The biological origin of cognition has deep implications in all of our social and individual relationships and its importance is not derived in the intrinsic belief that it is the truth, rather, its importance is derived from its utilitarian effect in assisting us in building sustainable organizations where people continuously learn to become more cooperative and creative. In few layman's words, Maturana says that living is a process of cognition, and that we learn by languaging, that is by coordinating our behaviour with each other, and by emotioning, that is responding to our physiology(3). Also, he says that we live through our own experiences as triggered by our own languaging and emotioning, and upon our reflection of such experiences we build our knowledge and we are what we are at any given time because of our own experiences in languaging and emotioning(4).

This definition of living, as a process of learning as it happens in our experiences through the recursive processes of languaging and emotioning, appears to be contorted and difficult to understand at first. And this is so, because we have been culturally brainwashed in seeing our individual and social relationships in terms of linear thinking where every effect is the result of specific cause(s), that is we have been culturally brainwashed to think of an absolute reality out there, away from us, transcendent of ourselves and of our own living.

Languaging and emotioning are fundamental and distinct processes of our living and to be human means to language and emotion with each other. In a nutshell, to be human means to accept ourselves away from our status of power and wealth, to strive for the building of healthier communities, and to find solutions, here in Saskatchewan and elsewhere, to the current political problems of wars, pollution, prostitution, crime, poverty, alienation and governmental autocracy.

As we are approaching Christmas and the new millennium let us not only renew our promise to have a better world, but let us make a step forward and work hard for the unfolding and creation of our own future where people can language and emotion with each other, and learn how to learn more intelligently and be in peace with themselves.

A Few Papers, Links and Web Sites Referring to Maturana's Works:

- An Introduction to "Maturana's" Biology, Lloyd Fell and David Russell

- The Dance of Understanding, Lloyd Fell and David Russell

-Reality: the search for objectivity or the quest for a compelling argument, The Irish Journal of Psychology, 1988, 9, 1, 25-82, Humberto R. Maturana, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile

-Site of Jane Cull, list of some papers by Humberto Maturana and Jane Cull

Endnotes

1. THE WEB OF LIFE, by Fritjof Capra, Anchor Books, 1996

2. Fritjof Capra: The Theory of Living Systems, by James deSantis, a paper for a Political Science class at Athabasca University, Alberta. March 1999

3. Languaging and emotioning: two verbs created by Maturana. Languaging refers to the natural coordination of behaviour among people within the environment. What we call normally language is an abstraction and it is part of languaging. Emotioning refers to bodily predispositions which reveal themselves in our behaviour, for instance love and fear. Emotioning is therefore a generative process linking body and behaviour. If we refer to the self-organization model of autopoiesis, we can say that languaging takes place in the context of our behavioural (or organizational) relationships within the environment, while emotioning takes place in our physiology or structure. NEED OF TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGES IN SASKATCHEWAN: The biological origin of cognition and implications for Education, by Mario deSantis, September 24, 1998

4. Maturana's processes of languaging and emotioning are recursive and cyclical, and this is why the author must be repetitive and redundant in presenting succinctly these concepts. Counter intuitive phenomena are normal in living organizations.