Henri Atlan

We must continue to defend the practices of technoscience, while at the same time fighting its pretensions.

Summary

Henri Atlan (1931 - ) is a French Algerian biologist and professor of biophysics at the University of Paris VI and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Influenced by Heinz von Foerster, he became interested in applying Cybernetics and Information Theory to living organisms, and has won an international reputation for his research on the self-organization of cells and Artificial Intelligence.

He made essential contributions to the concept of a Biocentric Culture (see Vital Unconscious and Biocentric Principle).

Ideas

• Self Organisation - developed the theory of "random organization".
  • At the birth of the universe there was an order/disorder/organization dialogic triggered off by calorific turbulence (disorder), in which, under certain conditions (random encounters) organizing principles made possible the creation of nuclei, atoms, galaxies and stars.
  • This dialogic recurred when life emerged via encounters between macro-molecules within a kind of self- productive loop which eventually became a living self-organization.
  • The dialogic between order, disorder and organization exists in a wide variety of forms, and via countless feedback processes is constantly an action in the physical, biological and human worlds.