Autopoiesis for Beginners

Autopoiesis means self-creation, but why is that concept so interesting?

It was coined by the Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana around 1970. It was picked up by familiy therapists, social constructivists, organizational psychologists and, famously, the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann.

But what does it mean? I have come across countless incomprehensible explanations. In what follows I’ll share my understanding, developed when I was associating with some of Maturana’s and his pal Heinz von Foerster’s groupies in California in the early 1980’s. Forgive me if my terms are a little rusty, I haven’t been keeping up.

Did Luhmann Write over Maturana's Dead Body?

I read an interesting factoid in the Wikipedia the other day: that ”Maturana has explicitly refused to be cited by Luhmann as a supporting theorist” (in the entry on Niklas Luhmann). This is remarkable, to put it mildly, in light of the fact that Luhmann’s entire mature oeuvre, twenty years of work and almost as many books, is built on Maturana’s concept of autopoiesis.