3: The knowledge of knowledge entails responsibility

Humberto R. Maturana on truth and oppression, structure determinism and dictatorship, and the autopoiesis of living

Humberto R. Maturana, (b. 1928) first studied medicine in Chile, then anatomy in England, was awarded a Ph.D. in biology at Harvard in 1958, and subsequently worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1960, he returned to work with the University of Chile at Santiago, which he only left for occasion periods of research and teaching abroad. He is particularly well known for his theory of autopoiesis (self-creation) that he began to develop in the late 1960s. This theory provides a novel feature of living beings going beyond the traditional criteria of biology - reproduction, mobility, etc. According to Maturana, a circular, autopoietic form of organisation distinguishes living beings, from the amoeba to humans. Living systems form a network of internal and circularly enmeshed processes of production that make them bounded unities by constantly producing and thus maintaining themselves. Autopoietic systems are autonomous. Whatever may happen inside them, whatever may penetrate and stimulate, perturb or destroy them, is essentially determined by their own circular organisation.

At the beginning of the 1970s, Maturana further elaborated the theory of autopoiesis together with the biologist Francisco J. Varela, who was then also teaching in Chile. They cooperated with systems theorists and politicians who, on the initiative of the newly elected socialist president Salvador Allende, had been engaged to reorganise the communication systems and the economy of the Republic. In 1973, the dictator Pinochet seized power and destroyed, amongst other things, the existing university environment. Numerous professors were dismissed and driven out; many were murdered or deported. Despite repeated threats from the side of the regime, Maturana stayed in Chile. The concept of autopoiesis began to gain greater popularity in the early 1980s. In the meantime, it has exploded in academic circles and become a synonym for an autonomous form of reality production. It has taken on a vital life of its own as a universally exploitable trendy concept in journals on systems thinking and family therapy or at the conferences of sociologists and media scholars - even in the face of resistance by its creator.

Humberto R. Maturana is still active as a professor of biology who seeks to promote a theory of cognition in the context of the natural sciences. Until his retirement, he was director of the Laboratory for Experimental Epistemology and the Biology of Cognition at the University of Chile in Santiago, which he had founded himself.

The explanation of experience

Poerksen: You once said that truth and reality often serve as motives for violence. How are we to understand this?

Maturana: We live in a culture that does not respect differences but only tolerates them. So just because certain people think that they are in the possession of truth, the situation frequently arises that everything unfamiliar and extraordinary will appear as an unacceptable and insupportable threat. The possible consequence of such an attitude is that people feel justified to use violence because they claim to have privileged access to reality or to the truth, or to fight for a great ideal. This attitude, so they believe, justifies their behaviour and sets them apart from common criminals.

Poerksen: Who is the target of this criticism of an idea of truth turned totalitarian? Where do you see such forms of conflict?

Maturana: They are ubiquitous although they need not always end in physical threats towards other people. In political and polemical debates, which are often similar to fights or even wars, we reject other people and their views. We attack them without listening, in fact, we refuse to listen because we are so very sure that they hold views that are patently false. Political terrorism rests on the idea that certain people are wrong and must, therefore, be killed.

Poerksen: This might mean that any idea of truth necessarily leads to violence. Would you accept that? Or, to reverse the question: Is there not a less dangerous and less fanatical way of handling the view that one has discovered the reality of the world as it is?

Maturana: It all depends on the emotions of the people relating to each other. If they respect each other, then the fact that they hold different views may offer the opportunity of a fruitful conversation and a productive exchange. If people, however, do not respect each other but demand subservience, then their differing views will engender motives for negation.

Poerksen: Reading your books or listening to you talking gives me the impression that you have invented a new theory of truth. Philosophers speaking about truth have always asked the question: How does truth come about? Truth seemed to them to be the result of some social convention (consensus theory of truth), the result of some experience of immediate evidence (evidence theory of truth), or the product of a correspondence between theory and reality (correspondence theory of truth). You do not ask how truth comes about but seek to develop what I would call a consequence theory of truth. The question now is: What are the consequences of the idea of truth? How does the atmosphere of a conversation change if notions of truth start to dominate it?

Maturana: I hold a different view. It is not my goal to create a new theory of truth. I am concerned with something that is of much more fundamental importance: The classic inquiries into truth, reality, or the essence of being, deal with truth, reality and being as something independent from, and external to, an observer. My key questions are: How can experience be explained? How can I do what I am doing right now? How do I operate as an observer? What criterion am I using to justify that what I am saying is in fact the case? Such a view of things changes the whole traditional system of questions centred on the validation of an external reality or truth - and the observer moves into focus. We no longer occupy ourselves with the assumed properties of an external reality or truth but we begin to understand the references to the reality or the truth as the proposal of an explanation by an observer who is telling us about his experiences. I do not presuppose reality as given in my work.

Poerksen: What does this mean? In what sense are reality and truth attempted explanations?

Maturana: They are explanatory proposals to eliminate doubt. If you refer to reality and truth in this way, you need no longer deal with the problem of how you know what you are asserting. What you know simply derives from what there is, from a connection with reality. When we say that we are absolutely sure of something, we mean that we are no longer forced to reflect, to ask questions, and to entertain doubts.

Poerksen: So you are not concerned with questions of truth and the opposition true-false but with the distinction between two fundamentally different positions: you either assert that all cognition is observer-dependent, or you assert that an observer-independent reality can be perceived.

Maturana: You could put it that way, yes. I am not interested in the question as to whether an observer-independent reality exists and whether I or somebody else may know it. I use the observer as the starting-point of my thinking, avoiding any ontological assumption, simply out of curiosity and interest in the questions involved. There is no higher reason, no ontological foundation, no universally valid justification for these questions. Observers observe, see something, affirm or deny its existence, and do whatever they do. Without the observer, there is nothing. The observer is the foundation of all knowledge, of any assumption involving the human self, the world and the cosmos. The disappearance of the observer would mean the end and the disappearance of the world we know; there would be nobody left to perceive, to speak, to describe, and to explain. What exists independently from this observer is necessarily and inevitably a matter of belief and not of secure knowledge because to see something always requires someone who sees it. The observer and the operation of observing are my topics of research and, at the same time, its objective and its instrument. I do not start with ontology, I start with experience. Here I am, Humberto Maturana, reflecting and posing the reflexive question how it is possible for me to reflect and to know how I know. And then I am confronted by the inescapable conclusion that I have to deal with biology: the scientist facing this question, the philosopher, the mathematician, the priest, the burglar, the politician - they are all human beings, living and structure-determined systems, biological entities.

Poerksen: Who is, in fact, an observer? What do observers do?

Maturana: Human beings - beings who live in language - operate as observers when they, acting in self-awareness, use a distinction in order to distinguish something. They are aware of seeing and perceiving something. Somebody who is simply looking out of the window I would not consider an observer.

Poerksen: The ability to observe is tied to the possibility of self-reflection.

Maturana: And this self-reflection and thinking about what we are doing takes place in language. Suppose we both watch a bird eating a worm or some other insect. When we ask ourselves whether the bird knows that it is eating a worm, we perform an operation in language that is unavailable to the bird because it does not live in language. The bird does not produce comments that serve to reflect its actions. It is therefore not an observer. It simply eats a worm - and we human beings observe its behaviour.

Poerksen: Do you separate the observer from the observed? Do you work with the traditional distinction between subject and object?

