“Cognition is not the representation of a pre-given world by a pre-given mind, but is rather the enactment of a world and a mind.”

“All doing is knowing, and all knowing is doing.”

— Francisco Varela, The Tree of Knowledge* (1987)

“Autopoiesis is the mechanism that makes living systems autonomous.”

— Francisco Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition* (1980)

“Every act of knowing brings forth a world.”

— Francisco Varela, Principles of Biological Autonomy* (1979)

“Evolution has no purpose; it simply drifts with the only constraint of maintaining structural …”

— Francisco Varela, The Tree of Knowledge* (1987)

“If everybody would agree that their current reality is A reality, and that what we essentially share …”

— Francisco Varela, The CoEvolution Quarterly (1975)

“The living being and its environment are mutually enfolded in multiple ways, and so what constitutes …”

— Francisco Varela, The Embodied Mind* (1991)