Der Baum der Erkenntnis

According to ancient Darwinian biology, a living being only survives if it adapts as perfectly as possible to its environment. It would thus be slavishly dependent on an objective outside world. For Maturana and Varela, however, there is no objective reality. When the basic requirements of life are met, living systems have all the freedom to create their own world, instead of merely reacting to pre-determined things. Of course, this is particularly true for humans. The subject is thus decisively involved in the creation of his only apparently objective reality. The new term for life, as defined by the neurobiologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, is autopoiesis, which means to create oneself. The unity of subjectivity and objectivity, of I and the world, of consciousness and being, which has been recognized in the history of mankind by sages, mystics and philosophers, is clearly confirmed by Maturana and Varela and is backed up by scientific research results.