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This month's question is from Jeff Blumberg from Johannesberg, South Africa
Dear Dr Maturana,
I'm not sure whether you are familiar with the work of Stuart Kauffman? In his book "At Home in the Universe" on page 274. he tends to brush aside the idea that autopoiesis is anything original. He mentions that the image dates back before you coined the term.
He refers to Kant, and then Goodwin, writing about the idea of an organism as an autpoetic (sic) whole.
I first read of your autopoiesis in Capra's book The Web of Life. Do I respect Kauffman's expose, or can I brush him aside.
Thank you.
Jeff Blumberg
Johannesberg, South Africa
ANSWER:
Dear Mr. Blumberg
Yes, I know the work of Start Kauffman that you mention. I think that he is very superficial in his assessment, and speaks without having seriously considered what he talks about. No doubt in many occassion have people spoken of living system as self sustaing totalities. But I do much more than just having the idea of living systems as autopoietic systems in the possible aristotelian or kantian sense. I do not know about Goodwin that seems to be his friend. What I do is to spell out the nature of the living system as a molecular autopoietic system when I indicate: that a living system is a molecular autopoietic system, and that as such it is a closed network of molecular productions in which, a) the molecules produced are of the same kinds of the molecules that produced them, b) recursively constitute with their interactions the same network of productions that produce them, and c) specify with their operation the extension of the network as a whole in the molecular space. At the same time I am explicit in claiming that as molecular systems living system are necessarily open to the flow of matter and energy, out as autopoietic systems they are closed in their dynamics of states. I am also explicit in claiming that as living systems are discrete entities, they exist as such only as long as their condition of autopoietic molecular singularities is conserved. I have also claimed that the history of living systems is the history of the reproductive conservation of molecular autopoietic systems in a continuous opennes for change in the manner that it is realized. I have also said that the origin of living systems occurs as a case of spontaneous organization. Notice that I speak of spontaneous organization, not of self organization as Mr Kauffman speaks. And I do so because the selfness of a system arises with the system, so a system cannot organize itself. Nor Aristoteles, nor Kant, and I think that none of Mr. Kauffman friends have done what I have done.
No doubt many people may have said similar things, or may have been close to point to them, but they are not said or pointed at until they are so.
No, I do not think that you should brush away what Mr. Kauffman says, but you should look into it to see the validity of what he says in the domain in which it has validity.
Yours sincerely, Humberto Maturana R.
January, 1998
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