Francisco Varela

Francisco Varela (1946–2001) was a Chilean biologist, philosopher, and neuroscientist who co-developed autopoiesis and helped establish enactive cognitive science.

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Autopoiesis: The self-producing organization through which a living system continually generates and maintains its components. Varela co-developed this account of living organization with Humberto Maturana.
Humberto Maturana: A Chilean biologist whose work on living systems and cognition helped establish autopoiesis. Maturana and Varela jointly developed the concept of autopoiesis.
The Embodied Mind: A 1991 book by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch on cognition, embodiment, and Buddhist philosophy. It presents the enactive approach and its proposed dialogue with Buddhist thought.
Enactive approach to cognition: A theory of cognition in which organisms bring forth meaningful worlds through embodied, situated activity. Varela helped make this approach a major alternative to computational accounts of mind.
University of Chile: A public university in Santiago, founded in 1842 and Chile’s oldest higher-education institution. Varela studied biology there before pursuing research abroad.
Enactivism: An approach to cognition that explains minded activity through an organism’s embodied interactions with its environment. Varela helped formulate cognition as action arising through organism–environment coupling.
Evan Thompson: A Canadian philosopher of mind whose work develops enactive and embodied approaches to cognition. Thompson collaborated with Varela on influential accounts of mind and experience.
Mind and Life Institute: An organization that fosters dialogue and research between contemplative traditions and modern science. Varela helped initiate the scientific and Buddhist dialogues that led to its founding.
Autonomy in biology: The capacity of a living system to maintain its organization through internally governed processes. Autopoiesis helped establish autonomy as a central theme in theoretical biology.
Harvard University: A private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, founded in 1636. Varela earned his doctorate in biology at Harvard under the guidance of Torsten Wiesel.