Francisco Javier Varela García (September 7, 1946 – May 28, 2001) was a Chilean

biologist A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual Cell (biology), cell, a multicellular organism, or a Community (ecology), community of Biological inter ...

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

, cybernetician, and

neuroscientist A neuroscientist (or neurobiologist) is a scientist specializing in neuroscience that deals with the anatomy and function of neurons, Biological neural network, neural circuits, and glia, and their Behavior, behavioral, biological, and psycholo ...

who, together with his mentor Humberto Maturana, is best known for introducing the concept of

autopoiesis The term autopoiesis (), one of several current theories of life, refers to a system capable of producing and maintaining itself by creating its own parts. The term was introduced in the 1972 publication '' Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realizat ...

to biology, and for co-founding the

Mind and Life Institute The Mind & Life Institute is a US-registered, 501(c)(3) organization, not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1991 to establish the field of contemplative neuroscience, contemplative sciences. Based in Charlottesville, Va., the institute ...

to promote dialog between science and

Buddhism Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

Life and career

Varela was born in 1946 in

Talcahuano Talcahuano () (From Mapudungun ''Tralkawenu'', "Thundering Sky") is a port city and commune in the Biobío Region of Chile. It is part of the Greater Concepción conurbation. Talcahuano is located in the south of the Central Zone of Chile. ...

in Chile, the son of Corina María Elena García Tapia and Raúl Andrés Varela Rodríguez. After completing secondary school at the Liceo Alemán del Verbo Divino in

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile (), is the capital and largest city of Chile and one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is located in the country's central valley and is the center of the Santiago Metropolitan Regi ...

(1951–1963), like his mentor Humberto Maturana, Varela temporarily studied medicine at the

Pontifical Catholic University of Chile The Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (UC Chile; ) is a traditional private university based in Santiago, Chile. It is one of the thirteen Catholic universities existing in Chilean university system and one of the two pontifical univ ...

and graduated with a degree in biology from the

University of Chile The University of Chile () is a public university, public research university in Santiago, Chile. It was founded on November 19, 1842, and inaugurated on September 17, 1843.

. He later obtained a Ph.D. in biology at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

. His thesis, defended in 1970 and supervised by

Torsten Wiesel Torsten Nils Wiesel (born 3 June 1924) is a Swedish Neurophysiology, neurophysiologist. With David H. Hubel, he received the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for their discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system; ...

, was titled ''Insect Retinas: Information processing in the compound eye''. After the 1973 military coup led by

Augusto Pinochet Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean military officer and politician who was the dictator of Military dictatorship of Chile, Chile from 1973 to 1990. From 1973 to 1981, he was the leader ...

, Varela and his family spent 7 years in

exile Exile or banishment is primarily penal expulsion from one's native country, and secondarily expatriation or prolonged absence from one's homeland under either the compulsion of circumstance or the rigors of some high purpose. Usually persons ...

in the United States before he returned to Chile to become a professor of biology at the Universidad de Chile. Varela became familiar, by practice, with

Tibetan Buddhism Tibetan Buddhism is a form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet, Bhutan and Mongolia. It also has a sizable number of adherents in the areas surrounding the Himalayas, including the Indian regions of Ladakh, Gorkhaland Territorial Administration, D ...

in the 1970s, initially studying, together with Keun-Tshen Goba (''né'' Ezequiel Hernandez Urdaneta), with the meditation master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, founder of Vajradhatu and Shambhala Training, and later with

Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche (1920A Brief Biography of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche
� ...

. In 1986, he settled in

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

, where he first taught cognitive science and epistemology at the

École Polytechnique (, ; also known as Polytechnique or l'X ) is a ''grande école'' located in Palaiseau, France. It specializes in science and engineering and is a founding member of the Polytechnic Institute of Paris. The school was founded in 1794 by mat ...

, and later neuroscience at the

University of Paris The University of Paris (), known Metonymy, metonymically as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, from 1150 to 1970, except for 1793–1806 during the French Revolution. Emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated wit ...

. From 1988 until his death, he led a research group, as Director of Research at the

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 eng ...

