Francisco Varela

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This article is about the Chilean scientist. For the Spanish painter, see Francisco Varela (painter).

Varela in Dharamsala India, 1994

Francisco Javier Varela García (September 7, 1946 – May 28, 2001) was a Chilean biologist, philosopher, and neuroscientist who, together with his teacher Humberto Maturana, is best known for introducing the concept of autopoiesis to biology, and for co-founding the Mind and Life Institute to promote dialog between science and Buddhism.

Life and career

Varela was born in 1946 in Santiago in Chile, the son of Corina María Elena García-Tapia and Raúl Andrés Varela-Rodríguez.^[1] After completing secondary school at the Liceo Aleman del Verbo Divino in Santiago (1951–1963). Like his mentor Humberto Maturana, Varela first studied temporarily medicine at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile to graduate in biology at the University of Chile, and later obtain a Ph.D. in biology at Harvard University. His thesis, defended in 1970 and supervised by Torsten Wiesel, was titled Insect Retinas: Information processing in the compound eye.

After the 1973 military coup led by Augusto Pinochet, Varela and his family spent 7 years in exile in the USA before returning to Chile to become a Professor of biology.

Varela became a Tibetan Buddhist in the 1970s, initially studying, together with Keun-Tshen Goba, with the meditation master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, founder of Vajradhatu and Shambhala Training, and later with Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, a Nepalese meditation master of higher tantras.

In 1986, he settled in France, where he at first taught cognitive science and epistemology at the École Polytechnique, and neuroscience at the University of Paris. From 1988 until his death, he led a research group at the CNRS (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique).

In 1987, Varela, along with R. Adam Engle, founded the Mind and Life Institute, initially to sponsor a series of dialogues between scientists and His Holiness The Dalai Lama about the relationship between modern science and Buddhism.^[2] The Institute continues today as a major nexus for such dialog as well as promoting and supporting multi-disciplinary scientific investigation in mind sciences, contemplative scholarship and practice and related areas in the interface of science with meditation and other contemplative practices, especially Buddhist practices.^[3]

Varela died in 2001 in Paris of Hepatitis C after having written an account of his 1998 liver transplant.^[4] Varela had four children, including the actress, environmental spokesperson, and model Leonor Varela.

Work

Varela was primarily trained as a biologist, and was fundamentally influenced by his teacher and fellow Chilean, Humberto Maturana, also a biologist with a strong philosophical orientation.

Varela wrote and edited a number of books and numerous journal articles in biology, neurology, cognitive science, mathematics, and philosophy. He was a founding member of the Integral Institute, a thinktank dedicated to the cross-fertilization of ideas and disciplines.

Varela was a proponent of the embodied philosophy which argues that human cognition and consciousness can only be understood in terms of the enactive structures in which they arise, namely the body (understood both as a biological system and as personally, phenomenologically experienced) and the physical world with which the body interacts. He introduced into neuroscience the concepts of neurophenomenology, based on the phenomenological writings of Edmund Husserl and of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and on "first person science," in which observers examine their own conscious experience using scientifically verifiable methods.

Publications

Varela wrote numerous books and articles:^[5]

1980 (with Humberto Maturana). Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Boston: Reidel.
1979. Principles of Biological Autonomy. North-Holland.
1998 (1987) (with Humberto Maturana). The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding. Boston: Shambhala Press.
1991 (with Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch). The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-72021-2
1992 (with P. Bourgine, eds.). Towards a Practice of Autonomous Systems: The First European Conference on Artificial Life. MIT Press.
1992 (with J. Hayward, eds.). Gentle Bridges: Dialogues Between the Cognitive Sciences and the Buddhist Tradition. Boston: Shambhala Press.
1993 ( with D. Stein, eds.). Thinking About Biology: An Introduction to Theoretical Biology. Addison-Wesley, SFI Series on Complexity.
1997 (ed.). Sleeping, Dreaming and Dying. Boston: Wisdom Book.
1996-99. Invitation aux sciences cognitives. Paris: Seuil.
1999. Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom and Cognition. Stanford University Press.
1999 (with J. Shear, eds.). The View from Within: First-Person Methodologies in the Study of Consciousness. London: Imprint Academic.
1999 (with J. Petitot, B. Pachoud, and J-M. Roy, eds.). Naturalizing Phenomenology: Contemporary Issues in Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Stanford University Press.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Francisco Varela.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Francisco Varela

