Editing Francisco Varela (section)

==Work and legacy==
{{Integral theory}}
Varela was trained as a biologist, mathematician and philosopher through the influence of different teachers, [[Humberto Maturana]] and [[Torsten Wiesel]].

He wrote and edited a number of books and numerous journal articles in [[biology]], [[neurology]], [[cognitive science]], [[mathematics]], and [[philosophy]]. He founded, with others, the [[Integral Institute]], a [[thinktank]] dedicated to the cross-fertilization of ideas and disciplines.

Varela supported [[embodied philosophy]], viewing human [[cognition]] and [[consciousness]] in terms of the [[enaction|enactive structures]] in which they arise. These comprise the body (as a biological system and as personally experienced) and the physical world which it enacts.<ref>p. 148 'This shift requires that we move away from the idea of the world as independent and extrinsic, to the idea of a world as inseparable from the structure of these processes of self-modification.' Varela, Francisco J., Thompson, Evan T., and Rosch, Eleanor. (1991). The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge, MA: The [[MIT Press]]. {{ISBN|0-262-72021-3}}</ref>

Varela's work popularized within the field of neuroscience the concept of [[neurophenomenology]]. This concept combined the [[Phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenology]] of [[Edmund Husserl]] and of [[Maurice Merleau-Ponty]], with "first-person science." Neurophenomenology requires observers to examine their own conscious experience using scientifically verifiable methods.

In the 1996 popular book ''The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems'', physicist [[Fritjof Capra]] makes extensive reference to Varela and Maturana's theory of [[autopoiesis]] as part of a new, [[Systems thinking|systems-based]] scientific approach for describing the interrelationships and interdependence of psychological, biological, physical, social, and cultural phenomena.<ref>{{cite book |last=Capra |first=Fritjof |date=1996 |title=The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems |url=https://archive.org/details/weboflifenewscie00capr |url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=Anchor Books |isbn=978-0385476768 }}</ref> Written for a general audience, ''The Web of Life'' helped popularize the work of Varela and Maturana, as well as that of [[Ilya Prigogine]] and [[Gregory Bateson]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.scottlondon.com/reviews/capra.html |title=THE WEB OF LIFE: Book Review |last=London |first=Scott |date=1998 |website=Scottlondon.com |access-date=9 Dec 2018}}</ref>

Varela's 1991 book ''The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience'', co-authored with [[Evan Thompson]] and [[Eleanor Rosch]], is considered a classic in the field of cognitive science, offering pioneering phenomenological connections and introducing the Buddhism-informed [[enactivist]] and [[embodied cognition]] approach.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://metapsychology.net/index.php/book-review/the-embodied-mind-cognitive-science-and-human-experience/ |title=Review - The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience Revised Edition |last=Walmsley |first=Lachlan Douglas  |date=2 May 2017 |website=Metapsychology Online |publisher=Metapsychology (Volume 21, Issue 18) |access-date=10 Dec 2018}}</ref> A revised edition of ''The Embodied Mind'' was published in 2017, featuring substantive introductions by the surviving authors, as well as a preface by [[Jon Kabat-Zinn]].<ref>{{cite book |url=https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262529365/the-embodied-mind/ |title=The Embodied Mind, Revised Edition |date=January 2017|website=mitpress.mit.edu |publisher=The MIT Press |isbn=9780262529365 |access-date=7 Jan 2025}}</ref>