Autopoiesis

a brief working definition for metadesigners (contrast with allopoiesis)

in the 1970s, biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela described the self-organizing capacity of living systems as autopoiesis (from Greek):
- ‘Auto’ means ‘self’
- ‘Poiesis’ means ‘production’ or ‘creation.’
This autonomy is expressed in their internal unity as an organized self-realizing, ‘autopoietic’ system.
An autopoietic system is described as a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components that produces the components which:
- 1) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them
- 2) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in the space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network (Maturana & Varela, 1973: 78-9)

Maturana and Varela’s theory puts great store by the way that respective ‘self-identities’ are managed.
Autopoiesis works when organisms manage the relationship between their self-identity and their image, as conveyed back to them by the environment (e.g. other organisms and conditions that impinge on their world).
This theory is useful for metadesigners, and managers of brand identities.
Whether the term ‘living system’ refers to a small biological organism, or to a large institution or corporation, is irrelevant to the theory.
It suggests that survival always depends on self-adaptation to new conditions and/or changing one's identity.
Maturana and Varela theory implies that the only cause of an organism's 'death' is an insufficient match (i.e. operationally) between its internal and its external identity.
The idea of ‘self-identity’ is, therefore, of paramount important, as it encompasses the existential predicament of all human beings, irrespective of location, tongue, age, class or ethnicity.
Nevertheless, it is habits of language and culture that regulate the (different) ways that people interpret what is meant, here, by ‘identity’.