Tree of Knowledge. Biological roots of human understanding

Before you is a brilliant study by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. It presents the foundations of an alternative theory of knowledge, the main tenets of which are opposed to the classical theory of representing reality (representationalism). The plot of this book is "knowledge of how we know." The authors offer a new perspective on the process of cognition, which they believe has significant social and ethical implications, as they argue that the only world we see is created through interaction with other people. According to the authors, cognition does not occur by reflecting the external world in the subject's consciousness, but is a process of forming the world through the interaction between the brain, body, and external environment. The main role in this process is played by experience, which allows overcoming the opposition between the knower and the known. The basis of the new theory is the concept of cellular autopoiesis and the principle of self-reproduction of closed (autonomous) systems.