What is Francisco Varela?
[[File:Francisco Varela.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Varela in [[Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh|Dharamsala]] India, 1994]] '''Francisco Javier Varela García''' (September 7, 1946 &ndash; May 28, 2001) was a [[Chile]]an [[biologist]], [[philosopher]], and [[neuroscientist]]. Varela was, with his teacher [[Humberto Maturana]], best known for introducing the concept of [[autopoiesis]] to biology, and for co-founding the [[Mind and Life Institute]] to promote dialog between science and [[Buddhism]]. ==Publications== Varela wrote numerous books and articles:<ref>Comprehensive [http://www.enolagaia.com/Varela.html#Bib bibliography] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171110121837/http://www.enolagaia.com/Varela.html#Bib |date=2017-11-10 }} by Randall Whitaker.</ref> * 1980 (with [[Humberto Maturana]]). ''Autopoiesis and cognition: the realization of the living''. Boston: Reidel. * 1979. ''Principles of biological autonomy''. North-Holland. * 1998 (1987) (with [[Humberto Maturana]]). ''The tree of knowledge: the biological roots of human understanding''. Boston: Shambhala Press. * 1991 (with Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch). ''The Embodied mind: cognitive science and human experience''. MIT Press. {{ISBN|978-0-262-72021-2}} * 1992 (with P. Bourgine) eds. ''Towards a practice of autonomous systems: the first European conference on artificial life''. MIT Press. * 1992 (with J. Hayward) eds. ''Gentle bridges: dialogues between the cognitive sciences and the Buddhist tradition''. Boston: Shambhala Press. * 1993 (with D. Stein) eds. ''Thinking about biology: an introduction to theoretical biology''. Addison-Wesley, SFI Series on Complexity. * 1997 (ed). ''Sleeping, dreaming and dying''. Boston: Wisdom Book. * 1996-99. ''Invitation aux sciences cognitives''. Paris: Seuil. * 1999. ''Ethical know-how: action, wisdom and cognition''. Stanford University Press. * 1999 (with J. Shea), eds. ''The view from within: first-person methodologies in the study of consciousness''. London: Imprint Academic. *1999 (with J. Petitot, B. P