What is Cognition?

Cognition is at the core of how we perceive, think, remember, reason, learn, and communicate.

This novel concept of mind was developed during the 1960s by the anthropologist Gregory Bateson, who used the term ‘mental process’, and independently by the biologist Humberto Maturana. Their central insight is the identification of cognition, the process of knowing, with the process of life.

Cognition, according to Maturana, is the activity involved in the self-generation and self-perpetuation of living networks. In other words, cognition is the very process of life. The self-organising activity of living systems, at all levels of life, is mental activity. The interactions of a living organism – plant, animal or human – with its environment are cognitive interactions. Thus life and cognition are inseparably connected.

Mind – or, more accurately, mental activity – is imminent in matter at all levels of life. For the first time, we have a scientific theory that unifies mind, matter and life.