This chapter traces how the concept of autopoiesis, originating in the field of theoretical biology with Chilean scientists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, has generated a wide range of disciplinary uses outside the sciences. The unlikely transit of autopoiesis was made possible in large part by the interdisciplinary ferment of postwar cybernetics that recast living organisms as information-processing machines. This chapter highlights the overlooked significance of the literary model that inspired this paradigm shift in the re-description of cellular life: Cervantes’s seventeenth-century novel Don Quixotede la Mancha. Through a reading of cybernetics, autopoiesis, and Cervantes, this essay compares scientific concepts of self-organization with the literary stakes of autopoiesis and “languaging” for theorists such as Sylvia Wynter and Michel Foucault.

Latencies of the different types of ganglion cell responses to stimulation within a receptive field were measured in guinea pigs. The latency of the response evoked by stimulation of the center or intermediate zone was always less than the response evoked by stimulation of the periphery or intermediate zone. The on-off response had latency values as if the responses were independently elicited in the center and periphery. When two light spots were shone in the receptive field at different time intervals, it was found that one could cancel the other if shone in a precise time which was dependent on the latencies of the responses of the receptive field. To account for the observations, it is postulated that the time courses of excitation and inhibition can vary from ganglion cell to ganglion cell.

Machines and Biology have been, since antiquity, closely related. From the zoological figures present in astronomical simulacra, through renaissance mechanical imitations of animals, through Decartes’ wind pipe nerves, to present day discussions on the computer and the brain, runs a continuous thread. In fact, the very name of mechanism for an attitude of inquiry throughout the history of Biology reveals this at a philosophical level ([4] and [6]). More often than not, mechanism is mentioned in opposition to vitalism, as an assertion of the validity of the objectivity principle in biology: there are no purposes in animal nature; its apparent purposefulness is similar to the purposefulness of machines. Yet, the fact that one picks machines as a set of objects comparable to living systems, deserves a closer look. What in machines makes it possible to establish such a connection?

In this essay, we propose to present and discuss the epistemology of the Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana, by means of the concepts of perception, autopoiesis and cognition and, accepting this explanatory path, comment on its implications for our understanding of three relational phenomena in the context of living: the domain of molecular interactions, in the scope of immunology, the domain of interspecific interactions, in the scope of domestication, and the domain of human relations, in the scope of education. While visiting these three relational domains, we reflect how the phenomenon of learning will inevitably arise, generated in the very dynamics of living, without the need to resort to the notion of instructive interactions, which we sometimes connote, at least in the context of human relations, as teaching.

Key words: humberto maturana. learning. immunology. domestication. education.

Context: Maturana’s published corpus is vast, and his publications span multiple venues, formats, and languages. For these and other reasons, the corpus is as complex as it is daunting in its scale. Problem: Over the last two decades, bibliographic data on Maturana’s publications had proliferated in terms of available resources, scope of coverage, and accessibility. However, as of 2011 the degree of accessibility was not matched by the inclusiveness, detail, and accuracy of the relatively few dedicated bibliographies upon which most such resources relied. It had become time to update, consolidate, and better validate the core bibliographic data. Method: The five most comprehensive electronic bibliographies were merged and collated. The merged listing was then validated using the available evidence and a three-tiered set of evaluation criteria. Finally, the resultant merged and validated listing was augmented with previously unrecorded entries and data, subject to the same evidentiary constraints and evaluation criteria pertaining to the validation phase. Results: None of the five bibliographies in the starting set was comprehensive. All five contained ambiguities, missing details, discrepancies, and outright errors. The updated and consolidated listing presented here is the largest, most comprehensive, and most accurate compiled to date. Implications: The resultant bibliography offers a more complete and more reliable reference resource to both veteran Maturana scholars and newcomers to his work than previously existing bibliographies.

Key words: Humberto Maturana, biology of cognition, autopoiesis, bibliography, publications