Maturana and Varela provide, in the theory of autopoiesis and cognition, an excellent example of the power of idealism in science. e theorization of the primacy of organization and relation as denitive of a self-organizing totality is very similar to that of Hegelian idealism.
What Maturana and Varela refer to as an “organization” is an Idea in the Platonic sense.
this seems to be their motive in introducing the, arguably misplaced and misleading, language of mechanism into their, otherwise perfectly organic, philosophy.