“Man knows and his capacity to know depends on his biological integrity; furthermore, he knows that he knows. As a basic psychological and, hence, biological function cognition guides his handling of the universe and knowledge gives certainty to his acts; objective knowledge seems possible and through objective knowledge the universe appears systematic and predictable.”

Source: Biology of Cognition (1970), p. 5 Introduction.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Man knows and his capacity to know depends on his biological integrity; furthermore, he knows that he knows. As a basic…" by Humberto Maturana?
Humberto Maturana photo
Humberto Maturana 14
Chilean biologist and philosopher 1928

Related quotes

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel photo

“There is no self-knowledge except historical self-knowledge. No one knows what he is if he doesn’t know what his contemporaries are.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Es giebt keine Selbstkenntniss als die historische. Niemand weiss was er ist, wer nicht weiss was seine Genossen sind.

“Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 139

Thomas Aquinas photo

“Man reaches the highest point of his knowledge about God when he knows that he knows him not, inasmuch as he knows that that which is God transcends whatsoever he conceives of him.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Source: De potentia (c. 1265–1266) q. 7, art. 5, ad 14

Michael Polanyi photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Swami Vivekananda photo
Paul Tillich photo

“In all existential knowledge both subject and object are transformed by the very act of knowing.”

Source: The Courage to Be (1952), p. 124
Context: There are realms of reality or — more exactly — of abstraction from reality in which the most complete detachment is the adequate cognitive approach. Everything which can be expressed in terms of quantitative measurement has this character. But it is most inadequate to apply the same approach to reality in its infinite concreteness. A self which has become a matter of calculation and management has ceased to be a self. It has become a thing. You must participate in a self in order to know what it is. But by participating you change it. In all existential knowledge both subject and object are transformed by the very act of knowing.

Max Stirner photo
Richard Maurice Bucke photo
Cormac McCarthy photo

Related topics