Excerpt: In this chapter we argue that a theoretical position derived from a combination of autopoietic theory and complexity theory provides a means for addressing two fundamental problems with the knowledge management (KM) concept. These problems are a lack of consistent epistemology – inadequate theorization about the nature of knowledge and a tendency to identify knowledge as residing primarily at the level of individuals. It represents an opportunity to move away from the reified view of knowledge that dominates most discussions of KM to one of knowledge which is deeply situated and contextualized. We argue that organizations are complex systems of a particular class; they comprise human (biological, reflexive) agents. This has important implications for the range and type of behaviors we can expect from organizations, but it also has implications for how we theorize about them.

George Kelly’s theory of personal construct psychology is introduced in the context of comparisons with the radical constructivism theory of Ernst von Glasersfeld and the autopoietic theory of Humberto Maturana. Personal construct theory, although written in the decade up to 1955, anticipates in detail many of the epistemological and praxis issues currently concerning practitioners of psychotherapy. Following the comparative introduction, the formal aspects of Kelly’s theory, namely, the Fundamental Postulate and elaborative Corollaries, are explicated within the framework provided by Maturana’s theory. In this the chapter focusses upon the themes of change and stability within self-organizing systems. Finally, specific comments are addressed to the implementation of these theoretical prescriptions in the therapeutic relationship.

Recently, some authors have begun to raise questions about the potential unity of 4E (enactive, embedded, embodied, extended) cognition as a distinct research programme within cognitive science. Two tensions, in particular, have been raised: (i) that the body-centric claims embodied cognition militate against the distributed tendencies of extended cognition and (ii) that the body/environment distinction emphasized by enactivism stands in tension with the world-spanning claims of extended cognition. The goal of this paper is to resolve tensions (i) and (ii). The proposal is that a form of ‘wide computationalism’ can be used to reconcile the two tensions and, in so doing, articulate a common theoretical core for 4E cognition.

Key words: 4e cognition, wide computationalism, bodycentrism, extended functionalism, autopoietic theory.

Use of systems-theoretical concepts is prevalent in 20th century European philosophy, cognitive science, and autopoietic and sociological systems theory. Each of these diverse fields of study can be placed in still closer proximity since each assigns a form of operational closure to systems. Operational closure refers to the capacity of a system to distinguish itself from its environment in order to build up internal complexity through mechanisms of circular causation or recursive feedback. Originally articulated within the autopoietic theory of Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela as a function of autopoietic systems, the concept of operational closure has deeper philosophical roots. Yet it has not been the subject of any intellectual history. This paper provides that history by locating the origin of the concept in Kantian and German idealist philosophy, particularly in the ontology of G.W.F. Hegel, and tracing it to constructivist epistemologies in the 20th century. After establishing the conceptual debt the 20th century systems fields owe to Hegelian ontology, this paper examines the common philosophical problems the concept of operational closure is used to solve in contemporary philosophical accounts of systems and states the epistemological significance of the concept within these fields. Relevance: Links autopoietic theory – and particularly the concept of operational closure – of Maturana and Varela in particular, with some brief mention of Luhmann, to philosophical roots in G.W.F. Hegel and also examines how this concept has been taken up in recent European philosophy.

In 1973, in the middle of rather unfortunate political events, two Chilean biologists, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, introduced the concept of Autopoietic systems (“auto”= self and ”poiesis” = generating or producing) as a theoretical construct on the nature of living systems centering on two main notions: the circular organization of metabolism and a redefinition of the systemic concepts of structure and organization. This theoretical contruct has found an important place in theoretical biology, but it can also be used as a foundation for a new type of authentically “soft” computing. To understand the main point of our exposition, how Autopoietic systems can be used to compute, it is first necessary to give a brief summary of Autopoietic theory along with the notion of structural coupling.

Maturana advanced the first systematic explanation of cognition based solely on biological principles since Aristotle. This was a risky strategy to adopt, given the intellectual currents of his time. Had it been more influential, the autopoietic theory of cognition might well have brought us much sooner to the trends currently at the forefront of the cognitive sciences, including dynamical systems, embodied and situated cognition, the emphasis on action and interaction, and other biologically based challenges to the computational paradigm, which Maturana opposed. I argue that the autopoietic theory of cognition was premature for several reasons. While it could be said that developments in the cognitive sciences have overtaken it, I believe Maturana’s theory, which he developed with Varela and others, still has much to offer contemporary theorists, despite its limitations.

Key words: Cognition, agency, anthropogenic approach, autopoiesis, biogenic approach, computationalism, prematurity in, scientific discoveryembodied cognition

