I'm flattered, yes of course, here it is
Robert Bacal asked:
>What is autopoeisis (self-flowering...no..that's auto-poesy)?
To attempt an answer, I'll quote bits from a work in progress [and BTW
self-flowering is quite close in some senses, if we see flowering as an
'emergence'...]:
>From the draft 'Learning from Complexity' pack: extracts from a chapter on
autopoeisis...
Autopoeisis: the miracle of me
Autopoeisis is the process by which living creatures constantly recreate
and maintain themselves and their own identity. Maturana & Varela, the
two Chilean biologists who invented the concept, describe living creatures
as 'characterised by their continual self-production'. You may be
familiar with the idea that the atoms in our bodies change completely over
a number of years, but if this is true, why am I still me and you still
you? Shouldn't we feel increasingly ' different' as time goes by? Because
as physical entities we are completely different, not one atom of our
bodies is the same as before, yet we have an unbroken sense of self going
back to our earliest memories. Autopoeisis is the process by which this
miracle is achieved.
Me and not me: the boundary of the self
Think about a cell: it could be a cell in your liver, or a single- celled
animal like an amoeba, or a plant cell. Every cell has a cell wall, a
membrane, a boundary that seperates it from everything else outside of it,
(in the case of a cell in your liver 'outside' merely means other nearby
liver cells, in the case of the amoeba everything outside of it is the
entire rest of the world). This boundary is part of the cell, it is not
something seperate: it simultaneously limits and therefore defines the
cell and it takes part in all the processes of the cell. If it was just
an inert boundary, the contents of the cell would flow out like water from
a leaky bucket when the membrane was damaged. So the membrane is
crucially part of the cell, and when the membrane is damaged the cell's
processes will quickly act to keep out everything that is not the cell -
'not me'- and keep in everything that is part of the cell -'me'. This is
the real mystery: how does a cell achieve this 'closure', when part of
itself forms the boundary between itself and everything else? How does it
know the difference between 'me' and 'not me'? Please don't expect an
answer here: the key point is that this 'self-production'- this 'closure'
between what is 'me' and what is 'not me'- is a key characteristic of all
living systems. Autopoeisis is a genuinely new way of looking at systems:
the insights to be gained by viewing human interactions from this new
standpoint are potentially enormous.
Autopoeisis applies to all living systems
Autopoeisis is also a characteristic of organisms: there are many millions
of cells in an organism, all organised into sub-systems within the 'big
system' that is the individual organism. Autopoeisis also applies to
systems of organisms: herds and flocks, populations and entire species.
And, because organisations can be viewed as collections of organisms
[human beings], autopoeisis is also being applied to social systems like
governments, companies and professions.
The internal model determines the response
Because any autopoeitic system has a sense of 'me and not-me', we can also
say that any autopoeitic system has an internal model of itself and its
world. Take the example of a muscle cell in the leg of a marathon runner:
at the start of a race protein molecules in the cell's environment will be
used as 'raw materials' for making more muscle protein. But at the end of
the race the same proteins may well be seen as 'emergency food' because
the cell will be running low on energy. [Protein is only used as food in
emergency because it is a very poor source of energy compared with
carbohydrate.] So when a cell responds to a protein molecule, it is the
cell's internal model that determines its response, not the nature of the
incoming chemical. It is not a simple case of 'stimulus and response'
[stimulus = protein, response = make more muscle], it is instead the
interactions within an incredibly complex internal organisation responding
to its own internal needs. When we think about internal models we are
usually talking about people or organisations, yet even the simplest cells
like bacteria have some knowledge of their world, as Stuart Kaufmann
points out: E. Coli has a model of its environment that allows it too
understand that if it swims upstream in a glucose gradient it will find
more food.
Varela says in Brockman:
"There's a circular or network process that engenders a paradox: a
self-organising network of biochemical reactions produces molecules which
do something specific and unique: they create a boundary, a membrane,
which constrains the network that has produced the constituents of the
membrane. This is a logical bootstrap, a loop....[it] is precisely what
is unique about cells... [Bootstrapping is ] a nice way of talking about
this funny screwy logic where the snake bites its own tail and you can't
discern a beginning. Forget the idea of a black box with inputs and
outputs. Think in terms of loops."
The rest of the section which I'm still writing, goes on to look at the
implications for human systems. The references for the above chunk are:
Francisco Varela in John Brockman, The Third Culture, Simon and Schuster,
New York, ISBN 0-684-80359-3, 17.99, which BTW I would recommend as an
excellent introduction to 'new science', it's a set of short pieces with
comments and discussion on each, it's on a par with Wheatley's book, and
Humberto Maturana & Francisco Varela, The tree of knowledge: the
biological roots of human understanding, Shambhala Publications, Boston,
US, ISBN 0-87773-642-1, 19.99, which I find very difficult, despite it
being written as an introductory 'layman's ' text! [Incidentally, Varela
would almost certainly disown my poor wee explanation of the ideas, as he
is known to oppose the application of autopoeisis outside of cells and
lifeforms, and that's assuming I haven't made any gross scientific errors.
That hasn't stopped others, applying it though, particularly some European
theorists, especially Luhmann in Holland, looking at public sector, local
government, government, the legal system, etcetera though...BTW caselaw is
the best example of autopoeisis in a human system ever!]
This is all I'll say on autopoeisis for now. Hope it helps. Everyone
I've read or talked to about autopoeisis stresses what a slippery
difficult idea it is. Let me know if I made any sense - I'd appreciate the
feedback. If you want more I'd recommend the writings and postings of
Michael McMaster and Uri Merry to name but 2 others on this list, as well
as the 2 references above. I'm not worthy, etcetera...
Best wishes
Arthur Battram
--from Arthur Battram, organiser of 'Tools for Learning', assisting local authorities to apply complexity concepts to learning apb@cityplex.demon.co.uk "complexity is in here... and simplicity is out there...if we want it to be..."
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>