated, and many implications remain to be explored in depth. In particular, I encourage researchers interested in systemic, multidisciplinary approaches to explore the extensions of the concept of molecular autopoiesis to the cellular, social, ecological, and planetary levels. Keywords: Autopoiesis, cognition, mind, Santiago theory, structural coupling.

The major insight in Robert Rosen’s view of a living organism as an (M, R)-system was the realization that an organism must be “closed to efficient causation”, which means that the catalysts needed for its operation must be generated internally. This aspect is not controversial, but there has been confusion and misunderstanding about the logic Rosen used to achieve this closure. In addition, his corollary that an organism is not a mechanism and cannot have simulable models has led to much argument, most of it mathematical in nature and difficult to appreciate. Here we examine some of the mathematical arguments and clarify the conditions for closure.

Key words: (M, R) systems, Metabolic circularity, Robert Rosen, Definitions of life, Autopoiesis, Autocatalytic sets, Chemoton, Impredicativity

Dynamic systems with suitable nonlinearities yield self-organizing behavior. The evolution continues until the relationship among the components becomes self-consistent; that is, until it reaches closure. Disruptions of closure that allow for continued change are also characteristic of biological evolution. Are the requisite nonlinearities add-ons that give an essentially linear world the appearance of circularity, or do they have their origin in the underlying physics of the universe? The picture developed here fits to the latter view.

Open peer commentary on the article “Circularity and the Micro-Macro-Difference” by Manfred Füllsack. Upshot: I reconstruct two core notions, “observation” and “objectivity,” in order to raise some questions regarding their interpretation and relevancy for the target article’s main thesis. The main concern with “observation” is that its scope and applicability are not clear, while the notion of “objectivity” could be in conflict with other concepts and assumptions accepted by the author.

Open peer commentary on the article “Circularity and the Micro-Macro-Difference” by Manfred Füllsack. Upshot: The target article is criticised because it conflates models of causation with causation itself. The arguments used in the target article to avoid a straightforward distinction between fine-grained measurements and the abstractions used to model them are discussed. The value of using the word “causation” to refer to atemporal models is questioned.

The non-adaptationist approach to evolutionary epistemology (EE) was born at the end of the 1970s as an alternative to traditional adaptationist EE. Despite the fact that non-adaptationist EE offers compelling interpretative models and its explanatory power is widely recognised, an organic overview of the broad non-adaptationist field is still lacking. In this paper, I propose to fill this gap. To this effect, after providing a systematisation of the perspectives that are commonly associated with non-adaptationist EE, I will discuss two recurring orders of arguments that non-adaptationist scholars, often independently of one another, put forward against their adaptationist rivals. By offering a way to conceive non-adaptationist evolutionary epistemological approaches as part of a structured whole, the resulting systematic account is meant to provide a reading grid, a compass for orienting oneself in the uneven territories of non-adaptationist EE. Moreover, the consequent identification of two recurring argumentative bodies is intended to add to the explanatory power of non-adaptationist EE, which in finding new strength in numbers eventually acquires a greater critical efficacy against its adaptationist counterpart.

Key words: evolutionary epistemology, non-adaptationism, adaptationism, overview, world-in-itself, epistemic circularity.

Open peer commentary on the article “Cybernetics, Reflexivity and Second-Order Science” by Louis H. Kauffman. Upshot: I demonstrate how Kauffman’s cogently argued article requires an act of imagination. I distinguish the act of perception, and its transformation as conception, as imagining. It is how we distinguish both the creation and exploration of our experience in context since, when we make a distinction, we also define the context, and this cannot be accomplished without circularity.