Maturana: The act of distinction consists in operating in such a manner as to produce something that seems to be independent from one’s own person. Now, it has become accepted in our culture to distinguish between the observer and the observed, as if there were a difference between the two, as if they were distinct. If this is assumed and accepted, we are immediately confronted by the task of describing the relation between these two supposedly independent entities with greater precision. I do not myself work with this classic distinction between observers and observed but I show how that which is distinguished is connected with the persons performing the distinction, and to what extent observers are involved in the distinctions they actually perform. My central point of departure is the experience of a human being. How come that we can speak about things and objects as if they were independent from us? This is what I want to find out.

Poerksen: What are the consequences of learning to understand that we are observers in this sense, of becoming aware that we ourselves actually create particular distinctions and write them into the world?

Maturana: Becoming aware that one is doing the observing, and then being aware of being aware that it is oneself who makes the distinctions, one attains a new domain of experience. Becoming aware of one’s awareness and understanding one’s understanding gives rise to the feeling of responsibility for what one is doing, for what one is creating through one’s own operations of distinction. This kind of insight has something inevitable: once this has been understood, one cannot pretend any longer to be unaware of one’s own understanding if one is actually aware of it and is also aware of this awareness. Even those who deny this kind of awareness are ineluctably aware of it: for acting hypocritically and lying implies asserting something that contradicts one’s own insights. This is why I wrote in the last chapter of the book The tree of knowledge that it is not understanding that entails responsibility but the knowledge of knowledge.

Poerksen: Your key concept of the observer seems to me to be a somewhat unfortunate choice to express what you intend to say? In ordinary language, it signals separation: we observe, keep a distance, and indirectly insist on neutrality. Would it not be better to replace observers by participants or sharers who are inseparably tied to their worlds and who massively contribute to the production and construction of these worlds?

Maturana: I am not at all unhappy with the concept of the observer, definitely not, because it actually invites us to explain the experience of observing: the table and the chairs in this room, my jacket, the scarf I am wearing - all these things appear to me to have an existence of their own that is independent from me. The problem that should not be made invisible by a concept like participation is the following: How do I know that these things are there? What kind of assertion do I make when I say that the world unfolding before my eyes in all its beauty exists independently from me? Your suggestion to speak of a sharer or participant is misleading because the notion of participation already contains an explanation and a ready-made answer; the only admissible question left would then concern the specific manner in which the assumed participation is realised. Observing is an experience which also has to do with the apparently independent existence of things, and that has to be explained. The concept of the observer is a challenge to study the operation of observing and to face up to the circularity of the understanding of understanding. It is, after all, an observer who observes the observing and strives to explain it; it is a brain that wants to explain the brain. Many people think that such reflexive problems are unacceptable and unsolvable. My proposal, however, is to accept this circular situation fully right from the start and to make oneself the instrument by means of which the question of one’s personal experience and one’s own actions is to be answered through one’s very own activities. The point is to observe the operations, which give rise to the experiences that are to be explained.

Fear of madness

Poerksen: Your plea for circular thinking somehow seems deeply disturbing, even threatening. The world dissolves; beginning and end become arbitrary fixations no longer offering a safe grip; all firm ground is pulled from under our feet. One would like to rush to the door and out of the room, but one has become uncertain that that door is still there. You reported somewhere that, having started to think in this way, you were quite scared for some time that you might go mad. Why did that alarm finally fade away?

Maturana: There came a moment at which I realised that circular thinking did not endanger the soundness of my mind but that it expanded my understanding. The decision, in particular, to proceed from my own experience and not from an external reality can have a profoundly liberating and comforting effect. The experiences we make are no longer doubted, no longer denigrated as unreal and illusory; they are no longer a problem, they no longer produce emotional conflicts; they are simply accepted for what they are. - Suppose, I claim to have heard the voice of Jesus speaking to me last night. What do you think would happen when I told other people of such an experience? Somebody might explain to me that I suffered from hallucinations because Jesus was dead and could therefore not possibly speak to me. Someone else might think me very vain and suspect that I wanted to present myself as an elect person: it is, after all, Jesus who was speaking to me. A third person might say that during that night the devil had led me into temptation. All these considerations have one thing in common: they reject the explanation with which I am trying to make sense of my experience but they do not negate the experience itself; they do not call into question that I heard a voice.

Poerksen: In what way does this example contribute to answering my question concerning your fear of madness? I assume that your principled decision to start out from your own experience allayed your fears, calmed your mind, and set you at ease. One accepts what one experiences. Therefore, the fear of madness might be a sort of clandestine attempt to defend oneself against one’s own experiences.

Maturana: This is the point. To call something mad means to explain one’s perceptions and experiences in such a way as to devalue oneself. It is not my intention to reject or devalue experiences. Once again: experiences are never the problem. What I want to explain is the operations through which experiences arise.

Poerksen: Do you believe that such a view, which so forcefully argues in favour of the legitimacy of any kind of experience, offers ethical advantages?

Maturana: Yes, I do. We must not forget that the notion of a reality existing independently from us corresponds with the belief that it is possible to achieve authoritative, universally valid statements. These may then be used to discredit certain kinds of experience. It is the reference to this reality that is held to make a statement universally valid; in a culture based on power, domination, and control, it provides the justification for forcing other people to subject themselves to one’s own view of things. However, as soon as one has realised that there is no single privileged access to reality, and that perception and illusion are indistinguishable in the actual process of an experience, then the question arises what criteria are used by a human being to claim that something is the case. The very possibility of posing this question opens up a space of common reflection, a sphere of cooperation. The other person becomes a legitimate counterpart with whom I am able to talk. Friendship, mutual respect, and cooperation emerge. It is no longer possible to demand submission; the universe changes into a multiverse within which numerous realities are valid by reference to different criteria of validity. The only thing one may now do is to invite the other person to think about what one believes and holds to be valid oneself.

I think we may sensibly distinguish between two distinct attitudes, two paths of thinking and explaining. The first path I call objectivity without parentheses. It takes for granted the observer-independent existence of objects that can be known; it believes in the possibility of an external validation of statements. Such a validation would lend authority and unconditional legitimacy to what is claimed and would, therefore, aim at submission. It entails the negation of all those who are not prepared to agree with the “objective” facts. One does not want to listen to them or try to understand them. The fundamental emotion reigning here is powered by the authority of universally valid knowledge.

The other attitude I call objectivity in parentheses; its emotional basis is the enjoyment of the company of other human beings. The question of the observer is accepted fully, and every attempt is made to answer it. The distinction of objects is, according to this path, not denied but the reference to objects is not the basis of explanations, it is the coherence of experiences with other experiences that constitutes the foundation of all explanation. In this view, the observer becomes the origin of all realities; all realities are created through the observer’s operations of distinction. If we follow this path of explanation, we become aware that we can in no way claim to be in possession of the truth but that there are numerous possible realities. Each of them is fully legitimate and valid although, of course, not equally desirable. If we follow this path of explanation, we cannot demand the submission of our fellow human beings but will listen to them, seek cooperation and conversation.

Principles of aesthetic seduction

Poerksen: Such acceptance of the other could be most helpful, I believe, to pull the rug from underneath the innumerable quarrels in the microcosms of private lives and in the macrocosms of public spaces. For me, the question is now how we might promote and practise this very fundamental kind of respect in a manner that does not in any way involve domination. If you want to remain consistent, you surely cannot force other people to agree to your thoughts. How are we to proceed, then, if dominance and manipulation are inadmissible? How do you convince people?

