SANTIAGO THEORY
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 2915 ▶ |
| Object type | General information, Human sciences, Epistemology, ontology or semantics |
- “A system theory of cognition , developed by H. MATURANA and F. VARELA” (F. CAPRA, 1997, p. 174)
Santiago is for Santiago de Chile, as both authors are Chileans.
Santiago theory is practically a synonym for autopoiesis .
CAPRA also states: “Mind is not a thing but a process - the process of cognition which is identified with the process of life”(Ibid., p. 175)
He resumes the basic ideas of the theory as follows: “In the Santiago theory, cognition is an integral part of the way a living organism interacts with its environment . It does not react to environmental stimuli through a lineal chain of causes and effects , but responds with structural changes in its nonlinear organizationally closed autopoietic network .
This type of response enables the organism to continue its autopoietic organization and thus to continue living in its environment. In other words, the organism's cognitive interaction with its environment is intelligent interaction… manifest in the richness and flexibility of the organism's structural coupling “(1991, p.269)
The basic importance for cognition of the interactions of the living organism with its environment was already clearly sensed by J.von UEXKULL in his theoretic biology and ethology research (1928, 1934) and, in a different way by A. KORZYBSKI in his work about the relations between our perceptions and the way we construct our abstractions , as well as about our very semantically based reactions to our perceptions (1950)
See also
Semantics, Structural differential