| We are not like the chained men in the cave of Plato's Republic who saw only the shadows of objective entitites that could, at least in principle, be conceived as having an absolute reality. We are more like pharmacologists describing biologically active substances by means of the changes of state of their biological probes. . . . It is not frequently realized, and it is less frequently taken seriously in the domain of science, that we human beings . . . can only operate in this way by using ourselves as biological probes with which we specify and describe the domains of reality in which we live. | |||
| p. 59 | |||
| Humberto R. Maturana |
"Biology and Language: The Epistemology of Reality" Psychology and Biology of Language and Thought Academic Press, 1978 |
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| Essays in honor of Eric Lenneberg, edited by George A. Miller and Elizabeth Lenneberg. | |||
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