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Information About

Francisco Varela





IDEAS

Varela is also a proponent of the Embodied Philosophy which claims that human Cognition and Consciousness can only be understood in terms of the enactive structures in which they arise, namely the body, and the environment in which the body interacts. He made an impact on the neuroscience profession by introducing concepts such as neurophenomenology, based on writings of Husserl, and "first person science" in which observers apply scientifically verifiable methods for examining the nature of their own conscious experience.

He became a Tibetan Buddhist in the 1970s initially studying with the meditation master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, founder of Shambhala Buddhism , and eventually with Tulku Ugyen , a Nepalese master of higher Tantra s. He was a founding member of the Integral Institute , a Thinktank dedicated to the cross-fertilization of ideas and disciplines. He was the author of dozens of academic journal articles and several books which made impacts in the crosscurrents of several fields.

His death was caused by Hepatitis C . For his own account of his liver transplant, see "Intimate Distances - Fragments for a Phenomenology of Organ Transplantation"

He is also the father of actress and model Leonor Varela .


SEE ALSO



BIBLIOGRAPHY

For a comprehensive bibliography, see Randall Whitaker's page .
  • H. Maturana and F. Varela: ''Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living'', Boston: D. Reidel, 1980

  • F. Varela: ''Principles of Biological Autonomy'', New York: Elsevier/North-Holland, 1979

  • H. Maturana and F. Varela: ''The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding'', Boston: Shambhala, 1987-1998

  • F. Varela, E. Thompson and E. Rosch: ''The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience'', Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1991

  • F. Varela and P. Bourgine (Eds.): ''Towards a Practice of Autonomous Systems: The First European Conference on Artificial Life'', Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992

  • J. Hayward and F. Varela (Eds.): ''Gentle Bridges: Dialogues Between the Cognitive Sciences and the Buddhist Tradition'', Boston: Shambhala, 1992

  • D. Stein and F. Varela (Eds.): ''Thinking About Biology: An Introduction to Theoretical Biology'', Reading: Addison-Wesley, SFI Series on Complexity, 1993

  • F. Varela (Ed.): ''Sleeping, Dreaming and Dying'', Boston: Wisdom Book, 1997

  • F. Varela: ''Invitation aux sciences cognitives'', Paris: Seuil, 1996-1999

  • F. Varela: ''Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom and Cognition'', Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999

  • F. Varela and J. Shear (Eds.): ''The View from Within: First-Person Methodologies in the Study of Consciousness'', London: Imprint Academic, 1999

  • J. Petitot, F. Varela, B. Pachoud and J-M. Roy (Eds.): ''Naturalizing Phenomenology: Contemporary Issues in Phenomenology and Cognitive Science'', Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999



FILMOGRAPHY

  • Franz Reichle: Monte Grande - What is Life, 2004



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