Autopoiesis

Autopoiesis is arguably one of the most important ideas in the history of biology.

A major node of the new sciences of complexity, it answers a question that was not answered by the mechanistic reductionistic approach to biology of the last hundred years: What is life?

In his book The Web of Life, Fritjof Capra argues that a coherent theory of living systems - and an answer to that question - must include two components:

autopoiesis as the (network) pattern of life

dissipative structures as the structure of a living system

Ilya Prigogine's theory of dissipative structures explained how living systems maintain their order - their stable structure - in the face of a constant flux of matter and energy passing through them by dissipating entropy to their environment. He won the Nobel prize for that work. More about his theory is explained in this interview with him and in another essay on this site, coming soon...)

Prigogine's theory also contributes much to our understanding about how evolution - especially rapid evolution consistent with Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldridge's theory of punctuated evolution - occurs via positive feedback amplifying instabilities into bifurcations.

However, while all living systems are dissipative structures, all dissipative structures are not living systems.

So what is the distinction between living and nonliving dissipative structures? Autopoiesis. Simply put, if a dissipative structure (system) is autopoietic, it is alive. If it is not autopoietic, it is NOT alive.

Autopoiesis was originally proposed by Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana (a second site here) as the answer to two questions at the heart of his life's work:

1. What is the organization of the living?

2. What takes place in the phenomenon of perception or cognition?

The answer to both questions is autopoiesis. That is, autopoiesis is the key to understanding both life and cognition. Interestingly, he originally thought these were very separate questions. They turned out to be essentially the same question. (That is, life and cognition are different sides of the same coin; see below.)

Maturana later refined and formalized the idea with his student (later colleague), the late Francisco Varela.

They defined autopoiesis as a circular network of production processes in which the function of each component - each node in the network - is to participate in the production or transformation of other components in the network. The entire network continually makes itself. (From The Web of Life.)

Autopoiesis is sometimes described by the term "circular organization" to indicate that it is a closed network of production processes in which the output of one process ultimately feeds back into itself. However, the term "circular" does not imply a literal physical circle, but an abstraction in which parts are linked in a closed loop.

Note that according to this view, life is not a force, but a process. This distinction between life as a force and life as a process is important.

In current models of science, including quantum physics and cosmology, there are only four known forces: gravity, the electromagnetic force (related to electricity, magnetism, gamma rays, X-rays, ultraviolet light, visible light, infrared radiation, microwaves, radio and TV waves), the weak force and strong force (the latter two operate at the level of the atomic nucleus).

Although the major force involved in life is the electromagnetic force (the chemical bonds between the atoms in organic molecules of life are electromagnetic forces), the electromagnetic force itself is NOT life.

Furthermore, there is no credible scientific evidence supporting the existence of a "fifth force" or "vital force" as vitalists and new age writers contend, as exemplified by this statement from new age writer Jose Arguelles: "The Serpent, Chan or Chicchan, represents the life force, which is the source of innate (DNA) wisdom. To deny this wisdom is to deny our life force."

Instead, from the view of complexity, life is not a force but a process. Some complexity scientists speak of it as an emergence or an emergent property, that is, a property characterizing a system that is not a property of the system's parts but that emerges as a result of the (nonlinear) interaction (a process) of the parts.

In either case, autopoiesis is the process by which life emerges in dissipative structures.

As biologist Lynn Margulis explains in her book (with Dorion Sagan) What is Life?, life is not a noun, but a verb. When autopoiesis stops, life stops.

Margulis offers a much more in-depth discussion of autopoiesis and its scientific and cultural implications in her essay "Big Trouble in Biology", chapter 20 in her book Slanted Truths: Essays on Gaia, Symbiosis and Evolution (also with Dorion Sagan) in which she also contrasts the autopoietic view with the perspective of mechanistic reductionism that dominates contemporary university biology curricula.

She describes (as does Capra) biologist Gail Fleischaker's three criteria necessary to define autopoietic forms:

Self-generating: all components, including boundary, are produced within the network;

Self-bounded: the system's self-generating boundary is an integral component of the system;
Self-perpetuating: production processes continually (over time) replace all components.

The concept of autopoiesis is similar to hypercycles, first described by Nobel laureate Manfred Eigen. However, autopoietic systems are more complex than hypercycles. In particular, as noted in Fleischaker's criteria, autopoietic systems produce their own boundaries that participate in the network.

The quintessential autopoietic systems are biological cells. The simplest, and certainly the first to evolve on Earth, are bacterial cells. Eukaryotic cells - those of kingdoms Protoctista, Animalia, Plantae and Fungi - are also autopoietic.

Autopoiesis is important to understanding all aspects of cell biology and metabolism, including respiration, photosynthesis, DNA replication & repair, and protein synthesis. All of those processes are components in a network of production processes.

For example, DNA is a template containing the information for the primary structure of proteins. Some of those proteins are enzymes that are involved in the replication and transcription of DNA to produce proteins in protein synthesis.

Photosynthesis and respiration are processes that transform energy (sunlight and chemical energy of glucose, respectively) into forms directly usable by living systems (ATP). Both require numerous enzymes and structural proteins which are the result of the DNA/protein synthesis nodes. In turn, ATP is required to fuel DNA synthesis and protein synthesis.

Thus, all of these processes are linked into a network of production processes, each contributing to the others.

Autopoiesis also has major ramifications for our understanding of cognition: specifically autopoiesis IS cognition. (See Capra's chapters 11 & 12)

More on autopoiesis can also be found at Principia Cybernetica Web.