Maturana: I never attempt to convince anyone. The only thing left for me to do is to converse with those people who seek and wish to converse with me. I give lectures if people want to listen to me; I write articles and books and work with my students. And one day perhaps a young man comes to Chile from Germany to visit me and asks for more precise details.

Poerksen: In the last passages of your famous paper Biology of Cognition you outline the concept of aesthetic seduction. What does this mean? How can one use the aesthetic to convince in an appealing manner?

Maturana: The idea of aesthetic seduction is based on the insight that people enjoy beauty. We call something beautiful when the circumstances we find ourselves in make us feel well. Judging something as ugly and unpleasant, on the other hand, indicates displeasure because we are aware of the difference to our views of what is agreeable and pleasant. The aesthetic is harmony and pleasure, the enjoyment of what is given to us. An attractive view transforms us. A beautiful picture makes us look at it again and again, enjoy its colour scheme, photograph it, perhaps even buy it. In brief, the relationship with a picture may transform the life of people because the picture has become a source of aesthetic experience.

Poerksen: It would interest me to know what this idea of aesthetic seduction means to you when you write, give lectures or interviews. Although this sounds like probing for rhetorical tricks and manipulation, I would like to know what you are, in fact, doing when you try to seduce people.

Maturana: I certainly never intend to seduce or persuade people in a manipulative way. Beauty would vanish if I tried to seduce in this way. Any attempt to persuade applies pressure and destroys the possibility of listening. Pressure creates resentment. Wanting to manipulate people stimulates resistance. Manipulation means to exploit our relation with other people in such a way as to give them the impression that whatever happens is beneficial and advantageous to them. But the resulting actions of the manipulated person are, in fact, useful for the manipulator. Manipulation, therefore, really means cheating people. No, the only thing left to me in the way of aesthetic seduction is just to be what I am, wholly and entirely, and to admit no discrepancy whatsoever between what I am saying and what I am doing. Of course, this does not at all exclude some jumping about and playacting during a lecture. But not in order to persuade or to seduce but in order to generate the experiences that produce and make manifest what I am talking about. The persons becoming acquainted with me in this way can then decide for themselves whether they want to accept what they see before them. Only when there is no discrepancy between what is said and what is done, when there is no pretence and no pressure, aesthetic seduction may unfold. In such a situation, the people listening and debating will feel accepted in such measure as to be able to present themselves in an uninhibited and pleasurable manner. They are not attacked, they are not forced to do things, and they can show themselves as they are, because someone else is presenting himself naked and unprotected. Such behaviour is always seductive in a respectful way because all questions and fears suddenly become legitimate and completely new possibilities of encountering one another emerge. I think people realise immediately when something is wrong: they are experts in detecting hypocrisy.

Poerksen: Let us assume that someone categorically refused to listen to you and to follow your thoughts. What would happen then?

Maturana: What could happen then? That is all perfectly legitimate. In some of my lectures I mention that I have added three further rights to the United Nations catalogue of human rights: the right to make mistakes; the right to change one’s view; and the right to leave the room at any moment. If people are allowed to make mistakes, they can correct them. People who are entitled to change their views can reflect. If people have the right to get up and leave at any moment, they will stay only if they wish to.

The salamander and the internal construction of the world

Poerksen: It may be useful at this point to recall some of your fundamental ideas in order to move on to another topic. You say that all knowledge is necessarily observer-dependent; that absolute reality assertions lead to terror, and that any form of coercion must be rejected. My impression is that all the ideas we have been discussing so far involve ethical assumptions in a very wide sense. We have been talking about conclusions and consequences relating to the claim that objective knowledge is impossible. My question is now whether your ethical demands can be justified epistemologically. Is there evidence for the impossibility of objective knowledge of the world? Is there proof?

Maturana: Answering your question requires the clarification of what we want to accept as proof. We must first establish what it really means to say that something is true or false? Is a hypothesis proved because it fits into what I am thinking? Am I perhaps prepared to listen and to trust the method of proof simply because of this correspondence between the so-called evidence and my own presuppositions? Do we therefore call something false because it is not in harmony with our preconceptions? Can something be false or right per se? What are the criteria used by people to accept some assertion as proven? My own answer to these questions is that I am a scientist who is able to state the conditions under which something happens that I claim is actually happening. What I am saying is neither true nor false.

Poerksen: In your books you describe experiments with frogs, salamanders, and pigeons. You studied perception in these animals; your epistemological insights are, as I understand you, the products of your work in the laboratory. Do these studies merely illustrate the assumption, which is unprovable in principle, that we can never know the real world, or is there more to them?

Maturana: These experiments relate to my personal history and my experiences as a scientist; they must not be taken as evidence or indications of truth; they outline and describe the points of departure and the course of my own way of thinking. When I speak about the experiments with frogs, pigeons or salamanders I refer to the circumstances in which my ideas developed over time. In this way, the conditions are revealed that induced me to leave the traditional paths of perception research and to change the established system of epistemological inquiry.

Poerksen: Could you exemplify the history of your re-orientation by some relevant experiment?

Maturana: Let me select a number of experiments carried out by the American biologist Roger Sperry in the early 1940ies. Roger Sperry removed one of the eyes of a salamander, severed the optic nerve, rotated the eye by 180 degrees, and carefully put it back into its socket. The optic nerve regenerated and the vision of the rotated eyes in the animals returned after some time. Everything healed but there was a crucial difference: the salamanders threw their tongue with a deviation of 180 degrees, when they wanted to catch a worm. The extent of the deviation corresponded exactly to the degree of rotation performed on the eyes. With these experiments, Roger Sperry wanted to find out whether the optic nerve was capable of regenerating and whether the fibres of the optic nerve would re-grow to join their original projection areas in the brain. The answer is: that is indeed what happens. He also wanted to find out whether the salamanders are able to correct their behaviour - whether they would manage to hit the worm again with their tongue. The answer here is: no, that is not possible; the animals keep tonguing with a deviation of 180 degrees; they starve to death if they are not fed. When I myself heard about these experiments I began to realise, however, that Roger Sperry had formulated a misleading question that tended to obscure the observed phenomenon.

The hidden epistemology of the experiment

Poerksen: In what respect was his research goal misleading?

Maturana: Roger Sperry started out from the assumption that the salamander aims at a worm in the external world with his tongue. His question implied, as Gregory Bateson would have said, a whole epistemology. It takes for granted implicitly that the external object is processed in the brain of the salamander in the form of information about its shape and location. The salamander, consequently, makes a mistake; it does not process the information coming from outside correctly. However, I found it much more meaningful to interpret the experiment in a completely different way. The salamander, I claimed, correlates the activities of the motor apparatus of its tongue with the activities of its retina. If its retina shows the image of a worm, it throws out its tongue; it does not aim at a worm in the external world. The correlation given in this case is an internal one. Seen in this way, it is not at all surprising that it does not change its behaviour.

Poerksen: How did you yourself discover the hidden epistemology of this experiment? And what experiences and observations have led you from the experiment to an empirical epistemology?

Maturana: When I performed experiments on the colour perception of pigeons, I proceeded from assumptions quite similar to those made by Roger Sperry. My goal was to show how the colours in the external world, which I had specified in terms of their spectral composition, are correlated with the activities in the retina. I wanted to establish the connections between Red, Green and Blue and the activities of the retina, i.e. the retinal ganglion cells. What did the red, green, or blue objects release?

Poerksen: So you thought likewise that the external object determines what happens inside the organism.

