Ouroboros Seminars
Life and Work of Francisco Varela
Aim of the lecture series
The goal of the 'Ouroboros Seminars' is to create an online research and discussion group centered around the work of Francisco Varela. The main activities of the group will consist in reading, presenting, and discussing Francisco's research spanning different time periods and different topics.
Motivation
Francisco Varela was an extremely prolific and creative thinker whose interests encompassed many disciplines, ranging from biology and cognitive neuroscience to phenomenology and wisdom traditions. However, due to his untimely death, the many strands of his life and thought have never been integrated into a coherent, unified whole. This is unfortunate, as it has often led to some of his ideas being overlooked, misunderstood, or even distorted. The activities of the group will be geared towards achieving a better understanding of the various dimensions and implications of Francisco’s work, and discussing how they could be creatively explored and developed further in contemporary philosophical and scientific discussions.
Format
- The group meetings will be held online (on Zoom). They will take place bi-weekly (in the first and the third Wednesday of each month), and will cover 12 pre-selected papers.
- At each session, a 20-to-40-minute presentation of the selected paper will be followed by a 60-minute discussion.
- Each paper will be presented by an expert in the field under scrutiny, preferably by one of Francisco’s friends, colleagues, or collaborators.
- The meetings will be recorded and uploaded on YouTube so that they may attract wider audience and instigate further discussion.
Please note: All lectures of the Ouroboros Seminars will be live streamed.
Time frame
March - December 2021.
Organizer
Sebastjan Vörös (University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts), Metanoia (Slovenia).
Overview: dates
Season 1
| DATE | TOPIC / TEXTS | SPEAKER |
| March 17, 2021 | Varela, “Calculus of Self-Reference” (1975) and Varela & Goguen, “The Arithmetic of Closure” (1978) | Louis Kauffman |
| April 7, 2021 | Varela, “Not One, Not Two” (1976) | Evan Thompson |
| April 21, 2021 | Varela, “Autonomy and Autopoiesis” (1981) and Varela, “Steps to a Cybernetics of Autonomy” (1986) | Tom Froese |
| May 5, 2021 | Varela, Thompson, “Color vision: A case study for the foundations of cognitive science” (1990) | Adrian Palacios |
| May 19, 2021 | Varela, “Organism: A Meshwork of Selfless Selves” (1991) and Varela, “Patterns of Life” (1997) | Ezequiel DiPaolo |
| June 2, 2021 | Varela, “Whence Perceptual Meaning” (1992) | Mog Stapleton |
| June 16, 2021 | Varela, “A Cognitive View of Immune System” (1994) | Hugues Bersini |
Season 2
| DATE | TOPIC / TEXTS | SPEAKER |
| September 1, 2021 | Varela, “Neurophenomenology” (1996) | Antoine Lutz |
| September 15, 2021 | Varela, “The phenomenology of Sunyata” | Michel Bitbol |
| October 6, 2021 | Varela, Depraz, Vermersch, “The Gesture of Awareness” (1999) | Claire Petitmengin |
| October 20, 2021 | Varela, Weber, “Life after Kant - Natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations of biological individuality” | Andreas Weber |
| November 3, 2021 | Varela, Depraz - “Imagining - Embodiment, Phenomenology, and Transformation“ (2003) | Hanne de Jaegher |
| November 17, 2021 | Varela, Depraz, “At the Source of Time” (2005) | Natalie Depraz |
| December 1, 2021 | Final Session: Varela, “Intimate Distances” (2001) | Amy Cohen Varela |
Please note: All lectures of the Ouroboros series will be live streamed on YouTube and Facebook.