Autopoiesis

"Autopoiesis" (from Greek αὐτo- (auto-), meaning "self", and ποίησις (poiesis), meaning "creation, production") refers to a system capable of reproducing and maintaining itself - wikipedia

The term was introduced in 1972 by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela to define the self-maintaining chemistry of living cells.

The concept of autopoiesis has been applied to the following fields:

An Autopoietic System is to be contrasted with an Allopoietic System, such as a car factory, which uses raw materials (components) to generate a car (an organized structure) which is something other than itself (the factory).

However, if the system is extended from the factory to include components in the factory's 'environment', such as supply chains, plant / equipment, workers, dealerships, customers, contracts, competitors, cars, spare parts, and so on, then as a total viable system it could be considered to be autopoietic.

Though others have often used the term as a synonym for Self-organization, Maturana himself stated he would "[n]ever use the notion of self-organization [...]. Operationally it is impossible. That is, if the organization of a thing changes, the thing changes".

Moreover, an autopoietic system is autonomous and operationally closed, in the sense that there are sufficient processes within it to maintain the whole.

Autopoietic systems are "structurally coupled" with their medium, embedded in a dynamic of changes that can be recalled as sensory-motor coupling. This continuous dynamic is considered as a rudimentary form of knowledge or cognition and can be observed throughout life-forms.