Maturana: Quite right. But one day it dawned upon me that the correlation I was looking for could in all probability never be established. Perhaps I should, I said to myself, deal with the question whether the activity of the retina could be shown to be connected with the names of colours. The consequence was a momentous change with regard to the goal of my research. Suddenly I found myself outside the established traditions of perception research.

Poerksen: This does indeed sound somewhat strange. Names and designations of colours or whatever are, after all, merely arbitrary, merely conventional.

Maturana: True. People naturally thought I was crazy. The colour terms, however, do say something about the persons who have particular experiences, they are indicators of experiences, they point to experiences. What I had to demonstrate, therefore, was that the activities of the retina are correlated with the specific experiences represented by colour names. That is precisely what I managed to show in one of my studies. A colour is, to pursue the thought further, nothing external but something happening in an organism - merely released by an external source of light. The colour designation refers to the particular experience of an individual in certain situations, which is independent from the given spectral composition of light. Against this background, the phenomena of illusory colours can be explained. In brief, the objective of my research was then to compare the activity of the nervous system with the activity of the nervous system, and to conceive of the nervous system as a closed system.

Poerksen: Comparing this experiment on the colour perception of pigeons with the striking behaviour of the manipulated salamanders, we find ourselves facing the same situation: the focus is always on internal states, not on their purported external determinants - coloured objects or moving worms.

Maturana: Yes - and suddenly I was forced to consider what “knowing” actually meant if the experiments were to be taken seriously. It is no longer possible to refer to external objects that determine what we perceive. What does it mean “to know” if we consider the nervous system as a closed system?

Poerksen: If I understand correctly, you were taught by your experiments. But this is the classical procedure of the realists: they propose a hypothesis, test it, it fails - and they modify it. The circumstances, the real world, force them to revise their ideas. The course and the direction of your thinking, are they not essentially realistic?

Maturana: This is an interesting point. We might, of course, say that I acted like a realist when I changed the traditional problems of the theory of knowledge in such a way as to be led to reject realism. But that is not of primary importance. I would claim that a scientist, and not a philosopher, was at work there, who tackled the problem of the possible existence and the degree of influence of an external reality. The distinction between science and philosophy that I am suggesting here has to do with the question of what philosophers and scientists want to preserve and sustain when they develop a theory. Their intentions are different. Philosophical theories arise, I would claim, when we try to preserve certain explanatory principles that we consider valid a priori. This interest in the preservation of principles and their coherence justifies disregarding what may be experienced. Scientific theories, on the contrary, arise when we want to preserve the coherences in relation to what we are capable of experiencing. The scientist can, therefore, ignore principles - dissolve them - and design a scientific theory. That is precisely what I did. I started out from the coherences within experience, I investigated the colour perception of pigeons, i.e., I investigated the operations of living systems - and had to do terrible things to them for the purposes of my research. The question as to whether an external reality really existed had little relevance for me; it was not one of my problems.

The limits of external determination

Poerksen: Can you see experiments and experiences that might refute your present claims and put you back on the path of realism?

Maturana: I could only give up my views if the structural determinism of living systems were no longer in force. What happens in any living system, we must bear in mind, is necessarily determined by its structure and not specifiable by external influences. However, the assumption that living systems are structure-determined systems is in no way related to an observer-independent reality; it is an abstraction resulting from the coherences that observers may experience.

Poerksen: What do you mean by structural determinism?

Maturana: When you press the key of your recording machine with your index finger in order to record our conversation, then you expect the machine to record. Should the machine fail to do so, you would certainly not go and see a doctor to have the functioning of your index finger checked. You will take the recording machine to someone who understands its structure and will, therefore, be able to repair it so that it will react to the pressure of your index finger in the appropriate way. This means that we treat your little recording machine as a system in which everything that happens in it or to it, is determined by its structure. My claim is that this structural determinism is valid for all systems. Human beings are structure-determined systems, too.

Poerksen: In what ways? Could you give another example?

Maturana: Suppose you see a doctor about a pain in your stomach. You will be properly examined - and perhaps your appendix will be removed. So you will be treated like a structure-determined system: the pain you felt before the operation and the relief you experienced afterwards were both determined by your structure and its modification by the doctor. More generally, this means that an external agent impinging on some molecular system triggers certain effects but cannot determine them. Any impingement from outside merely triggers some structural dynamics; all its consequences are, however, specified and determined by the structure of the system itself.

Poerksen: Is this so? Let us assume I offer you medicinal tablets or hard drugs and we both take some; we shall experience similar things. Drugs have quite specific effects.

Maturana: Perfectly correct, but the similarity of our experiences does not refute structural determinism at all. Taking drugs means bringing molecules with a specific structure into your organism, which then become part of it and modify the structure of its nervous system. What happens will, however, necessarily depend on the structure of the nervous system itself. Without receptors inside the organism for the substances you put in, nothing can happen at all. A receptor, one must remember, is a specific molecular configuration that matches the structure of the substance in question, a drug, for instance. In this way, a change in the organism is triggered.

Poerksen: Does this mean that the thesis of the structural determinism of all systems is essentially irrefutable? In other words, can you state conditions under which something dead or alive would no longer be subject to universal structural determinism?

Maturana: Only a miracle can violate structural determinism and make it inoperative. Suddenly the impossible seems possible. Even observing then appears to be something wonderful and miraculous - and is therefore inexplicable.

Poerksen: Are you waiting for a miracle?

Maturana: No, I do not expect a miracle. And, quite generally, I do not think that we could really do very much with miracles.

Poerksen: Why not? Miracles, to me, are glorious moments in which something suddenly loses its traditional validity.

Maturana: On the contrary. Miracles are rather impractical events. Just remember the story of King Midas of Phrygia who offered his services to the god Dionysos. It shows - in a satirical way for me - the uselessness of miracles that suspend structural determinism. Dionysos asked King Midas what kind of reward he wanted for his services. King Midas answered that he wanted everything he touched to turn into gold. And that is what it happened. He touched the grass - it became gold; he touched the table - gold! Happily, he went home, and his daughter came running towards him; he embraced her - and she became rigid and turned into a golden statue. What is the tragedy of King Midas? My answer: His tragedy was that he had no chance of becoming an analytical chemist. Everything he touched was the same for him: gold.

The powerlessness of power

Poerksen: You claim that human beings are structure-determined systems, too. This conception sets narrow limits for the concept of direct and linear control. However, is not the wielding of power and force by dictators a compelling example of how extensively people can be controlled and influenced by external forces, after all?

Maturana: No, that is not the case. As I have lived under a dictatorial regime, I know what I am talking about. Strangely enough, power arises only when there is obedience. It is the consequence of an act of submission depending on the decisions and the structure of the individuals subjecting themselves. It is granted to dictators by doing what they want. You grant power to others in order to keep or save something - life, freedom, possessions, jobs, a relationship, etc. My thesis is, in brief: Power arises through submission. When dictators or other people point a gun at me and want to force me to do something, then I am the one who has to consider: Do I want to grant power to these people? Perhaps it is sensible to meet their demands for some time in order to be able to get the better of them in favourable circumstances.

Poerksen: Does what you are saying also apply to the dictatorship of the National Socialists? Was it the terror of the Gestapo that made Adolf Hitler powerful? Or did the people actually decide to grant power to a third-class painter from Austria?

Maturana: It was a conscious or a subconscious decision of the people, which gave power to Adolf Hitler. All those who did not protest had decided not to protest. They had decided to subject themselves. Suppose a dictator comes along and kills every person refusing to obey him. Suppose the people of the country refuse to obey him. The consequence: He kills and kills. But for how long? Well, in the extreme case he will go on killing until everybody is dead. Where is the dictator’s power then? It has vanished.