Intimate Distances An autobiographical essay written shortly before his death
Francisco Varela: In memoriam:
The Embodied Mind:
- Evan Thompson, coauthor.
- Eleanor Rosch, coauthor.
- Daniel Dennett, 1993, "Review of The Embodied Mind," American Journal of Psychology 106: 121-26.
"Escher, enaction & intersubjectivity."
"Why the mind is not in the head" The Cosmos Letter, Expo'90 Foundation, Japan
Franz Reichle, 2004. Film Monte Grande - What is Life?

v t e Subfields of and scientists involved in cybernetics

Subfields	Polycontexturality Second-order cybernetics Catastrophe theory Connectionism Control theory Decision theory Information theory Semiotics Synergetics Biological cybernetics Biosemiotics Biomedical cybernetics Biorobotics Computational neuroscience Homeostasis Management cybernetics Medical cybernetics New Cybernetics Neurocybernetics Sociocybernetics Emergence Artificial intelligence

Cyberneticists	Igor Aleksander William Ross Ashby Anthony Stafford Beer Claude Bernard Ludwig von Bertalanffy Valentin Braitenberg Gordon S. Brown Walter Bradford Cannon Heinz von Foerster Charles François Jay Wright Forrester Jacque Fresco Buckminster Fuller Ernst von Glasersfeld Francis Heylighen Erich von Holst Cliff Joslyn Stuart Kauffman Sergei P. Kurdyumov Niklas Luhmann Warren McCulloch Humberto Maturana Talcott Parsons Gordon Pask Walter Pitts Alfred Radcliffe-Brown Robert Trappl Valentin Turchin Jakob von Uexküll Francisco Varela Frederic Vester Charles Geoffrey Vickers Stuart Umpleby John N. Warfield William Grey Walter Kevin Warwick Norbert Wiener Anthony Wilden

v t e Systems and systems science

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Systems	Art Biological Complex Complex adaptive Conceptual Coupled human–environment Database Dynamical Economic Ecosystem Formal GPS Holarchic Human anatomy Information Legal Measurement Metric Multi-agent Nervous Nonlinear Operating Physical Political Sensory Social Solar

Theoretical fields	Chaos theory Complex systems Control theory Cybernetics Earth system science Living systems Sociotechnical system System dynamics Systems biology Systems ecology Systems engineering Systems neuroscience Systems psychology Systems science Systems theory World-systems theory

Systems scientists	Russell L. Ackoff William Ross Ashby Béla H. Bánáthy Gregory Bateson Anthony Stafford Beer Richard E. Bellman Ludwig von Bertalanffy Kenneth E. Boulding Murray Bowen C. West Churchman George Dantzig Heinz von Foerster Jay Wright Forrester Charles A S Hall James J. Kay George Klir Edward Norton Lorenz Niklas Luhmann Humberto Maturana Margaret Mead Donella Meadows Mihajlo D. Mesarovic James Grier Miller Howard T. Odum Talcott Parsons Ilya Prigogine Qian Xuesen Anatol Rapoport Claude Shannon Francisco Varela Kevin Warwick Norbert Wiener Anthony Wilden

Authority control	WorldCat VIAF: 108728186 LCCN: n79125799 ISNI: 0000 0001 1032 2546 GND: 122328434 SUDOC: 029450543 BNF: cb121075193 NDL: 00476543

Persondata
Name	Varela, Francisco
Alternative names
Short description	Chilean biologist
Date of birth	September 7, 1946
Place of birth	Santiago
Date of death	May 28, 2001
Place of death

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