Autopoiesis, Structural Coupling And Cognition: A History Of These. And. Other Notions In The Biology Of Cognition

Cybernetics & Human Knowing, Vol.9, No.3-4, 2002, pp. 5 -34

Autopoiesis, Structural Coupling and
Cognition: A history of these. and. other
notions in the biology of cognition
Humberto Maturana Romesin1

Abstract: My intent in this essay is to reflect on the history o f some biological notions such as
autopoiesis, structural coupling, and cognition, that I have developed since the early1960's as a
result o f my work on visual perception and the organization o f the living. No doubt I shall repeat
things that I have said in other publications (Maturana & Varela, 1980, 1988), and I shall present
notions"that once they are said appear as obvious truisms. Moreover, I shall refine or expand the
meaning o f such notions, or even modify them. Yet, in any case, the reader is notinvited to attend to
the truisms, or to what seems to be obvious, rather he or she is invited to attend to the consequences
that those notions entail for the understanding o f cognition as a biological process. After all,
explanations or demonstrations always become self evident once they are understood and accepted,
and the purpose o f this essay is the expansion o f understanding in alldimensions o f human
existence.
Keywords: Autopoiesis, structural coupling, cognition, explanations, self-consciousness

Conceptual changes

In 1960 I asked myself "What should happen in the manner o f constitution o f a
system so that I see as a result o f its operation a living system?" This was a
strange question in a period in which every scientist knew that to know something
about somethingone should go and look what was already there without
interfering with it. I was not making a hypothesis about how the system was. I was
proposing that the relation between the internal dynamics o f the system and the
result o f that internal dynamics in the domain in which I observed it, would tell
me what the system was. I had to create the system to know it.
In 1965 when I was studyingcolor vision in pigeons I realized that I could no
longer pretend that one saw the colors as features o f an external world, and that I
had to abandon the question, "how do I see that color?" and ask instead, "what
happens in me when I say that I see such a color?" To make this change meant
abandoning the notion that there was an external independent world to be known
by the observer. Instead Ihad to accept that knowing has to do w ith the congruent
interactions between entities eacl\ o f which is a structure determined system - that
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[I] Instituto Matriztico, Las Urbinas 87, Appartment 16, Providencia, Santiago, Chile

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Humberto Maturana Romesin

is a system in which all that happens with it and to i t is determined at every instant
by the way it ismade (its structure) at that instant.
To adopt the epistemological grounding entailed in these changes meant that
henceforth I would not ask "what is?", but I would ask myself " what criterion do I
use to validate my claim that something is what I say that it is?" Furthermore, to
do this entailed a fundamental ontological change, namely the fundamental
question was no longer "what is theessence o f that which I observe?" but rather
"how do I do what I do as an observer in o bserving?"
All that follows comes from that basic epistemological and ontological change
in my thinking.

1. Autopoiesis
1.1 Origin o f the notion ofautopoiesis
I n November 1960, a first year medical student asked me the question "What
began three thousand eight hundred million years ago so that you can saynow that
living systems began then?" I realized that at that moment I could not properly
answer that question, so I replied " I cannot answer this question now, but i f you
come back next year, I shall propose an answer." Thus, I accepted the question o f
the student to be answered later and at the same time accepted the question for
myself. In so doing I realized that I did not know the...