Autopoiesis: self creation. The word explains what makes something alive versus not alive. Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela discovered this pattern in the 1970s.
Autopoiesis means a system that produces and maintains itself through its own processes.
A living cell: produces proteins that form the membrane. The membrane contains the processes that produce the proteins. The proteins and membrane create each other continuously. The cell creates itself, maintains itself, reproduces its own components.
Contrast with a factory: produces cars. The cars don’t produce the factory. The factory produces something other than itself. This is allopoiesis, other creation.
Autopoiesis: the system’s only product is itself. The components produce the network. The network produces the components. Circular. Self contained. Autonomous.
The boundary, like the cell membrane, isn’t imposed from outside. The system creates its own boundary as part of creating itself. The boundary distinguishes the system from everything else while allowing the self creation process to continue.
Three requirements for autopoiesis:
First: Components must produce components. Not just maintain existing parts. Actively generate new ones. The cell doesn’t just preserve proteins, it makes new proteins continuously.
Second: The components must form a network that produces those components. Circular organization. Each part depends on other parts. The whole regenerates itself through the interactions of parts.
Third: The network must create its own boundary. The system defines where it ends and the environment begins. The cell membrane isn’t added externally, the cell’s processes create and maintain it.
When these three operate together: autopoiesis. The system lives. It maintains itself. It continues existing as a unity through constant self production.
Stop any one of these three: the system dies. No longer autopoietic. The organization collapses even if physical components remain temporarily.
This is why a dead cell and living cell can have identical chemical composition but only one is alive. The autopoietic organization either operates or it doesn’t. Life isn’t about having the right parts. Life is about parts organized in a self creating process.
If life is autopoiesis, continuous self creation:
Living systems are autonomous. They don’t require external instructions to maintain themselves. The organization is self referential. Every process serves the continuation of the whole.
Living systems are organizationally closed. Nothing from outside can directly specify what happens inside. The environment can trigger changes, but the system’s own organization determines how it responds. The cell decides what enters, what gets processed, what gets expelled, based on maintaining its autopoiesis.
Living systems create their own identity. The boundary they produce distinguishes them from the environment. This distinction isn’t arbitrary. It’s necessary for autopoiesis to continue.
Recognition: When observing any system, biological, social, organizational, ask: Does it produce itself? Do the components generate the network that generates the components? Does it create its own boundary?
If yes: autopoietic. If not: something else, perhaps complicated, perhaps useful, but not self creating, not autonomous, not alive in this sense.
Autopoiesis: self creation through circular organization. Components produce a network. A Network produces components. Boundary emerges from the process itself.
This is what distinguishes living from non living. Organization that creates itself.
@ Lee Greene