To Bring Forth a World

At this point we may say that the structural changes in the system constitute acts of cognition. Cognition results from a pattern of distinctions, and distinctions are perceptions of difference, in Bateson’s meaning of the word. Therefore, structure is embodiment of difference, and the organizational maps of an organism are maps of difference, and not of components.

According to the Santiago theory, a living organism does not represent an objective external world independent of the observer (18), but creates a world, or a multiplicity of them linked together by the same pattern of organization.

This pattern is also not stable: it is cognitive, which means that it is self-transforming and self-similar. By making distinctions, a living system continually brings forth a world through the process of living. The system specifies which perturbations from the environment trigger structural changes, and in that way the system specifies a world it will bring forth.

Similar structure and organizational patterns imply similar worlds brought forth. Thus the ability to communicate, understand and create together. Communication is to bring forth worlds with others of the kind.

(18) Maturana and Varela do not claim that there is no reality, but that reality does not have any pre-determined features. Nothing exists independent of the process of cognition. There are no objectively existing structures; there is no pre-given territory of which we can make a map – map-making itself brings forth the features of the territory.

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