(Centre National de Recherche Scientifique). In 1987, Varela, along with R. Adam Engle, founded the

, initially to sponsor a series of dialogues between scientists and

the Dalai Lama The Dalai Lama (, ; ) is the head of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. The term is part of the full title "Holiness Knowing Everything Vajradhara Dalai Lama" (圣识一切瓦齐尔达喇达赖喇嘛) given by Altan Khan, the first Shu ...

about the relationship between modern science and

. The Institute continues today as a major nexus for such dialog as well as promoting and supporting multidisciplinary scientific investigation in mind sciences, contemplative scholarship and practice and related areas in the interface of science with

meditation Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique to train attention and awareness and detach from reflexive, "discursive thinking", achieving a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state, while not judging the meditat ...

and other contemplative practices, especially

Buddhist practices Buddhism (Pali language, Pali and ''Buddha Dharma'') is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Gautama Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Bu ...

. Varela died in 2001 in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

Hepatitis C Hepatitis C is an infectious disease caused by the hepatitis C virus (HCV) that primarily affects the liver; it is a type of viral hepatitis. During the initial infection period, people often have mild or no symptoms. Early symptoms can include ...

after having written an account of his 1998 liver transplant. Varela had four children, including the actress, environmental spokesperson, and model Leonor Varela.

Work and legacy

Varela was trained as a biologist, mathematician and philosopher through the influence of different teachers, Humberto Maturana and

. He wrote and edited a number of books and numerous journal articles in

biology Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, History of life, origin, evolution, and ...

neurology Neurology (from , "string, nerve" and the suffix wikt:-logia, -logia, "study of") is the branch of specialty (medicine) , medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the nervous syst ...

cognitive science Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition (in a broad sense). Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include percep ...

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

, and

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

. He founded, with others, the Integral Institute, a thinktank dedicated to the cross-fertilization of ideas and disciplines. Varela supported

embodied cognition Embodied cognition represents a diverse group of theories which investigate how cognition is shaped by the bodily state and capacities of the organism. These embodied factors include the motor system, the perceptual system, bodily interactions wi ...

, viewing human

cognition Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...

and

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of a state or object, either internal to oneself or in one's external environment. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations, and debate among philosophers, scientists, an ...

in terms of the enactive structures in which they arise. These comprise the body (as a biological system and as personally experienced) and the physical world which it enacts. Varela's work popularized within the field of neuroscience the concept of neurophenomenology. This concept combined the

phenomenology Phenomenology may refer to: Art * Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties Philosophy * Phenomenology (Peirce), a branch of philosophy according to Charles Sanders Peirce (1839� ...

Edmund Husserl Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (; 8 April 1859 – 27 April 1938) was an Austrian-German philosopher and mathematician who established the school of Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology. In his early work, he elaborated critiques of histori ...

and of

Maurice Merleau-Ponty Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty. ( ; ; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interes ...

, with "first-person science." Neurophenomenology requires observers to examine their own conscious experience using scientifically verifiable methods. In the 1996 popular book ''The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems'', physicist

Fritjof Capra Fritjof Capra (born February 1, 1939) is an Austrian-born American author, physicist, systems theorist and deep ecologist. In 1995, he became a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California. He was on the faculty of ...

makes extensive reference to Varela and Maturana's theory of

as part of a new, systems-based scientific approach for describing the interrelationships and interdependence of psychological, biological, physical, social, and cultural phenomena. Written for a general audience, ''The Web of Life'' helped popularize the work of Varela and Maturana, as well as that of

Ilya Prigogine Viscount Ilya Romanovich Prigogine (; ; 28 May 2003) was a Belgian physical chemist of Russian-Jewish origin, noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility. Prigogine's work most notably earned him the 19 ...

and

Gregory Bateson Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904 – 4 July 1980) was an English anthropology, anthropologist, social sciences, social scientist, linguistics, linguist, visual anthropology, visual anthropologist, semiotics, semiotician, and cybernetics, cybernetici ...

. Varela's 1991 book ''The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience'', co-authored with

Evan Thompson Evan Thompson (born 1962) is a professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia, specializing in cognitive science, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and cross-cultural philosophy, particularly Buddhist philosophy in dialogue with We ...

and

Eleanor Rosch Eleanor Rosch (once known as Eleanor Rosch Heider;"Natural Categories", Cognitive Psychology, Vol. 4, No. 3, (May 1973), p. 328. born 9 July 1938) is an American psychologist. She is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berk ...

