Notes on an Epistemology for Living Things - Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition - page 252

(“necessity”), it is in principle impossible to make infallible inductive infer-
ences (“chance”). Consequently, chance and necessity are concepts that do
not apply to the world, but to our attempts to create (a description of) it.

11. The environment contains no information; the environment is as it is.

12. Go back to Proposition Number 1.

References

1. Piaget, J.: The Construction of Reality in the Child . Basic Books, New York, (1954).
2. Witz, K. and J. Easley: Cognitive Deep Structure and Science Education in Final
Report , Analysis of Cignitive Behavior in Children; Curriculum Laboratory,
University of Illinois, Urbana, (1972).
3. Castaneda, C.: A Separate Reality . Simon and Schuster, New York, (1971).
4. Maturana, H.: Neurophysiology of Cognition in Cognition: A Multiple View ,
P. Garvin (ed.), Spartan Books, New York, pp. 3-23, (1970).
5. Maturana, H.: Biology of Cognition , BCL Report No. 9.0, Biological Computer
Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana,
95 pp., (1970).
6. Maturana, H. and F. Varela: Autopoiesis . Faculdad de Ciencias, Universidad de
Chile, Santiago, (1972).
7. Exodus, 3, 14.
8. Aristotle: Metaphysica . Volume VIII of The Works of Aristotle , W. D. Ross (ed.,
tr.). The Clarendon Press, Oxford, (1908).

III. Notes

1. The environment is experienced as the residence of objects, stationary, in
motion, or changing.
1.1 “Change” presupposes invariance, and “invariance” change.
2. The logical properties of “invariance” and “change” are those of representa-
tions. If this is ignored paradoxes arise.
2.1 The paradox of “invariance:”

THE DISTINCT BEING THE SAME

But it makes not sense to write x 1 = x 2 (why the indices?).
And x = x says something about “=” but nothing about x.

2.2 The paradox of “change:”

THE SAME BEING DISTINCT

But it makes no sense to write x π x.

3. Formalize the representations R, S,...regarding two sets of variables x i and t j
(i, j = 1, 2, 3 . . .), tentatively called “entities” and “instants” respectively.
3.1 The representation R of an entity x regarding the instant t 1 is distinct from
the representation of this entity regarding the instant t 2 :
Rxt

( () ) π ()

Rxt

( ) 1 2