CONCEPT
Bringing Forth a World
Maturana's thesis that organisms do not find a pre-existing world but generate one through the distinctions their structure makes possible — and his insistence that everything said is said by an observer.
The organism does not discover a world that was waiting to be found. It brings forth a world through the distinctions its own structure makes possible. The bacterium moving toward glucose does not encounter glucose in a world where glucose was waiting — its molecular machinery generates a domain of interaction in which certain chemical gradients are relevant and others are not. That domain is brought forth by the bacterium's own structure. A different organism, with different receptors and metabolic needs, would bring forth a different world from the same physical environment. Maturana stated this as an axiom: everything said is said by an observer. The observer's distinctions are not read off pre-existing reality; they are operations performed by the observer's cognitive system, determined by the observer's structure. Different observers bring forth different worlds — not different opinions about the same world, but different worlds.
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