The Tree of Knowledge Quotes

“In other words, the nervous system does not "pick up information" from the environment, as we often hear. On the contrary, it brings forth a world by specifying what patterns of the environment are perturbations and what changes trigger them in the organism. The popular metaphor of calling the brain an "information processing device" is not only ambiguous but patently wrong.”
― Humberto Maturana, The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding

“The being and doing of an autopoietic unity are inseparable, and this is their specific mode of organization.”
― Humberto Maturana, The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding

“Organisms and environment vary independently: the organisms at each reproductive stage and the environment according to a different dynamics. From the encounter of these two variations will emerge phenotypic stabilization and diversification as a result of as a result of the same process of conservation of adaptation, and autopoiesis depending on when the encounter takes place: stabilization when the environment changes slowly, diversification and extension when it changes abruptly.”
― Humberto Maturana, The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding

“El conocimiento del conocimiento obliga. Nos obliga a tomar una actitud de permanente vigilia contra la tentación de la certeza, a reconocer que nuestras certidumbres no son pruebas de la verdad, como si el mundo que cada uno ve fuese el mundo y no un mundo que traemos a la mano con otros. Nos obliga porque al saber que sabemos no podemos negar lo que sabemos.”
― Humberto Maturana, The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding