From Autopoiesis to NeuroPhenomenology

A Tribute to Francisco Varela

June 18-20, 2004

(Amphithéâtre Richelieu, University Paris-Sorbonne

17, rue de la Sorbonne - 75005 Paris)

Introduction:

Over the past half century complexity theory has a seminal influence on the entire framework of modern science, affecting all its domains from physics and biology to cognitive science and the human and social sciences. This radical reframing is powered by a new vision of causality: a consequence arises from networks of multiple causes rather than from a single, direct cause.

This transversal notion of non-linear or emergent dynamics has allowed us to critically reexamine our models and to mobilize new approaches to age-old questions such as the relations between the biological and the mental, the physical and the lived, the personal and the social, etc.

From Autopoiesis to Neurophenomenology : a Tribute to Francisco Varela will bring together scientists and thinkers from the fields of mathematics, neuroscience, immunology, theoretical biology, cognitive science, philosophy and the social sciences who participate in what can be loosely termed a complex-systems approach to fundamental processes of life, mind and human relations. These researchers share a constellation of concepts: self-organization, autopoiesis, autonomy, enaction, radical embodiment. The goal of these notions is the acquisition of a deeper understanding of non-living and living systems through the ongoing study of emergent properties.

Francisco Varela's contribution to the understanding of these ideas was devoted to conjugating non-linear dynamics with first person accounts, constituting the neurophenomenology program which is a component of the general program of naturalizing phenomenology. Francisco Varela's oeuvre ramifies into an unusually large number of domains essential to contemporary science. This tribute uses it as a basis for presenting new and original work by thinkers of all origins.