I'm perhaps best known for three different kinds of work, which seem disparate to many people but to me run as a unified theme. These are my contribu… - Francisco Varela

The cybernetics phase of cognitive science produced an amazing array of concrete results, in addition to its long-term (often underground) influence:

It is actually by experience of our teleology – our wish to exist further on as a subject, not our imputation of purposes on objects – that teleology becomes a real rather than an intellectual principle... before being scientists we are first living beings, and as such we have the evidence of intrinsic teleology in us. And, in observing other creatures struggling to continue their existence – starting from simple bacteria that actively swim away from a chemical repellent – we can, by our own evidence, understand teleology as the governing force of the realm of the living. Theories about the living can only be conceived from the fragile and concerned perspective of the living itself.

I'm interested in establishing empirical correlations between a long-standing interest in Buddhist practice and scientific work.