The term autopoïèse comes from the Greek car (oneself), and poièsis (production, creation). It defines the property of a system to occur itself (and to be maintained, to be defined itself). The term refers to the dynamics of the structures in unstable balance, i.e. organized states (called dissipative structures) which remain stable for long periods in spite of the matter and energy which passes through.

The autopoietic approach of Maturana and Varela was born in Santiago from the Chile starting from the article Autopoietic Systems which was presented in a seminar of research organized by the Université of Santiago in 1972. Note that Varela (ref.?) use in French the orthography autopoièse , for example in Autonomie and knowledge (translated under its supervision).

According to Varela, “a system autopoietic is organized as a network of production process of components which

  • regenerate continuously by their transformations and their interactions the network which produced them
  • constitute the system as a concrete unit in space where there exists, by specifying the topological field where it is carried out like network. ”

The canonical example of a system autopoietic and one of the entities which justified Varela and Maturana to define the autopoïèse, is the biological cell. The cell eucaryote for example is made varied biochemical components, like the nucleic acid and the Protéine S, and is organized in structures limited like the Noyau of the cell, various Organelle S, a membrane of cell and the Cytosquelette. These structures based on an external flow of molecules and energy “produce” the components which, in their turn, continue to maintain the structure contained, which allows the growth of these components.

Another striking example is the Grande red spot on Jupiter which is primarily a gigantic swirl of gas in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter. This vortex persisted for much longer (of about a century) that the average of time that any gas molecule passed inside.

A system autopoietic is to be compared with a system “allopoietic” like a factory of cars, which uses rough components to manufacture a vehicle (an organized structure) which is other thing that itself (a factory).

Theoretical debate

An application of the concept to the Sociologie can be found in the Théorie of the social systems of Luhmann. The approach of the autopoïèse of Limone and Bastias was popularized at the Business school of the Catholic University of Valparaiso, starting from the thesis of Aquiles Limone (published in 1977) and model CIBORGA (popularized of 1998) with the collaboration of Shine Bastias, Cardemártori and others.

Since the last years, several theorists of social confuse the concept of autopoïèse with that of reproduction, or autoreproduction, theories basing their explanation on the idea that the present moment exists only if the Acteur in the Système acts according to a Praxis, melting a congruence of sound Action and its Idées. On this subject, Michel Freitag, social philosopher of the years 2000, operates a dissection of the autopoïèse and gives again with human the capacity of action: what leads directly to its concept épistémiquement opposite: the reproduction.

See too

External bonds

  • Article about the autopoïèse on the site of the group of research in exobiology and astrobiology of CNRS.
  • the generator poietic: an experiment of collective interaction in real-time and line allowing to concretely observe - and to take part in - phenomena poietic.

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