"I have introduced people to, and tutored them on, autopoietic theory for a number of years. The following reading plan is a suggested 'menu' based on these experiences. The real difficulty in approaching Maturana and Varela's theories lies not in their complexity but in their novelty. Because it takes a while to catch onto and shift into these thinkers' perspective, the following readings are ordered so as to provide a 'graduated' progression. The links will take you to the full bibliographical data in the references."
I <David Soul> started this reading from the back end.... I first came across Maturana & Varela's work through the works of Stafford Beer on Managerial Cybernetics.... [including: Brian of the Firm (1972), The Heart of Enterprise, Cybernetics and Management (1959) and Decision and Control (1966)] This led me to the preface by Beer for Maturana & Varela (1980) listed by Whitaker and eventurally backwards to the Tree of Knowledge (listed by Whitaker as a good place to start... in between I discovered Winograd & Flores independently.... I would agree with Dr. Whitaker's advice.... I would have needed much less bactracking and probably got a sounder introduction if I had the above list before me at the start of my journey.....I can't vouch for the rest of the list as I haven't tracked them down to this point... but given how "on the mark" his first recommendations are I will be following the thread myself....
