The Living Who Learns. The Biological Humanism of Humberto Maturana

Abstract

The Chilean scientist can be considered one of the most significant exponents of that cultural turning point that has made "complexity" the centerpiece of its research. The purpose of our investigation is not to give an account of a biological conception of the world, albeit a very fascinating one: our interest is entirely directed at the epistemology of education, and it is rather aimed at grasping the elements of innovation that should become common heritage of a scientific education which, on the contrary, in Italy seems to remain, at a general level at least in high school, anchored in to nineteenth-century positivism. The interest that moves us focuses on a specific aspect: biology in Maturana, in our opinion, overcomes the ideological barriers that have characterized the cultural history of the West with arbitrary divisions that, still today, confuse and generate prejudice. The dichotomy between scientific and non-scientific, between scientific and humanistic, between science in the singular and sciences in the plural, is overcome, through the category of living that evolves and, in this process, learns, from the cell up to the human being. At this point biology, as a "human science" does not limit its investigation within the research laboratories, but participates in daily life, questions its experiences, revolutionize the terms with which we commonly take note of what are the reason or the function that emotions perform. This is a bibliographic essay that carries out its analysis on education with a hermeneutic and epistemological approach and a qualitative methodology of investigation.