Poerksen: How do you want us to interpret this re-formulation of the relationship between power and helplessness? Is this an idealistic call not to subject ourselves? Or do you really mean what you are saying?

Maturana: I am totally serious when I say: we always do what we want to do, even though we may claim to be acting against our will or to have been compelled to do something. Nobody can force you to shoot at another person but you may, of course, decide to shoot in order to save your own life. Maintaining that you were forced to shoot is only an excuse that obscures the goal you were pursuing, namely, to save your life for the price of subjecting yourself. When you decide, in such a situation, not to shoot at another person, a shot may still be heard but it will be a shot fired at you - and you might die, preserving your dignity.

Poerksen: The Chilean dictator Pinochet ordered, as we all know, the abduction, torture and murder of many of his opponents. How did you experience this phase of Chilean history? What did you do when Salvador Allende was dead and the socialist experiment had met with a bloody end?

Maturana: I decided to practise hypocrisy in order to stay alive and to protect my family and children. At the same time, I tried to move and behave in such a way as to avoid endangering my dignity and my self-respect. I kept away from certain situations, respected the curfew, did not discuss certain topics in the university. When the soldiers came and ordered me to raise my hands and to move up to the wall, I raised my hands and moved up to the wall. However, it was quite clear to me in those moments that the time would come when I would no longer be prepared to grant power to the dictator’s regime.

Poerksen: Would you like to tell me about a particular situation?

Maturana: One day in the year 1977 I was arrested and put into prison. The reason was that I had given three lectures. The first lecture dealt with Genesis and the Fall. I said that Eve who had eaten from the apple and then given it to Adam could serve as an example. She was disobedient, and her rebellion against the divine commandment laid the foundation for human self-knowledge and responsible action, for the expulsion from paradise, a world without self-knowledge. In the second lecture, I spoke about St. Francis of Assisi. His way of perceiving human beings, in my eyes, generates such deep respect towards them that it becomes impossible to define them as enemies. And I added that every army must first transform other human beings into strangers and then into enemies in order to be able to maltreat and kill them. The third lecture was devoted to Jesus and the New Testament. How do we live together, I asked my audience, if we base everything on the emotion of love? A few days later, I was taken to prison and treated like a prisoner. I was to be interrogated, I heard. One day somebody arrived and called out my name and said: “Are you Professor Humberto Maturana?” When I heard that I thought that I would remain a professor forever even if these people killed me. The status of professor was the protective shield they had granted me. They took me to a room where three persons were waiting. I sat down and asked the question: “In what way have I violated the statement of principles issued by the military government?” This means that it was me who began the interrogation and changed the rules of the game. I would not say that I manipulated those people but that the interrogation took place in a way that allowed me to keep my dignity and self-respect. I continued behaving like a professor and tried to counter the accusations they formulated. And I gave these people a lecture on evolutionary theory and explained to them why they would never be able to destroy communism by persecuting communists. I said that it was necessary to change or eliminate the conditions that made communism possible, in the first place. The three men listened to me with growing astonishment. I told them they could invite me for a lecture any time. Then they took me back to the university.

Poerksen: Your very own experiences during the years of the dictatorship are most important to me because they make me understand you better, I believe. You do not plead for some fatal heroism, you do not condemn those who subject themselves, but you plead for a maximum of awareness in the handling of power.

Maturana: Naturally, yes. It can be very stupid not to subject oneself for a time and to wait for a suitable opportunity to strike back. My fundamental point is to declare one’s responsibility and to invite others to act in full awareness. Does one want the world that emerges when one grants power to others? Does one primarily want to survive? Does one reject the world emerging through the wielding of power in an unconditional and uncompromising way?

Poerksen: Do you believe that that different state of awareness is really decisive? It might be argued that conscious or subconscious subjection leads to the same consequences: the dictator stays in power.

Maturana: This different state of awareness is decisive because it allows you to be hypocritical. Being hypocritical means simulating a non-existent emotion. You remain an observer, keeping an inner distance, and one day you may act in a different way again. This means that the perceptual abilities of the hypocrites are not destroyed, and their self-respect and dignity are preserved. Due to these decisive and very significant experiences, they may be able to lead a different life. If one gives up this attitude of the conscious handling of power, one is lost because one has decided for blindness.

Poerksen: How can we be sure that the belief that we are merely hypocritical and observing is not just a subtle and refined form of self-delusion?

Maturana: Well, that is a difficult problem, indeed. The situation is particularly precarious when people are convinced that they are immune to the temptations of power. These people have become blind to their own temptability, to the delights of wielding power, the pleasures of the uncontrolled execution of control. My view is that we should never believe that we are in any way special as far as morality or anything else is concerned: we are then mentally unprepared for situations that may make torturers of us. Those who think they are immune will be the first, I believe, to become torturers in certain situations. They are not aware of their own seducibility. Whatever horrible or wonderful things one human being can do - there will always be another, and it could be you or me, who is capable of doing the same. Such an insight allows us to lead our lives in full awareness and to decide whether to support democracy or a dictatorship.

The emergence of blind spots

Poerksen: At the end of 1973 - following the coup of the military under Pinochet - many members of the university fled to other countries. You remained. Why?

Maturana: On the day of the military coup I rang my friend Heinz von Foerster and asked him to help me and my family to leave the country. Heinz von Foerster tried to get me an invitation from an American university, which was not at all easy, of course. Nobody wanted me. Ten days later, Heinz von Foerster had managed to interest a neurophysiologist in New York in my work. But by that time I had already decided to stay in Chile. My motives to stay were of different kinds. My first thought was: If all democratically minded people left the country there would soon be no recollection of a democratic culture and of another, a better time. In this perspective, every older person was a living treasure. Then I was concerned about the fate of all the many students who were dispirited and suddenly found themselves drifting through the university on their own. Many professors had fled or gone into hiding, or had already been arrested. Finally, I wanted to know what it means to live under a dictator. I wanted to understand the Germans and, in particular, the history of my friend Heinz von Foerster who had survived the Nazi terror due to his understanding of systems. He once said to me: The more specified a system is the easier it is to cheat. I also asked myself whether I might be able to observe in such a dictatorial system how people gradually go blind, and what the causes of such perceptual deprivation were. Can one, if one has been duly forewarned and is aware of the dangers of ideologically produced blindness, prevent it from developing and retain one’s capabilities of vision and perception?

Poerksen: You wanted to come to grips with the epistemology of ideologies.

Maturana: You might put it that way, yes. When innumerable Germans insisted after the War that they had known nothing about the horrors of the Nazi period, I was convinced that not all of them were liars. Perhaps some of them were simply unable to face up to the terrible truth. I wanted to know what had been going on inside them and in their psyches. How does one live under a dictatorial regime that makes it so very difficult to keep away from it? In what measure does one unavoidably go blind even though one definitely does not want it to happen? Does one go blind because one knows that one could? How and in what ways is blindness produced at all?

Poerksen: What did you observe?

Maturana: Nobody is everywhere. If you decree curfews, you prevent people from seeing certain things. They will be unable to notice that people are murdered in their street during the night; they will not see the corpses. Everything happens behind a curtain. So people might not believe the rumours and tales they come across when they go out in the morning. There is nothing to be seen, not even a trace of blood. Moreover, people will probably say to themselves that soldiers are human beings too, and that no human being can behave in such bestial ways. Such humanist presumptions may therefore very well make us blind: they protect us against the horror and they preserve our trust in other people. Of course, the new situation of a dictatorship creates new advantages for some people: Suddenly particular jobs are available because other people had to give them up and get away.

