New edition of Principles of Biological Autonomy

Today, we celebrate the new publication of Principles of Biological Autonomy (1979) by MIT Press, now accompanied by a new critical apparatus by Ezequiel Di Paolo and Evan Thompson.
Varela’s ideas continue to shape cognitive science through the ongoing development of the enactive approach, which today encompasses accounts of various aspects of cognition and is becoming an increasingly influential framework. Yet it’s often forgotten how deeply Varela’s work was grounded in a conception of biological autonomy. So much so, in fact, that the label enactivism is frequently invoked without reference to its foundational commitment to autonomy.
This new edition invites us to reconsider enaction and autonomy as fundamentally continuous and inseparable projects. It also restores to circulation a classic work that had long been difficult for scholars and theorists to access.
To mark the occasion, in the coming weeks we will be sharing a series of excerpts from the new critical apparatus.