Autopoiesis

The neurobiologists Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela introduced the term autopoiesis in the 1970s in order to describe how living systems (e.g., human, plant, cell, or microbe) produce and reproduce themselves. Combining the idea of autonomy and production, autopoiesis means in short the continual self‐production of living systems. The components of an autopoietic system reproduce themselves and the relations between them by these components and relations (Maturana et al. 1974; Maturana & Varela 1987). It is therefore operationally closed: the system determines the rules of reproduction relatively independently of its specific environment.