What makes a living system a living system? What kind of biological phenomenon is the phenomenon of cognition? These two questions have been frequently considered, but, in this volume, the authors consider them as concrete biological questions. Their analysis is bold and provocative, for the authors have constructed a systematic theoretical biology which attempts to define living systems not as objects of observation and description, nor even as interacting systems, but as self-contained unities whose only reference is to themselves. The (...) consequence of their investigations and of their living systems as self-making, self-referring autonomous unities, is that they discovered that the two questions have a common answer: living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. The result of their investigations is a completely new perspective of biological (human) phenomena. During the investigations, it was found that a complete linguistic description pertaining to the ‘organization of the living’ was lacking and, in fact, was hampering the reporting of results. Hence, the authors have coined the word ‘autopoiesis’ to replace the expression ‘circular organization’. Autopoiesis conveys, by itself, the central feature of the organization of the living, which is autonomy. (shrink)

Jean Piaget was one of the most salient and inspirational figures in psychological and educational research this century. He was prolific, authoring or editing over eighty books and numerous journal papers which have spawned a huge and fertile continuation of his research over the decades. A major component of any course on children's psychological development and a research tradition that is expanding, scholars need access to the original texts rather than relying on secondhand accounts. Jean Piaget: Selected Works is a (...) chance to acquire key original texts, most of which have been previously unavailable for several years. (shrink)

I propose to formulate and expound a version of idealism. The position at issue does not maintain the causal thesis that matter is somehow the product of mind. Nor, a fortiori, is it spiritualism—the theory that only minds exist and that all else is the product of their functioning. Rather, this doctrine, which I shall call conceptual idealism, holds not merely the trivial thesis that mind is at work in our conceiving of reality, but the more significant and daring doctrine (...) that mind underlies the conception of reality. Beginning with the traditional rationalist thesis that the mind makes a substantive and constitutive contribution to the shaping of our conception of reality, conceptual idealism goes beyond this to hold that the mind makes this formative contribution in terms that to some extent involve a reference to itself: that key elements in our picture of natural reality are painted with mentalistic coloration. (shrink)