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"An autopoietic machine is a
machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of
processes of production (transformation and destruction) of
components which: (i) through their interactions and
transformations continuously regenerate and realize the
network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii)
constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in space in
which they (the components) exist by specifying the
topological domain of its realization as such a network."
(Maturana, Varela, 1980, p. 78) - Humberto
Maturana
This body of work is important
because it draws distinction about living systems, and poses
contrasts for cybernetic theory such as the contrast between
autopoiesis and self-organization; note these distinctions in
the following excerpt from
wikipedia.
"Autopoiesis
(from
Greek αὐτo- (auto-), meaning "self", and ποίησις
(poiesis), meaning "creation, production") literally means
"self-creation" and expresses a fundamental
dialectic among
structure,
mechanism and
function. The term was introduced in 1972 by Chilean
biologists
Humberto Maturana and
Francisco Varela:
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 organized
structure) which is something other than itself (the
factory).
Though others have often used the term as a synonym for
self-organization, Maturana himself stated he would "never
use the notion of self-organization, because it cannot be the
case... it is impossible. That is, if the organization of a
thing changes, the thing changes."[3]
Moreover, an autopoietic system is autonomous and
operationally closed, in the sense that there are sufficient
processes within it to maintain the whole. Autopoietic systems
are "structurally coupled" with their medium, embedded in a
dynamic of changes that can be recalled as
sensory-motor coupling. This continuous dynamic is
considered as a rudimentary form of
knowledge or
cognition and can be observed throughout life-forms."
For me, this idea that cognition is not a owned by
humans, and cognition is and may be the underlying
"collaboration" of desires, that produce the organism in its
form of "energetically open and organizational closed"
dissipative system in response to fitness.
"Living systems are cognitive
systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition.
This statement is valid for all organisms, with or without a
nervous system. - Maturana, Humberto R./Varela, Francisco J.
(1980): Autopoiesis and Cognition. The Realization of the
Living. Dordrecht: Reidel, p. 13
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Helpful Hint:
For me, the idea that cognition is
not just knowing but all the processes that create the knowing
as a system of knowing, gives legs to cognition, whereas as it
is, it seems to be a process, versus a system. There are not
many references to a cognitive system, or even fewer to
cognitive metasystems, which is where the ability to know
about knowing is a key construct. |
