El Fenómeno de la Vida

El Fenómeno de la Vida, published by Dolmen Ediciones in Santiago in 2000, collects essays by the Chilean biologist Francisco Varela (1946 to 2001). Rather than starting from the impersonal universe of physics and trying to account for the living afterward, the essays recentre the phenomenon of life on its own terms, as a central occurrence of nature that grounds all knowledge. Drawing together texts from different periods of Varela's career, the collection combines hard science on the biological basis of life and his concept of autopoiesis with phenomenological analysis, arriving at a central conclusion: an inseparable circularity between the act of knowing and the act of living. Varela's work in this area was shaped by his collaboration with Humberto Maturana on the biological and cybernetic foundations of knowledge and consciousness. Credits: Varela, F. (2000). El Fenómeno de la Vida. Santiago, Chile: Dolmen Ediciones.