Humberto Maturana

From Geography

Latest revision as of 11:30, 19 September 2012

Humberto Maturana [1]

Humberto Maturana

[2]

Quotation from interview with Humberto Maturana

"When one puts objectivity in parenthesis, all views, all verses in the multiverse are equally valid. Understanding this, you lose the passion for changing the other. One of the results is that you look apathetic to people. Now, those who do not live with objectivity in parentheses have a passion for changing the other. So they have this passion and you do not. For example, at the university where I work, people may say, ‘Humberto is not really interested in anything,’ because I don’t have the passion in the same sense that the person that has objectivity without parentheses. And I think that this is the main difficulty. To other people you may seem too tolerant. However, if the others also put objectivity in parentheses , you discover that disagreements can only be solved by entering a domain of co-inspiration, in which things are done together because the participants want to do them. With objectivity in parentheses, it is easy to do things together because one is not denying the other in the process of doing them."

Humberto Maturana - Interview 1985. (Oikos, n.d.)

Humberto Maturana Life and Career

Humberto Maturana[2] Romesín was born in 1928 in Santiago de Chile. He graduated in 1947 from Liceo Manuel de Salas, and then entered the profession of medicine at the University of Chile. In 1954 he moved to University College London to study anatomy and neurophysiology, thanks to a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1958 he earned a PhD in Biology from Harvard University in the United States. Along with his disciple and later collaborator Francisco Varela, in the seventies he developed the concept of autopoiesis, which accounts for the organization of living systems as closed networks of self-production by components that constitute them. The concept was later used by Niklas Luhmann in his theory of social systems. In addition, it laid the foundations of biology of cognition, a discipline that is responsible for explaining the operation of living entities as closed systems and certain in its structure. Another important aspect of reflection corresponds to the invitation Maturana makes about the question of being (question posed by the existence of an objective reality independent of the observer – thus a question of ontology), the question of doing (question takes as its starting point at objectivity in parentheses, the objects are brought into the hand through the operations of distinction drawn by the observer and based on selection of meaning (Noe & Fjelsted Alroe, 2002, pp. 41-42), understood as any human being operating from a system and in the language.) Subsequently, Maturana studied the activity of a directional sensory organ's cell, with the scientist Jerome Lettvin from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Following that investigation, both were nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, but finally they did not obtain the award.

Academic biography chronologically

To put it his academic biography into chronological order:

In 1960 he returned to Chile to serve as second assistant in the department of Biology, School of Medicine of the University of Chile. He founded in 1965, the Institute for Science and the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Chile.

In 1970 he created and developed the concept of autopoiesis, which explains the fact that living beings are closed systems, while circular networks of molecular productions in which the molecules produced through their interactions are the same network that produced and specified limits . At the same time, living beings remain open to the flow of matter and energy in both molecular systems. Thus, living beings are "machines" which are distinguished from others by its ability to self-produce. Since then, Maturana has developed knowledge of biology.

In 1990 he was named illustrious son of the commune of Ñuñoa (Santiago, Chile). In addition, it was declared an honorary doctorate at the Free University of Brussels.

In 1992, along with biologist Jorge Mpodozis raises the idea of the evolution of species through natural drift, based on the neutralist conception of how members of a lineage made its autopoiesis transgenerationally remains in a lifestyle or particular ontogenic phenotype, which depends on its history of interactions and innovation which lead to the diversification of lineages. On September 27, 1994, they received the National Prize for Science in Chile, through their research in the field of visual perception of vertebrates and their statements about the theory of knowledge.

Moreover Humberto Maturana is co-founder and teacher of Matríztica Training Institute, where he works on the development of dynamic cultural and Biological Matrix of Human Existence. Matriztic institute's proposal is to explain the experiences from the experiences, as a human way living (culture), in the intertwining of language and emotions (talking), which is where it happens all human activity.

Currently he also carries out his academic activities at the University of Chile and University Andrés Bello. Maturana has also made great contributions, primarily constructivist psychology.

Recent Work

Maturana has continued developing radical ideas in areas as diverse as education, psychology and politics and many more by works such as: Emotions and Language in Education and Politics (Chilean Educational Publishing, 1990), The Sense of Humanity (Hachette Communications, 1991), From Biology to Psychology (Editorial Synthesis, 1993), Reality: Objective or Built? (Editorial Anthopos, 1996, Transformation in Coexistence (Dolmen Ediciones, 1999).

________________________________________

References

-Instituto de Altos Estudios en Biociencias de la Vida. Biografía: Humberto Maturana

-Jorge Mendoza,Ximena Santa Cruz, Silvia Selowsky.Biología del Fenómeno Social. Ecovisiones n°6. Chile.

-Noe, E. & Fjelsted Alroe, H. (2002). Combining Luhmann and Actor-Network theory to see farm enterprises as self-organizing systems. Cybernatics and Human Knowing, 13(1), 34-48.

-Oikos (n.d.). Humberto Maturana. Ecology of mind. Retrieved on May 7th, 2012, from: http://www.oikos.org/maten.htm

Contributors

Image and links inserted by --JikkeVanTHof 15:17, 18 October 2011 (CEST)

Enhanced by Janna Völpel s3015041JannaVolpel 15:47, 7 May 2012 (CEST)