{"id":869,"date":"2009-05-06T23:48:52","date_gmt":"2009-05-06T22:48:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lumen.nu\/rekveld\/wp\/?p=869"},"modified":"2019-08-24T21:25:57","modified_gmt":"2019-08-24T20:25:57","slug":"calculus-for-self-reference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/?p=869","title":{"rendered":"a calculus for self-reference"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Three days ago I finally got hold of a copy of Francisco Varela&#8217;s paper &#8220;A Calculus for Self-Reference&#8221;, Int. J. General Systems, 1975, Vol 2. pp. 5-24, including its introduction by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/wp\/?p=667\">Heinz von Foerster<\/a> and Richard Howe. I have been looking for this for a long time, so I was very happy to find it, only to find out that I should have looked in the right place on-line: without the (short) introduction you can find it right <a href=\"http:\/\/www.math.uic.edu\/~kauffman\/VarelaCSR.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here<\/a>, on Louis Kauffman&#8217;s site. (see previous posts <a href=\"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/wp\/?p=799\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/wp\/?p=803\">here<\/a> for a bit of context)<\/p>\n<p>In Varela&#8217;s paper, he extends the calculus of distinctions by George Spencer-Brown by a third state. It is incredibly interesting to read, but I&#8217;ll have to read a lot around this paper to really grasp what it means and what kinds of reasoning it enables. And just as is the case with Spencer-Brown: since this side of things seems very much out of fashion, sources are hard to find (or perhaps I am again not looking in the right places to begin with). I guess the next station will be Varela&#8217;s 1979 book &#8220;Principles of Biological Autonomy&#8221;; I&#8217;d like to find a copy I can afford&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image868\" src=\"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/selfref.jpg\" alt=\"selfref.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Three days ago I finally got hold of a copy of Francisco Varela&#8217;s paper &#8220;A Calculus for Self-Reference&#8221;, Int. J. General Systems, 1975, Vol 2. pp. 5-24, including its introduction by Heinz von Foerster and Richard Howe. I have been looking for this for a long time, so I was very happy to find it, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/?p=869\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">a calculus for self-reference<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":868,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-umwelt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=869"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2493,"href":"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions\/2493"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}