| Autopoiesis literally means "self-production" (from the Greek: auto for self- and poiesis for creation or production) and expresses a fundamental
complementarity between structure and function. The term was originally introduced by Chilean biologists
Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana in the early 1970s. More precisely, the term
refers to the dynamics of non-equilibrium structures; that is, organised
states (sometimes also called dissipative structures) that
remain stable for long periods of time despite matter and energy continually flowing through them.
A vivid example of a non-equilibrium structure is the Great Red Spot
on Jupiter, which is essentially a gigantic whirlpool of gases
in Jupiter's upper atmosphere. This vortex has persisted for a much longer time (on the order of centuries) than the average
amount of time any one gas molecule has spent within it.
The canonical example of an autopoietic system, and one of the entities that motivated Varela and Maturana to define
autopoiesis, is the biological cell. The eukaryotic cell, for example, is made of various biochemical components such as nucleic acids and proteins, and is
organised 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 organised 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 organised structure) which is something other than
itself (a factory).
An application of the concept to sociology can be found in Luhmann's systems theory.
References
- Capra, Fritjof (1997). The Web of Life. Random House. ISBN 0385476760 —general introduction to
the ideas behind autopoiesis
- Maturana, Humberto & Varela, Francisco (1980). Autopoiesis and Cognition: the Realization of the Living. Robert S.
Cohen and Marx W. Wartofsky (Eds.), Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 42. Dordecht: D. Reidel Publishing Co.
ISBN 9027710155 (hardback), ISBN 9027710163 (paper) —the main
published reference on autopoiesis
- Mingers, John (1994). Self-Producing Systems. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. ISBN 0306447975 —a book on the
autopoiesis concept in many different areas
- Luisi, Pier L. (2003). Autopoiesis: a review and a reappraisal. Naturwissenschaften 90 49–59.
—biologist view of autopoiesis
- Varela, Francisco J.; Maturana, Humberto R.; & Uribe, R. (1974). Autopoiesis: the organization of living systems, its
characterization and a model. Biosystems 5 187–196. —one of the original papers on the concept of
autopoiesis
External links
|
