Contemplative Knowledge and Social Sciences: Close Encounters of the Enactive Kind.

The encounter of Eastern contemplative practices with the Western culture favoured the formulation and introduction of secular mindfulness programs in lay organizations and institutions worldwide. The specific characteristics of this process of secularization have been surprising in many respects. In the Life sciences, the enactive approach proposed by Francisco Varela et al. in 1991 was pioneering in opening the door to the contemplative traditions through the revaluation of first-person methods, so far inspiring a methodology to reconcile the human experience and cognitive theories. Enactivism, as a non-representational approach to knowledge with its specific ethical know-how, implies an embodied, interdependent self in a world without foundation. Along with other contributions, we are able to radically review the concept of self and the actor-structure dualism. A perspective inspired by groundlessness facilitates intellectual work in detaching from the identification of someone or something as originally biased and separated, the expectations of future liberations, the believing of alternative worlds, the need of purifying upheavals and rebirths. As a cascade process, it could deeply influence the concept and practice of social transformation and the foundational layers of social sciences themselves, contributing at the same time to the renewal of the traditions of wisdom in a post-religious era.