Poerksen: I find it striking that you and various other authors, who are counted among the founders of constructivism today, all had to suffer under dictatorial regimes and were confronted with dogmatic worldviews. Heinz von Foerster had to hide from the NS-thugs; Ernst von Glasersfeld left Vienna when the Nazis seized power; Paul Watzlawick has repeatedly suggested how deeply shocked he was by the NS-regime; Francisco Varela escaped from Pinochet to Costa Rica. And so on. Is there a connection between the theories of these authors and the experience of dictatorship? Alternatively, is this biographical correspondence purely accidental?

Maturana: It is not accidental but the result of the period. Infinitely many people were confronted with authoritarian systems more or less directly during the past century - the century of the Russian Revolution, of Fascism and National Socialism. I can, of course, only speak for myself, but my own understanding of power does not derive from the experiences I went through after the military coup in Chile. Rather the reverse. My life under the dictatorship was informed by my understanding of power, resulting from my permanent longing for democracy. Supporting democracy obviously entails the rejection of dictatorship that, therefore, becomes an enemy and a constant threat lurking in the background. All those actively engaged in the democratisation of a country quickly realise how difficult and laborious it is to keep a democratic culture alive. One has to come to terms with the ideal of perfection, which is widespread and deep-rooted in our culture, and with the attempt to generate seemingly perfect and allegedly democratic forms of living together even with the means of oppression. One is evidently opposed to dictatorship and, consequently, an active supporter of the individual, not of the goals of some collective. Still, one must not lose sight of the whole of society when working for the democratic participation of the individual. The persons you mentioned have, I think, been well aware of these difficulties and understood that there is no antagonism between individual and society. This is what they all have in common.

Poerksen: Structure-determined systems - human beings - can only be controlled in a limited way; one can perturb them but not control them. My thesis is: You have developed an epistemology that removes the conceptual foundation of dictatorial power.

Maturana: I strongly support this thesis and want to add that I destroy the conceptual foundations of dictatorship because my work allows me to achieve a more profound understanding of democracy. Democracy must be created anew every day, I believe, as a space of living together in which participation and cooperation are possible, based on self-respect and the respect of others. The first thing a dictatorship destroys is the self-respect and the autonomy of every single individual, because it demands subjection and obedience as the price for staying alive.

Poerksen: Could it be that the immense popularity of your ideas today is due to the often-invoked end of all ideologies and the collapse of the sort of socialism that “really existed”?

Maturana: I see a connection. What I have written provides a new foundation for the possibility of self-respect, which is fundamentally negated by dictatorships. What the readers of my work may realise is that we are all unavoidably participating in the creation of the world we live in. We bring forth the world that we live. This is the view that I invite people to try without compulsion or cost, a view that values the individual. And whoever feels appreciated and respected, will be enabled to appreciate and respect themselves. They can accept the responsibility for what they do. It is indeed as the Beatles song proclaims: All you need is love. We are all looking for love, and still cannot help being scared of it. And now, to make matters worse, a scientist stands up and starts talking about love! Some of the people reading these passages may think that he must be mad! Nevertheless, it is a fact that all we want is love. And what is love? Love means to live in a community that is supported by self-respect and mutual respect and cooperation.

Language and self-observation

Poerksen: Does the idea of responsibility for this self-generated and perhaps love-influenced world not fly in the face of structural determinism? Can structure-determined systems be held responsible for anything? A dog that attacks me because it feels threatened is evidently a structure-determined system. However, we would never think of ascribing responsibility to it or condemning it because we do not consider it an autonomous being capable of free decision. Therefore, freedom is the prerequisite of responsibility. If you, however, describe human beings generally as structure-determined systems, then you necessarily negate, I would assert, the possibility of responsibility.

Maturana: Perfectly correct. Living systems cannot act responsibly because they know no purpose or goal; they simply live in the flow of existence. Only human beings can assume responsibility in the domain of relations because they exist in language. They are capable of describing a certain action as responsible. Language enables us to reflect and distinguish the consequences of our actions for other living beings and to classify them as responsible or irresponsible. In this way, our caring for other people gains presence - and the possibility of responsible action arises.

Poerksen: But, surely, this requires freedom. Any person desiring to act ethically must have the freedom of choice and self-determined decision. Repeating the question: Do not your key concepts of structural determinism and your special understanding of autonomy force you to abandon the idea of freedom and, consequently, the possibility of responsible action?

Maturana: The experience of choice and decision, which we human beings make, does not at all contradict our structure-determinedness. Human beings will always remain structure-determined systems; they may, however, by virtue of a perspective opening up in a meta-domain, make the experience that they have a choice. Then they move in another domain but still operate as structure-determined systems. This experience of the potential choice between different possibilities, however, is a unique characteristic of the human species and requires language. Having a choice presupposes the ability to observe and compare at least two different situations appearing at the same time, and then to adapt one’s perspective in such a way as to be able to make out a difference between these situations. At first one sees only sameness and is blocked. A change of perspective and position may enable us to see potential distinctions in what appears to be the same; then we can move - according to our own preferences and ways of life - and choose one possibility while negating others. As this process is an intentional act in the language of living beings, it is possible to classify it, from the point of view of an observer, as a process of choice.

Poerksen: Does this mean that it is the meta-perspective that makes it possible to identify an action as an act of choice and decision?

Maturana: Exactly so, yes. Only from that perspective does it become possible to characterise something as a choice and a decision between different possibilities. We perform an operation on a meta-level because we have the ability to use language and to make ourselves aware of an event and its consequences. In this act of becoming aware, the phenomena we are dealing with are transformed into objects of contemplation. We gain a form of distance that we lack when we are completely immersed in our activities and situations. If we accept this and consider it adequate, an action may then be described as responsible or as irresponsible.

Poerksen: Could you elucidate these ideas by means of a particular case?

Maturana: Some time ago, reports travelled round the world that a boy who had been trying to get to Miami together with his mother in a small boat from Cuba was saved from drowning by dolphins. For some reason, their boat sank and the mother drowned. The boy, however, was kept afloat by a school of dolphins, saved from drowning, and finally rescued. What those dolphins did we can, as beings living in language, describe as responsible. The dolphins do not, as far as we know, possess the ability to comment on their activities and to tell us about what happened between them and the boy floating on the sea. However, we are capable of talking about the relationship between those animals and the boy because we operate in the domain of language. We can characterise what happened as an effort to keep another being alive. From this meta-perspective the activity of the dolphins appears as a responsible action.

Poerksen: To act responsibly, then, means to take care of someone else and then to observe one’s actions and classify them accordingly.

Maturana: Exactly. People are aware of the circumstances and reflect the consequences of their activities. They can ask themselves whether they want to be what they are as they are doing what they are doing. In the moment of self-observation, all the certainties and securities of the state without reflection disappear. When, through the linguistic operation, a form of contemplation and an awareness has been generated that allows observation, then people will, at the next step, act according to their own preferences, that means they will act responsibly. And when they, with a further step, try to find out whether they value their own preferences and intend to maintain them, then they are free. Do I like my predilections? Do I like the decision I have taken and of which I have just said that I like it and that it corresponds with my desires? In this moment of the reflection of their own choice, there arises the experience of freedom.

