Autopoiesis

Autopoiesis literally means "auto (self)-creation" (from the Greek: auto– αυτό for self- and poiesis– ποίησις for creation or production), and expresses a fundamental dialectic between structure and function. The term was originally introduced by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela in 1973:


 * "An autopoietic machine is a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network." (Maturana, Varela, 1980, p. 78)


 * "[…] the space defined by an autopoietic system is self-contained and cannot be described by using dimensions that define another space. When we refer to our interactions with a concrete autopoietic system, however, we project this system on the space of our manipulations and make a description of this projection." (Maturana, Varela, 1980, p. 89)

The term autopoiesis was originally conceived as an attempt to characterize the nature of living systems. A canonical example of an autopoietic system is the biological cell. The eukaryotic cell, for example, is made of various biochemical components such as nucleic acids and proteins, and is organized into bounded structures such as the cell nucleus, various organelles, a cell membrane and cytoskeleton. These structures, based on an external flow of molecules and energy, produce the components which, in turn, continue to maintain the organized bounded structure that gives rise to these components. An autopoietic system is to be contrasted with an allopoietic system, such as a car factory, which uses raw materials (components) to generate a car (an organized structure) which is something other than itself (the factory).

More generally, the term autopoiesis resembles the dynamics of a non-equilibrium system; that is, organized states (sometimes also called dissipative structures) that remain stable for long periods of time despite matter and energy continually flowing through them. From a very general point of view, the notion of autopoiesis is often associated with that of self-organization. However, an autopoietic system is autonomous and operationally closed, in the sense that every process within it directly helps maintaining the whole. Autopoietic systems are structurally coupled with their medium in dialect dynamic of changes that can be recalled as sensory-motor coupling. This continuous dynamic is considered as knowledge and can be observed throughout life-forms.

An application of the concept to sociology can be found in Luhmann's Systems Theory.