Varela F. J. (1981) Autonomy and autopoiesis. In: Roth G. & Schwegler H. (eds.) Self-organizing systems: An interdisciplinary approach. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt/New York: 14–24. https://cepa.info/2063
Excerpt: I hope to do the following: first, offer a characterization of what an autonomous system is, or rather what mechanisms endow a system with a degree of autonomy; second, to apply this characterization to three cases of relevance; third, to offer some remarks on the issue of formalizations of these ideas; forth, and finally, I shall conclude with some comment about the relation between autonomy and cognitive phenomena.
German: Schmidt S. J. (ed.) Der Diskurs des Radikalen Konstruktivismus. Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft, Frankfurt: 119–133, 1986.