, is considered a classic in the field of cognitive science, offering pioneering phenomenological connections and introducing the Buddhism-informed enactivist and

approach. A revised edition of ''The Embodied Mind'' was published in 2017, featuring substantive introductions by the surviving authors, as well as a preface by

Jon Kabat-Zinn Jon Kabat-Zinn (born Jon Kabat, June 5, 1944) is an American professor emeritus of medicine and the creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Med ...

Publications

Varela wrote numerous books and articles:Comprehensiv
bibliography
by Randall Whitaker.

Books

* 1979
Principles of Biological Autonomy

MIT Press The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...

. * 1980 (with Humberto Maturana). ''Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living''. Boston: Reidel. * 1987 (rev 1992, 1998) (with Maturana). ''The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding''. Boston: Shambhala Press. * 1988. ''Connaître:Les Sciences Cognitives, tendences et perspectivess''.

Éditions du Seuil Éditions du Seuil (), also known as Le Seuil, is a French publishing house established in 1935 by Catholic intellectual Jean Plaquevent (1901–1965), and currently owned by La Martinière Groupe. It owes its name to this goal "The ''seuil'' (th ...

. * 1991 (rev 2017) (with

and

). ''The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience''. MIT Press. * 1992 (with P. Bourgine, eds.). ''Towards a Practice of Autonomous Systems: The First European Conference on Artificial Life''. MIT Press. * 1992 (with J. Hayward, eds.). ''Gentle Bridges: Dialogues Between the Cognitive Sciences and the Buddhist Tradition''. Boston: Shambhala Press. eprinted, 2014, as ''Gentle Bridges: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on the Sciences of Mind''.* 1993 (with W. Stein, eds.). ''Thinking About Biology: An Introduction to Theoretical Biology''. Addison-Wesley, SFI Series on Complexity. eprinted, 2018, as ''Thinking About Biology: An Invitation to Current Theoretical Biology'', CRC Press.* 1997 (ed.). ''Sleeping, Dreaming and Dying: An Exploration of Consciousness with the Dalai Lama''. Boston: Wisdom Books. * 1999. ''Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom and Cognition''. Stanford University Press. * 1999 (with J. Shear, eds.). ''The View from Within: First-Person Methodologies in the Study of Consciousness''. London: Imprint Academic. *1999 (with J. Petitot, B. Pachoud, and J-M. Roy, eds.). ''Naturalizing Phenomenology: Contemporary Issues in Phenomenology and Cognitive Science''. Stanford University Press.

Notable articles

* 2002 (with A. Weber). 'Life after Kant: Natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations of biological individuality'. ''Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences'' I:97–125, 2002.

References

External links

Intimate Distances
An autobiographical essay written shortly before his death * Francisco Varela: In memoriam: *

*

*''The Embodied Mind'': *
Evan Thompson
, coauthor. *

coauthor. **

Daniel Dennett Daniel Clement Dennett III (March 28, 1942 – April 19, 2024) was an American philosopher and cognitive scientist. His research centered on the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of biology, particularly as those ...

, 1993,
Review of The Embodied Mind
" ''American Journal of Psychology 106'': 121–26. *
Escher, enaction & intersubjectivity.
*

The Cosmos Letter, Expo'90 Foundation, Japan * Franz Reichle, 2004
Film Monte Grande - What is Life?
{{DEFAULTSORT:Varela, Francisco 1946 births 2001 deaths People from Santiago, Chile Tibetan Buddhists from Chile Chilean biologists Chilean people of Galician descent Chilean philosophers Chilean scientists Complex systems scientists Converts to Buddhism Consciousness researchers and theorists Cyberneticists Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Integral theory Systems scientists Theoretical biologists Colegio del Verbo Divino alumni French National Centre for Scientific Research scientists Pontifical Catholic University of Chile alumni University of Chile alumni Deaths from hepatitis 20th-century American writers 20th-century Chilean philosophers Researchers of artificial life 20th-century Chilean biologists Academic staff of École Polytechnique Research directors of the French National Centre for Scientific Research