Autopoiesis

The Chilean neuroscientist Humberto Maturana together with Francisco Varela constructed the model of autopoiesis (15) as organizational feature common to all living systems. The components of a living system are not stable: they continuously transform or “make themselves.” Moreover, they do not make themselves independently of the whole that connects them to the other components, but each local transformation reflects a transformation in the relationship environment. In this way components enter into a process of “making” each other as well, and so the entire network continually “makes itself.” The network is continually produced by its components and in turn produces its components. “In a living system,” Maturana and Varela write, “the product of its operation is its own organization.”

Maturana postulated that the phenomenon of the feedback loop implies that the (nervous) system is not only self-organizing but also continually self-referring. This connection between the feedback loop and self-referential ability of a system affects the definition of perception as well. Perception is not a representation of an external reality but it is a continual process of creation of relationships within the (neural) network: “The activities of nerve cells do not reflect an environment independent of the living organism and hence do not allow for the construction of an absolutely existing external world.” According to Maturana, perception and cognition do not represent an external reality, but they rather specify one, or in Deleuzean terms, singularize one reality out of originally non-characterized flux.

(15) "autopoiesis" : “self-making”

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