The concept of autopoiesis was introduced by Matura and Varela in the middle of the seventies. It consists in a minimal definition of life based on the observation of living cells. Any closed structure able to synthesize within its boundary all its constituents and to self-maintain by substituting the old substances with the new ones is considered a living system according to the autopoietic theory. In this framework, Luisi and his co-workers, from the early 1990s onwards, began to implement chemical systems that exhibit autopoietic behaviors. They focused their attention mainly on solutions of amphiphiles that spontaneously self-assemble in the aqueous environment. Many different amphiphilic systems have been realized over the years starting from caprylic acid inverse micelles (Bachmann et al. 1990), aqueous caprylate micelles (Bachmann et al. 1992), oleate vesicles (Walde et al. 1994a) vesicles of chiral methyl-dodecanoic acid (Morigaki et al. 1997), and oleate giant vesicles (Wiek et al. 1995). In all these systems spontaneous self-assembly processes take place along with the amphiphile production that is catalyzed by the aggregates themselves producing highly coupled reactions schemes that exhibit non linear kinetic behaviors. The aim of the present dissertation is to elaborated kinetic models to elucidate the mechanism of the processes and the experimentally observed data. Two different approaches has been used: the classical deterministic approach and the Gillespie’s Monte Carlo method. In the deterministic approach, the basic hydrolysis of the water insoluble organic compound, which produces the surfactant molecules, has been assumed to be the rate- determining step and it has been treated as a surface reaction that can occur both at the macroscopic interface and on the aggregate boundary. All the other processes will be assumed to rapidly reach equilibrium, being not perturbed by the surfactant formation. As a consequence, the kinetic differential equation set could be largely reduced to few variables directly related to the available experimental data. It has been possible to rationalize the experimentally observed autocatalytic effect in spite of the well known inhibition due to the electrostatic repulsion between the negatively charged aggregates and the hydroxide ions. In fact, during the process’s slow stage the hydrolysis can occur only at the macroscopic interface, whereas when the aggregates are formed they quickly solubilize the hydrophobic compound and the reactive surface can grow enormously. The limit of this approach is, of coarse, that it can not be applied to systems where the surfactant production rate is comparable with the self-assembly rate. To overcome this restriction a program based on the Monte Carlo algorithm introduced by Gillespie (GiIlespie 1976 and 1977) has been developed. The original procedure consists in an exact simulation of the stochastic master equation for a generic homogeneous well stirred chemically reacting system. This procedure has been optimized and tested successfully by simulating irreversible self-assembly processes for which analytical solutions for specific association constant definitions are available in literature. Therefore, the kinetics of the micellization process has been studied by simulating surfactant solution jump experiments and following the relaxation of the total ennamer concentration towards the new equilibrium state. A decay with two distinct processes has been found by the simulations in agreement to experimental observations. The trend of the simulated time decays against the reduced surfactant concentrations was found in agreement with the Aniansson and Kahlweit theories. Since the program was able to reproduce the dynamic behavior of a micelle solution it was used to simulate an autopoietic micellar system by using a mechanism that was slightly different but kinetically equivalent to those used in the deterministic model. In this case, the main features of the process were also well reproduced by the simulations. The autocatalytic effect was elucidated with the huge increase of the ester concentration in water, due to the micelle solubilization that could also overcome the supposed inhibition effect. In addition, this approach made it possible to confirm the validity of the pseudo-equilibrium assumption of the deterministic model, showing that only the micelle formation is slightly perturbed during the catalytic stage. Finally, the Monte Carlo program was used to investigate two irreversible mechanisms that in particular conditions shows the emergence of irreversible autopoietic units both in a continuous growth or in a homeostatic regime sustained by molecular flows from the outside.

Villalobos and Razeto-Barry’s embodied reformulation of the autopoietic theory (AT) replaces AT’s reference to autopoietic ‘systems’ with a reference to autopoietic ‘bodies’ so as to prevent an extended enactivist reading of AT. I argue that the specific notions of ‘body’ and ‘embodiment’ invoked by Villalobos and Razeto-Barry appear to be in tension with AT and are problematic as such.

Key words: autopoiesis, enactivism, embodiment, extended mind, life

Autopoietic theory is increasingly seen as a candidate for a radical theory of law, both in relation to its theoretical credentials and its relevance in terms of new and emerging forms of law. An aspect of the theory that has remained less developed, however, is its material side, and more concretely the theory’s accommodation of bodies, space, objects and their claim to legal agency. The present article reads Luhmann’s theory of autopoietic systems in a radical and material manner, linking it on the one hand to current post-structural theorisations of law and society, and on the other hand extending its ambit to accommodate the influx of material considerations that have been working their way through various other disciplines. The latter comprises both a materialisation of the theory itself and ways of conceptualising the legal system as material through and through. This I do by further developing what I have called Critical Autopoiesis, namely an acentric, topological, post-ecological and posthuman understanding of Luhmann’s theory, that draws on Deleuzian thought, feminist theory, geography, non-representational theory, and new material and object-oriented ontologies. These are combined with some well-rehearsed autopoietic concepts, such as distinction, environment and boundaries; Luhmann’s earlier work on materiality continuum; more recent work on bodies and space; as well as his work on form and medium in relation to art. The article concludes with five suggestions for an understanding of what critical autopoietic materiality might mean for law.

Key words: materiality, autopoiesis, luhmann, critical autopoiesis, systems theory, matter, deleuze, law and materiality.

In the search for the primary roots of autonomy (a pivotal concept in Varela’s comprehensive understanding of living beings), the theory of autopoiesis provided an explicit criterion to define minimal life in universal terms, and was taken as a guideline in the research program for the artificial synthesis of biological systems. Acknowledging the invaluable contribution of the autopoietic school to present biological thinking, we offer an alternative way of conceiving the most basic forms of autonomy. We give a bottom-up account of the origins of “self-production” (or self-construction, as we propose to call it), pointing out which are the minimal material and energetic requirements for the constitution of basic autonomous systems. This account is, indeed, committed to the project of developing a general theory of biology, but well grounded in the universal laws of physics and chemistry. We consider that the autopoietic theory was formulated in highly abstract terms and, in order to advance in the implementation of minimal autonomous systems (and, at the same time, make major progress in exploring the origins of life), a more specific characterization of minimal autonomous systems is required. Such a characterization will not be drawn from a review of the autopoietic criteria and terminology (à la Fleischaker) but demands a whole reformulation of the question: a proper naturalization of the concept of autonomy. Finally, we also discuss why basic autonomy, according to our account, is necessary but not sufficient for life, in contrast with Varela’s idea that autopoiesis was a necessary and sufficient condition for it.