1998 : WHAT QUESTIONS ARE YOU ASKING YOURSELF?

francisco_varela's picture
biologist; director of research at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, and professor of cognitive science
Biologist at the Æ’cole Polytechnique, in Paris; author of Principles Of Biological Autonomy; coauthor of Autopoiesis And Cognition.

"Why is our western civilization so reluctant to accept subjective, first-hand experience as fundamental data? In close association: why the reluctance to consider one's experience as a realm to be explored with a discipline just as rigorous as the one invented by science for material phenomena?"