Poerksen: I want to keep on questioning: How can a structure-determined system feel responsible for its own actions? If I cannot control and influence others then the effects of my activities become completely incalculable. We are confronted by a paradox of responsibility because we are to be held responsible for something the consequences of which we could not possibly foresee. Doing good may potentially trigger terrible consequences (and vice versa).

Maturana: The concept of responsibility is ambiguous. Some authors mean by responsibility that we must be accountable for all the possible consequences of an action. Responsibility then means causation. For me, responsible action is a question of awareness. Persons act or fail to act in the awareness of all the possible and desirable consequences of their actions. It is not necessary for the consequences of an action to be fully calculable and foreseeable; there may indeed be undesirable consequences in the end. In my view, being responsible simply means to be in a certain state of attention and mindfulness: one’s activities match one’s desires in a reflected way, that is all.

Poerksen: The concept of responsibility is, for you, not linked to the idea that it is possible to plan the consequences of an action?

Maturana: This is not relevant. To plan something means to envisage ways and procedures for achieving a certain result and to subordinate the next chosen steps to this imagined result. The potential consequences of an action need not come about, however, and perhaps they exist only in the minds of particular people. It is crucial, in any case, that the people designing things in this way live responsibly and act in full awareness of the possible consequences of their actions. They are responsible for what they say and do. Nevertheless, they are not accountable for what other people make of what they say and do.

Are social systems autopoietic?

Poerksen: Professor Maturana, the concepts you have created now circulate in the scientific community all over the world. However, during the three days we have been talking to each other here, you have not even once used the concept that has become a trendy designer term in the scientific community: autopoiesis. Why? Is there a deeper reason for this abstinence?

Maturana: The reason simply is that I use the concept only when it is adequate and necessary. Autopoiesis means “self-creation” and consists of the Greek words autos (self) and poiein (produce, create). The concept of autopoiesis supplies the answer to the question what characterizes a living system. In the course of the history of biology it has been claimed that living beings are characterised by the capability of reproduction and mobility, by a specific chemical composition, a specific aspect of metabolism, or by some combination of these different criteria. I propose another criterion. When you regard a living system you always find a network of processes or molecules that interact in such a way as to produce molecules that through their interactions in turn produce the very network that produced them and determine its boundary. Such a network I call autopoietic. Whenever you encounter a network whose operations eventually produce itself as a result, you are facing an autopoietic system. It produces itself. This system is open to the input of matter but closed with regard to the dynamics of the relations that generate it. In brief, I use the concept of autopoiesis in order to describe the key property of living beings. That is all. Whenever people are not dealing with this problem but with other topics, I do not see any reason why the concept of autopoiesis should be used.

Poerksen: Perhaps an example demonstrating the autopoiesis of the living would be helpful at this stage. You have often referred to the cell as an autopoietic system. Would that be a compelling model?

Maturana: In my terminology the cell is described as a molecular autopoietic system of the first order. This means that a cell as a totality is an autopoietic system in its own right. Consequently, multicellular organisms are autopoietic systems of the second order that are related to other organisms in diverse social, parasitic, symbiotic, and other ways. We must, quite fundamentally, realise that living systems form totalities and represent independent entities, and that there must be boundaries and edges that constitute the difference between a system and its environment. The special thing about cellular metabolism is that it produces components, which are integrated as entireties into the network of transformations that produced them. The production of components embodies, therefore, the condition of the possibility of an edge, of a boundary, of the membrane of a cell. This membrane, in turn, participates in the ongoing processes of transformation, it participates in the autopoietic dynamics of the cell: it is in itself the condition of the possibility of the operation of a network of transformations that produces the network as an integral whole. Without the boundary of the cell membrane everything would dissolve into some sort of molecular slime, and the molecules would diffuse in all directions. There would no longer be an independent entity.

Poerksen: This means that the cell produces the membrane and the membrane the cell. The producer, the act of production, and the product, have become indistinguishable.

Maturana: I would say, a little more rigorously: The molecules of the cell membrane participate in the realisation of the autopoietic processes of the cell and in the production of other molecules within the autopoietic network of the cell; and autopoiesis generates the molecules of the membrane. They produce each other, and they participate in the constitution of the whole.

Poerksen: You have been trying hard to retain the rigorous concept of autopoiesis exclusively for the characterisation of the living. Nevertheless, your readers and devotees are not willing to follow you. On the contrary: your ideas are now commonly used in social theory, in the description of society. Meanwhile, everything is an autopoietic system - science, journalism, football, families, art, politics, societies, etc. - , everything vibrates along according to its own rules within its own boundaries.

Maturana: That is so. People like and honour me as the inventor of the term and the concept of autopoiesis - particularly so, when I am not present and unable to tell them what I really said. When I appear in person, however, I always point out that the concept is, in my opinion, only valid for a certain defined domain for which it solves a particular problem. A few years ago, for instance, I was invited to a conference at the London School of Economics, which dealt with the problem of whether social systems could be seen as autopoietic. The debate lasted three full days and, at the end, I was asked to say a few concluding words. I said: “For three days I have been listening to your ideas and exchanges, and I want to put the following question to you now: What are the features of a social system that would justify choosing as the topic of this conference the problem whether a social system could be classified as autopoietic or not?”

Poerksen: You meant to suggest a different starting point for their deliberations: one must first understand the social phenomena before one can attempt to describe them more precisely with a concept borrowed from biology.

Maturana: Precisely. Applying the concept of autopoiesis to explain social phenomena will cause them to vanish from your field of vision because your whole attention will be absorbed by the concept of autopoiesis. Naturally, we can discuss whether the house we are sitting in now is an autopoietic system. The choice of this topic, however, has the unavoidable effect that the features of an autopoietic system will guide our reflections. Asking for the constitutive properties of the entity of a house, however, and whether its characteristics accord with the concept of autopoiesis, will leave us free to analyse and investigate. We might then find that houses cannot be described as autopoietic - or must be described as such. Who knows?

Poerksen: In Germany, the sociologist Niklas Luhmann at Bielefeld University has been one of the best-known proponents of the theory of autopoiesis. He introduced the concept in his central work Soziale Systeme, published in 1984, and from there went on to elaborate this theory by describing all the different domains of society as self-directed producers of their own specific realities. Luhmann brought about the autopoietic turn in sociology.

Maturana: When I was a visiting professor at Bielefeld I never withheld my criticism but articulated it frequently in numerous debates. “Thank you for having made me famous in Germany,” I said to Niklas Luhmann, “but I disagree with the way in which you are using my ideas. I suggest that we start with the question of the characteristics of social phenomena. The concept of society historically precedes the idea of the autopoiesis of living systems. Society was the primary subject of debate; autopoiesis and social systems came much later. It follows, therefore, that we should first deal with all the relevant phenomena appearing in the analyses of society and only afterwards ask ourselves whether they may be elucidated more precisely in terms of the concept of autopoiesis.”

Poerksen: You are cautioning against the dangers of reductionism.

Maturana: The problem simply is that Niklas Luhmann uses the concept of autopoiesis as a principle in the explanation of social phenomena, which does not illuminate the processes to be described nor the social phenomena but tends to obscure them. Autopoiesis as a biological phenomenon involves a network of molecules that produces molecules. Molecules produce molecules, form themselves into other molecules, and may be divided into molecules. Niklas Luhmann, however, does not proceed from molecules producing molecules; for him everything revolves around communications producing communications. He believes that the phenomena are similar and that the situations are comparable. That is incorrect because molecules produce molecules without extraneous help, without support. This means: autopoiesis takes place in a domain in which the interactions of the elements constituting it bring forth elements of the same kind; that is crucial. Communications, however, presuppose human beings that communicate. Communications can only produce communications with the help of human beings. The decision to replace molecules by communications places communications at the centre and excludes the human beings actually communicating. The human beings are excluded and even considered irrelevant; they only serve as the background and the basis into which the social system - conceived of as an autopoietic network of communications - is embedded.

