Any attempt to understand how human life has evolved its unique cultural habits needs to start with observing what infants know and can do. Organisms regulate the development of their lives by growing structures and processes from within their vitality, by autopoiesis that requires anticipation of adaptive functions. And they must develop and protect their abilities in response to environmental affordances and dangers, with consensuality (Maturana and Varela, 1980; Maturana et al., 1995). Infants are ready for human cultural invention and collaboration as newly hatched birds are ready for flying – within ‘the biology of love’ (Maturana and Varela, 1980; Maturana and Verden-Zoller, 2008). All organisms reach out in time and space to make use of the ‘affordances’ for thought and action . Consciousness is created as the ongoing sense of self-in-movement with which we experience and manipulate the world around us.

Outside of music, I felt that my life … Read More