Autopoiesis
autopoïèse (grec auto- + poièsis)
A concept developed by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela (*autopoiesis*, around 1972), from the Greek *auto-* (self) and *poièsis* (making, producing): “making itself.” It designates the defining feature of the living—not a substance, nor a list of parts, but a mode of organization. A living system is a network whose sole function is to produce and regenerate the components that, in turn, produce the network. It is closed upon its own organization: it does not manufacture an external object, it continuously manufactures itself. It is this looping—produced by its components, producer of those components—that sets the living apart from any mechanical assembly. *Autopoiesis* is the usual French calque.
Autopoiesis, or "self-making," is a network pattern in which the function of each component is to participate in the production or transformation of other components in the network. In this way the network continually makes itself. It is produced by its components and in turn produces those components.
The term comes from Maturana and Varela, who coined it—Capra reminds us—because no existing word captured the idea: auto, “self,” for the autonomy of the living; poièsis, which shares its root with “poetry,” for “making.” Autopoiesis: “self-making-itself.” “Autopoïèse” is merely its French calque.
The definition Capra adopts forms a loop: a network pattern in which the function of each component is to participate in the production or transformation of other components in the network—a network pattern where each component’s role is to contribute to producing or transforming the others. The consequence is clear-cut: It is produced by its components and in turn produces those components. The network produces nothing external to itself; its product is its own organization. The cell is the simplest example: a membrane encloses a chemistry that manufactures the components which rebuild the membrane that contains the chemistry.
≠ Machine: a mechanism is allopoietic—assembled from the outside from preexisting parts, and its product is other than itself (a watch produces time, not more watches). The living, by contrast, cannot be assembled from without: it generates itself.
≠ Also sympoiesis as defined by Donna Haraway, who extends the term while challenging it: nothing makes itself alone. Where autopoiesis emphasizes organizational closure—a system that produces itself—sympoiesis insists that no living thing truly loops back on itself, that everything is made with, in symbiosis and dependence. The “self” of auto- is already a multitude.