Humberto Maturana Rumesin - From Being to Doing: The Origins of the Biology of Cognition

Carl-Auer

Humberto R. Maturana/Bernhard Poerksen

The Origins of the Biology of Cognition

Translated by Wolfram Karl Koeck and Alison Rosemary Koeck

Second Edition, 2011

Cover: WSP Design, Heidelberg

Layout: Verlagsservice Hegele, Heiligkreuzsteinach

Coverpicture: Rene Magritte The False Mirror

Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2004

Printed in Lithuania

UAB Spindulio spaustuv, Kaunas

Second Edition, 2011

ISBN 3-89670-448-6
eISBN 978-3-84978-112-5

Copyright 2004, 2011 by Carl-Auer-Systeme

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any process

whatsoever without the written permission of the copyright owner.

Title of the original edition:

Vom Sein zum Tun

2002 by Carl-Auer-Systeme, Heidelberg

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutschen Bibliothek

Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de.

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Human beings are indispensable

Humberto Maturana, whom I have known for nearly half a century, always addresses his audiences, whether philosophers, physicists, family therapists, business executives or others, with the words: Whoever I am talking to, Im talking to as a biologist. He maintains this attitude in the fascinating conversations with Bernhard Poerksen, a perceptive and intelligent partner, which have resulted in an impressive panorama of ideas stretching from the intricate problems of philosophy and logic to the fundamental ethical questions of everyday life. The central point of view chosen here is the point of view of life itself. Wherever one opens this rewarding book, one will close it again with an enriched and stimulated mind.

Heinz von Foerster
Prof. h. c. University of Vienna, Prof. em. University of Illinois,
Rattlesnake Hill, February 2002

Humberto R. Maturana and I met for the first time in May 2000 in his rooms at the University of Chile in the centre of Santiago. It was there, in his laboratory, that the plan took shape to compile a book that would present, in dialogical form, Maturanas neurosophy, that special mixture of rigorous and wild thinking along the borderlines of natural science and philosophy. During this first encounter we reached some agreement about the key topics and talked, still quite warily and hesitantly and groping for the right kind of form, about the discovery of the observer and the biology of cognition. Torrential downpours, however, flooded half of Santiago so badly that one could only move around in rubber dinghies, and so we could not see each other often enough. The definitive meetings that finally produced this book took place in March 2001, again in Santiago. Our discussions and debates, which varied widely in content, always revolved around a decisive transformation, a re-orientation from being to doing, from the essence of an object to the process of its production. And whatever the topic the era of the dictatorship in Chile, the education of children, or the theory of autopoiesis , Humberto R. Maturana invariably focusses on foundational issues, full of enthusiasm but with intellectual rigour. It is the conditions that generate a reality, that bring it forth, in the first place, that fascinate him, and that he seeks to explore. From such a perspective, nothing remains unchangeable and simply given, everything may be related to and explained by its particular origin and development. When writing this book, I tried very hard to preserve as much as possible of the spirit and the dynamics of this kind of thinking fascinated by changes and transformations. The publisher, Carl-Auer-Systeme, Heidelberg, has been most helpful. Ralf Holtzmann and Klaus W. Mueller have supported the project with confidence and stimulating optimism. Wolfram Matthias Eckoldt, Julia Raabe and Friederike Stock looked through the first transcriptions and formulated their critical comments in such a charming manner that they became inspirations. But the book would never have seen the light of day in its present form without Humberto R. Maturana himself and his practically inexhaustible willingness to talk to me. It could not have been written without his dedication and trust. He therefore deserves my very special, heartfelt gratitude.

Bernhard Poerksen
Hamburg, April 2004

The English translation of the book was prepared by Wolfram Karl Koeck and Alison Rosemary Koeck. The present version contains original English contributions by Humberto R. Maturana (Introduction; texts accompanying figs. 112) and occasional rewordings by the authors and the publisher.

This book presents a rather long conversation that I had with Bernhard Poerksen about the history of my work on the biology of cognition. It is no more but no less than that. So I have not much more to say in this short preface than what I have already said in the book. Yet, I would like to add some reflections on how I lived what the book tells. In particular I will reflect on three basic turning points that I lived while I was working in what became the biology of cognition and the biology of love.

The three turning points that I am talking about occurred to me in relation to my becoming aware of the systemic implications of three ordinary features of our daily living. They were the relational nature of questions, the ordinary fact that we commit mistakes, and our normal daily trust in the repetitiveness of natural phenomena. Of course I knew that questions take place in the relation of the person that asks the question and the person that answers it. Of course I knew that I committed mistakes, and of course I knew that I trusted the regularity of natural processes in my daily living. The expansion in my awareness referred to my becoming conscious of the consequences of acting in the awareness of what those ordinary circumstances and processes of our daily living entail for our doings and our understanding of what we do. Let us see:

If we attend to the relational nature of questions and answers, we can easily see that the person that accepts an answer to his or her question determines in his or her listening what makes the answer that he or she accepts valid for him or her. Whatever the question may be, it is a constitutive feature of the question answer relation that the person that accepts the answer determines what makes it a valid answer. Yet, this is not a peculiar feature of questions and answers; in every relation in which something offered is accepted, the person that accepts what is offered determines the truth, value, or adequacy of what is accepted. Of course what I say is not new, indeed is well known. Yet, if we accept that that is indeed the case, we cannot henceforth ignore in what we do that nothing is true in itself, valuable, adequate or acceptable in itself. Furthermore, if we accept the implications of what I have said above, the following questions arise: what is to know? What is the sense of fighting for the truth? When a scientist asks a question to nature and obtains an answer through experiments or observations, is he or she aware of the fact that it is he or she who determines the validity of the answer obtained, by choosing the criterion that he or she uses to accept or to reject the results of the experiments or the observations?