Library Person

Humberto Maturana

Chilean biologist; co-originator, with Francisco Varela, of the concept of autopoiesis.

Humberto Maturana (1928–2021) was a frequent visitor to Heinz von Foerster’s Biological Computer Laboratory, whose second-order cybernetics shaped his own research into cognition as a biological process. With his student Francisco Varela, he coined the term “autopoiesis” for the self-producing, self-maintaining organization of living systems, developing the idea across their jointly authored The Tree of Knowledge (1987).

Works in the Library