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

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

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,

cybernetician A cyberneticist or a cybernetician is a person who practices cybernetics. Heinz von Foerster once told Stuart Umpleby that Norbert Wiener preferred the term "cybernetician" rather than "cyberneticist", perhaps because Wiener was a mathematician ...

, and

neuroscientist A neuroscientist (or neurobiologist) is a scientist who has specialised knowledge in neuroscience, a branch of biology that deals with the physiology, biochemistry, psychology, anatomy and molecular biology of neurons, neural circuits, and glial ...

who, together with his mentor

Humberto Maturana Humberto Maturana Romesín (September 14, 1928 – May 6, 2021) was a Chilean biologist and philosopher. Many consider him a member of a group of second-order cybernetics theoreticians such as Heinz von Foerster, Gordon Pask, Herbert Brün ...

, is best known for introducing the concept of

autopoiesis The term autopoiesis () 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 Realization of the Living'' by Chilean biologists ...

to biology, and for co-founding the

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

to promote dialog between science and

Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religions, Indian religion or Indian philosophy#Buddhist philosophy, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha. ...

Life and career

Varela was born in 1946 in

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whos ...

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 (1951–1963), like his mentor

, Varela temporarily studied medicine at the

Pontifical Catholic University of Chile The Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (''PUC or UC Chile'') ( es, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) is one of the six Catholic Universities existing in the Chilean university system and one of the two pontifical universities i ...

and graduated with a degree in biology from the

University of Chile The University of Chile ( es, Universidad de Chile) is a 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 Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

. His thesis, defended in 1970 and supervised by

Torsten Wiesel Torsten Nils Wiesel (born 3 June 1924) is a Swedish 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; the prize was ...

, 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 general who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, first as the leader of the Military Junta of Chile from 1973 to 1981, being declared President of ...

, Varela and his family spent 7 years in exile 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 (also referred to as Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Lamaism, Lamaistic Buddhism, Himalayan Buddhism, and Northern Buddhism) is the form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet and Bhutan, where it is the dominant religion. It is also in majo ...

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

Vajradhatu Vajradhatu was the name of the umbrella organization of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, one of the first Tibetan Buddhist lamas to visit and teach in the West. It served as the vehicle for the promulgation of his Buddhist teachings, and was also the na ...

and

Shambhala Training Shambhala Training is a secular approach to meditation developed by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa and his students. It is based on what Trungpa calls Shambhala Vision, which sees enlightened society as not purely mythical, but as reali ...

, and later with

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

, a Tibetan meditation master of higher

tantra Tantra (; sa, तन्त्र, lit=loom, weave, warp) are the esoteric traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism that developed on the Indian subcontinent from the middle of the 1st millennium CE onwards. The term ''tantra'', in the Indian ...

s. In 1986, he settled in France, where he first taught cognitive science and epistemology at the

École Polytechnique École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

, and later neuroscience at the

University of Paris , image_name = Coat of arms of the University of Paris.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of Arms , latin_name = Universitas magistrorum et scholarium Parisiensis , motto = ''Hic et ubique terrarum'' (Latin) , mottoeng = Here and a ...

. From 1988 until his death, he led a research group, as Director of Research at the CNRS (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 , coatofarms = , coatofarms_article = , coatofarms_link = , incumbent = Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama , incumbentsince = 22 February 1940 , image = Dalailama1 20121014 4639.jpg , caption = Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama , first = Ge ...

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 – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm ...

and other contemplative practices, especially

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

. Varela died in 2001 in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

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

Leonor Varela Leonor Magdalena Varela Palma (; born 29 December 1972) is a Chilean actress. She played the title role in the 1999 television film '' Cleopatra'', and vampire princess Nyssa Damaskinos in the 2002 Marvel Comics film ''Blade II''. Early life ...

Work and legacy

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

and

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

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

neurology Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal ...

, cognitive science, mathematics, and philosophy. He founded, with others, the

Integral Institute Integral theory is a synthetic metatheory developed by Ken Wilber. It attempts to place a wide diversity of theories and models into one single framework. The basis is a "spectrum of consciousness," from archaic consciousness to ultimate spiri ...

, a thinktank dedicated to the cross-fertilization of ideas and disciplines. Varela supported

embodied philosophy Embodied cognition is the theory that many features of cognition, whether human or otherwise, are shaped by aspects of an organism's entire body. Sensory and motor systems are seen as fundamentally integrated with cognitive processing. The cognit ...

, viewing human cognition and

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...

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 Neurophenomenology refers to a scientific research program aimed to address the hard problem of consciousness in a pragmatic way. It combines neuroscience with phenomenology in order to study experience, mind, and consciousness with an emphasis on ...

. This concept combined the phenomenology of

Edmund Husserl , thesis1_title = Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung (Contributions to the Calculus of Variations) , thesis1_url = https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:58535/bdef:Book/view , thesis1_year = 1883 , thesis2_title ...

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 interest an ...

, 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 physicist, systems theorist and deep ecologist. In 1995, he became a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California. He is on the faculty of Schumacher ...

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 (; russian: Илья́ Рома́нович Приго́жин; 28 May 2003) was a physical chemist and Nobel laureate noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility. B ...

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

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

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

Publications

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

Books

* 1979. ''Principles of Biological Autonomy''. North-Holland. * 1980 (with

). ''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''. Editions du Seuil, Paris. * 1991 (rev 2017) (with Evan Thompson 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, 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 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 (Ken Wilber) 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 biologists École Polytechnique faculty Research directors of the French National Centre for Scientific Research