Poerksen: What swims into focus if we follow this perspective and describe a social system as a network of autopoietically self-reproducing communications, is an extremely weird social structure: a society without human beings.

Maturana: That is precisely the form of description manufactured by Niklas Luhmann. His conception can be compared with a statistical view of social systems: people with particular features do not feature in it. When we speak about social systems in our everyday life, however, we naturally have in mind all the individuals with their peculiar properties, who would protest against their characterisation as autopoietic networks - and do so, anyway, when they criticise Niklas Luhmann. But why does he proceed in this way? He told me once that he excluded human beings from his theoretical framework in order to be able to make universal statements. If you speak about human individuals, he argued, you cannot formulate universal statements. I do not share this view, either.

Poerksen: The systems theory designed by Niklas Luhmann could perhaps be considered as a sort of negative anthropology: We cannot but remain silent in gentle humility and reverence regarding the infinitely manifold and ineffable mystery of humanity, the object of worship.

Maturana: That is possible; but even in the face of such a proposal you will have to take account of the people who may possibly complain and protest against their characterisation. If you deprive people of this opportunity, you treat them like freely disposable objects; they have the status of slaves, compelled to function without the opportunity of complaining when they do not like what is happening to them. Such treatment and contempt of people is standard practice in certain companies, communities, and countries that negate individuals. A social system that forbids and even fundamentally excludes complaint and protest is not a social system. It is a system of tyranny.

The dutiful worship of systems

Poerksen: The concept of autopoiesis has created a furore not only in science and amongst the followers of Niklas Luhmann but also won huge popularity in the New-Age scene. I think we are witnessing a sort of paradigm change with the theorists and opinion leaders of the New Age. Years ago they were attracted by modern physics and the dance of the atoms. It used to be reported that the physicist Werner Heisenberg, the creator of the Uncertainty Principle, and the Buddha, practically shared an identical view of the essence of matter. The syncretism that emerged could be called quantum theology. For some time now, the key concepts of the New-Age scene have been provided by Gregory Bateson, Francisco Varela and - Humberto Maturana. The protagonists of the scene - Capra & Co. - have been brewing a rather explosive mixture of spiritualism and science, a sort of network theology, which is supposed to be the scientifically legitimated foundation of the worship of universal connectedness.

Maturana: We have now h it upon the p roblem of reductionism, which is characteristic of our culture. Just look out the window for a moment. Over there, you see a loving couple, a young woman and a young man kissing each other. What is happening there? My answer would be: Whatever happens there happens in the domain of human relations. Naturally, you can point out that in such exchanges of tenderness hormones and neurotransmitters are involved; no doubt we can speak of systemic processes in both organisms. All that would be correct, but what is occurring in the encounter of those two persons, their feeling of love, is not grasped or described by reference to such processes: the loving tender relation that those two persons are living cannot be reduced to hormones, neurotransmitters and systemic processes. What they are actively living occurs in them in the flow of their interactions as these give rise to the flow of what they do with each other through them. When Fritjof Capra and others promote their quantum theology or some network theology and begin to worship systems or networks, they are thinking and arguing in a reductionist way. They flatten and blur everything. They no longer speak of molecules but only of systems that they elevate to their new gods. This is obviously reductionism, too. What I do is fundamentally different from a reductionist approach. Since I am always aware of the existence of different non-intersecting phenomenal domains, I take care not to confuse them in my thinking or in my writing. Indeed, if one does this, one can see that the phenomena of one domain cannot be expressed in terms of the phenomena of another domain. Thus, whatever happens in the domain of the operation of the organism as a totality in its relational space cannot be expressed in terms of the molecules that compose it, or vice versa. All that an observer can do is to see what happens in those two domains and attempt to establish a generative relation between them. I preserve, and attend to, the differences between the separate phenomenal domains in my descriptions. In this way, one sees the domain of molecules, the systemic domain, the domain of relations, etc. All these different domains constitute their own specific phenomena.

Poerksen: Although I am not particularly inclined to defend the New-Age scene against anything, I think that it is no accident that your work has become attractive to that scene. The thesis of the observer-dependence of all knowledge can be interpreted as the removal of the subject-object rift that we encounter in the description of spiritual and mystical experiences.

Maturana: These spiritual experiences have, in my opinion, nothing to do with experiences of transcendence in an ontological sense but much rather with an extension of awareness and an intensified feeling of participation: You become aware of being all at one with other human beings, with the cosmos, the biosphere, etc. When people now talk about spiritual matters, however, they generally refer to some experience containing an ontological understanding or a true knowledge of nature. Such insights are, in my view, impossible in principle. Nothing that can be said is independent from us.

Poerksen: Have you yourself had experiences that might be described as spiritual in your sense?

Maturana: I suffered from lung tuberculosis as a young man. After having spent seven months in bed, I went back to my school to find out whether I could still complete the school year in the regular way and so avoid having to repeat it. It was in December and I - having just got out of my sickbed - had to listen to a presentation prepared by my fellow pupils concerning the menace of tuberculosis. They described the terrible risks of this disease and the extremely limited opportunities for therapy available at the time. While I was listening to them, I felt myself slowly beginning to faint and decided to observe this process of fainting. When I regained consciousness, I was in the middle of the room and heard the voice of my teacher who said that I was looking very green and wanted to know what had happened.

Poerksen: What had happened?

Maturana: I shall tell you how I experienced the situation. When I prepared to observe the process of passing out, I lost all feeling for my body. I had no body any more but was still aware of being alive and gradually disappearing - like a wisp of smoke floating quietly and silently through a room - in a glorious blue cosmos. I felt like dissolving into that magnificent blue, fusing, and becoming one with everything. Then suddenly everything was over. My head ached, I was sick; I heard the voice of my teacher and came round. What does this wonderful experience mean, I asked myself. Had I seen God? Was it a mystical experience? Or had I been on the way to death? In the following weeks and months, I read the few books that existed at the time about near-death experiences and studied the medical and the mystical literature. It became obvious to me that I walked a very thin line with all the different interpretations. Reading the medical books and accepting their statements led me to believe that I had experienced what it is like to die and what effects are caused by insufficient blood supply to the brain. If I believed the mystical literature, my experience involved an encounter with God and the unification with the totality of existence. At the time, I opted for the medical interpretation of what had happened to me as a near-death experience.

Poerksen: Are these two interpretations so very different? Death could be a metaphor telling us of the gift of a new beginning: the old personality is dying.

Maturana: It was, in any case, an experience that transformed my life. This transformation and the element of the extension of awareness restored to my experience a spiritual, a mystical, dimension that was not so clear to me when I was young and thought I had to decide between the two interpretations. I lost all fear of death; I stopped clinging to things and unreasonably identifying myself with them because through the encounter with death I had experienced my connectedness with the whole. I became more reflective and less dogmatic. This is not intended to mean that I want to describe myself as an illuminated being above all earthly ties, not at all. That experience was so penetrating that it changed my life. Everything is transient, I realised, nothing but transition. We do not have to defend anything, we cannot hold on to anything.