Autopoiesis

How do living organisms maintain the conditions that ensure their continuing survival?
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.’
Loosely speaking, the theory says that the only way a living system dies is when it fails to reconcile its interior and exterior identities.
This implies that an organisation's interior and exterior worlds are distinct.
Of course, this is a limit case, as inside and outside interconnect via a semi-permeable boundary.

Maturana & Varela described ‘autopoiesis' as a state of internal unity that is maintained by processes that include self-realization.
This derives from 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)

This schematic diagram is simple enough to allow the comparison of very different entities.

how Bert sees how others
himself see Bert

Maturana and Varela’s theory puts great store by the way that organisms manage the relationships between their interior-identity and their perceived identity within a given context.
Here, the idea of ‘self-identity’ is important at an existential level, irrespective of species, location or status.

how Bert saw how the lion
himself saw Bert

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 also useful for medical practitioners and designer/managers of brand identities.
It claims that survival always depends on self-adaptation to new conditions and/or changing one's identity.
Humans are social animals and suffer, or even die, when isolated by exclusion (see apoptosis)
Whether the ‘living system’ is a small biological organism or a large corporation is immaterial.
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.
Habits of language and culture will affect how people interpret the term ‘identity’.