autopoiesis: one construct, many systems

In theoretical biology, autopoiesis names the defining organisation of a living system: a network of processes that continuously produces the very components that regenerate the network and maintain the boundary separating it from its surroundings. Maturana and Varela's Autopoiesis and Cognition advanced self-production, not any particular material, as what makes a system alive. The referent is the self-producing organisation of a living unity, and later uses in cognition and society are deliberate extensions of this same construct rather than unrelated namesakes.[1]

Unit

The closed network of component-producing processes that sustains the unity

Recovery means

An autopoietic system persists by continuously regenerating its components; it ceases (disintegrates) when that self-production can no longer be maintained

Measured by

Identified by operational closure: whether the system's processes recursively produce the components and boundary that produce them

In the enactive approach to cognitive science, autopoiesis grounds cognition in life: a cognitive system is first a self-producing, self-maintaining body that brings forth, or enacts, a world of significance through its ongoing activity rather than representing a pre-given one. Varela, Thompson, and Rosch's The Embodied Mind carries the biological construct into mind, making self-production the basis of sense-making. It is the same self-producing-organisation construct as in cell biology, here applied to cognition and measured by a system's capacity to generate and maintain its own relevance to its environment.[2]

Unit

The self-producing activity through which a cognitive system enacts a world of meaning

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Framed by whether cognition is treated as the sense-making activity of an operationally closed, self-maintaining system

In Luhmann's social-systems theory, autopoiesis is transposed to society: a social system reproduces itself from its own elements (communications that give rise to further communications), operationally closed against its environment while remaining open to information. Luhmann's Social Systems builds a general sociology on this self-reproducing closure, with people treated as part of the environment rather than components of the system. It is the same self-production construct as in biology, lifted to the level of communication and assessed by whether a social system's operations recursively generate the operations that continue it.[3]

Unit

The recursive production of communications that reproduce the social system

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Characterised by operational closure at the level of communication: whether the system's communications generate its own further communications