Published: December 2021, Issue 40

Keywords:
Humberto Maturana Romesín, Ximena Dávila Yáñez, Systemic Laws, living beings, knowing, observing, observer, randomness, chaos, recursiveness,perception, illusion, evolutionary drift, conservation, change, structural determinism, structural coupling, composite unity, structure, organisation, class identity , domains of being, continuously changing present, closed system, Meta-systemic Laws, spontaneity of living, adaptation, history, desires, medium, niche, autopoiesis..

Humberto Maturana Romesín

Humberto Maturana Romesín is a Chilean biologist and epistemologist. Along with Francisco Varela, he developed the concept of autopoiesis. He is also the author (with Varela) of The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding. Maturana received a Ph.D. in biology from Harvard and worked with Jerome Lettvin at MIT. He is co-founder, with Ximena Dávila Yañez, of Matriztica de Santiago. With her, he is the co-author of The Tree of Living: Toward a Cultural Transformation, now in press.

Ximena Dávila Yáñez

Ximena Dávila Yáñez studied human and family relations, specializing in work relations at the Instituto Profesional Carlos Casanueva (IPCC) in Chile. She also studied experimental epistemology with Maturana. Her preoccupation in the domain of human relations has been to understand how relational pain and suffering arise, and how a person can come out of it. She is the creator of Liberating Conversation, an approach to the ancestral conversations from the origin of humanness. She is co-founder, with Maturana, of Matríztica de Santiago, where she works as researcher and professor. She is author with Maturana of Habitar Humano: en sis ensayos de Biología-Cultural, published in Santiago in 2008. She is also author with Maturana of The Tree of Living: Toward a Cultural Transformation, (at the time) in press.

Abstract

Many thanks to Dr Dávila and Matristica de Santiago Institute for granting permission to upload this text. (First published in ACM, Interactions, Volume XX.3, May+June 2013, On Modeling Forum).