Translators’ note: Parts of this Preface were translated and published in the special issue of Systems Research dedicated to Heinz von Foerster, under the title “The early days of autopoiesis: Heinz and Chile” (Systems Research, Vol. 13 N. 3 pp 407–416). The present text is the first full translation of the Preface that Varela wrote in Paris 1994. This translation is the result of a collaboration between Alberto Paucar-Caceres, Roger Harnden and Karina Cornejo. In his preface, Varela gives a fascinating account of the origins of the notion of autopoiesis, from his personal point of view, the main actors involved and the its historical context in Chile.

Key words: Autopoiesis, cognition, epistemology, Chile

Historically, immunology emerged as a biomedical science, concerned with host defense and production of anti-infectious vaccines. In the late 50s, selective theories were proposed and from then on, immunology has been based in a close association with the neo-Darwinian principles, such as random generation of variants (lymphocyte clones), selection by extrinsic factors (antigens) – and, more generally, on genetic determinism and functionalism. This association has had major consequences: (1) immunological jargon is full of “cognitive” metaphors, founded in the idea of “foreignness”; (2) the immune system is described with a random clonal origin, coupled to selection by random encounters; and (3) physiological events are virtually absent from immunological descriptions. In the present manuscript, we apply systemic notions to bring forth an explanation including systemic mechanisms able to generate immunological phenomena. We replace “randomness plus selection” and the notion of foreignness by a history of structural changes which are determined by the coherences of the system internal architecture at any given moment. The importance of this systemic way of seeing is that it explicitly attends to the organization that defines the immune system, within which it is possible to describe the conservative physiology of the immune system. Understanding immune physiology in a systemic way of seeing also suggests mechanisms underlying the origin of immunopathogeny and therefore suggests new insights to therapeutic approaches. However, if seriously acknowledged, this systemic/historic approach to immunology goes along with a global conceptual change which modifies virtually everything in the domain of biology, as suggested by Maturana.

Key words: immune system, organization, structural determinism, autopoiesis, maturana.

Autopoiesis is a very powerful way of looking at and dealing with autonomous systems. It also has some major implications for the philosophy of science. Unfortunately, it is not clear in what philosophical context one should go about using autopoiesis. In this paper, we look at these issues, touching upon the inadequacies of conventional (positivistic) ontologies and philosophies of science, and we briefly describe an alternative relativistic ontology. We argue that self-organization is a necessary condition for autonomous systems and we highlight the difficulties that this raises for conventional representational approaches to autonomous systems. We discuss a methodology for discourse in relativistic ontology (Systematics) and, based on this, we argue in favour of a spectrum of autonomy. In a sister as a particular instance of autonomy in this spectrum. We proceed to describe the progress which has been made towards the development of a computational simulation of autopoietic organization, beginning with a formulation in terms of the calculus of indications (incorporating Varela’s extensions to include autonomous forms), and incorporating the Systematic formulation.

In a sister paper, we have looked at the philosophical aspects of the development of autonomous systems, touching upon the inadequacies of conventional (positivistic) ontologies and philosophies of science, and we have described an alternative relativistic ontology. We argued that self-organization is a necessary condition for autonomous systems and we highlighted the difficulties that this raises for conventional representational approaches to autonomous systems. We discussed a methodology for discourse in relativistic ontology (Systematics) and, based on this, we argued in favour of a spectrum of autonomy. In this paper, we try to show how autopoiesis can be interpreted as a particular instance of autonomy in this spectrum. We now proceed to describe the progress which has been made towards the development of a computational simulation of autopoietic organization, beginning with a formulation in terms of the Calculus of Indications (incorporating Varela’s extensions to include autonomous forms), and incorporating the Systematic formulation.

In the target article, it was claimed that the enactive extended interpretation of the autopoietic theory (AT) of living beings is incorrect, and an embodied reformulation of AT (EAT) was put forward to remedy and prevent such an interpretation. In this general reply, I want to clarify the motivation, reach, philosophical commitments, and theoretical status of EAT. I do this, mainly, by explicating the notions of body and autopoiesis, and by reconstructing EAT, not as a conceptual definition of life but as a theoretical identity statement of living beings as a natural kind.

Key words: embodied autopoietic theory, extended enactivism, autopoiesis, body

This paper examines a fundamental philosophical difference between two radical postcognitivist theories that are usually assumed to offer (more or less) the same view of cognition; namely the autopoietic theory (AT) and the enactive approach. The ways these two theories understand cognition, it is argued, are not compatible nor incompatible but rather incommensurable. The reason, so it is argued, is that while enactivism, following the traditional stance held by most of the cognitive theories, understands cognitive systems as constituting a (sort of) natural kind, the autopoietic theory understands them as constituting only a conventional kind. Additionally, the paper shows that AT’s conventionalist stance about cognition, far from being an undesirable or useless position, offers some methodological virtues that might be timely and welcome in the agitated and revolutionary climate of current cognitive science.

Key words: autopoietic theory, enactivism, the mark of the cognitive, conventional kind, pluralism, strict naturalism.

1Building on the original formulation of the autopoietic theory (AT), extended enactivism argues that living beings are autopoietic systems that extend beyond the spatial boundaries of the organism. In this article, we argue that extended enactivism, despite having some basis in AT’s original formulation, mistakes AT’s definition of living beings as autopoietic entities. We offer, as a reply to this interpretation, a more embodied reformulation of autopoiesis, which we think is necessary to counterbalance the (excessively) disembodied spirit of AT’s original formulation. The article aims to clarify and correct what we take to be a misinterpretation of AT as a research program. AT, contrary to what some enactivists seem to believe, did not (and does not) intend to motivate an extended conception of living beings. AT’s primary purpose, we argue, was (and is) to provide a universal individuation criterion for living beings, these understood as discrete bodies that are embedded in, but not constituted by, the environment that surrounds them. However, by giving a more explicitly embodied definition of living beings, AT can rectify and accommodate, so we argue, the enactive extended interpretation of autopoiesis, showing that although living beings do not extend beyond their boundaries as autopoietic unities, they do form part, in normal conditions, of broader autopoietic systems that include the environment.

Key words: autopoiesis, extended autopoietic systems, enactivism, body, multiple realizability.

The theory of autopoiesis holds that an organism can be defined as a network of processes. However, an organism also has a physical body. The relationship between these two things – network and body – has been raised in this issue of Adaptive Behaviour, with reference to an extended interpretation of autopoiesis. This perspective holds that the network and the body are distinct things, and that the network should be thought of as extending beyond the boundaries of the body. The relationship between body and network is subtle, and I revisit it here from the extended perspective. I conclude that from an organism = network perspective, the body is a biological solution to the problem of maintaining both the distinctness of an organism, separate from but engaged with its environment and other organisms, and its distinctiveness as a particular individual.

Key words: autopoiesis, embodiment, extended autopoiesis, origins of life, organism = network

Abstract: We argue that the significance of the spatial boundary in autopoiesis has been overstated. It has the important task of distinguishing a living system as a unity in space but should not be seen as playing the additional role of delimiting the processes that make up the autopoietic system. We demonstrate the relevance of this to a current debate about the compatibility of the extended mind hypothesis with the enactive approach and show that a radically extended interpretation of autopoiesis was intended in one of the original works on the subject. Additionally we argue that the definitions of basic terms in the autopoietic literature can and should be made more precise, and we make some progress towards such a goal.

Key words: Operational limit, operational closure, physical boundary, relational domain, spatial boundary

Excerpt: Nach wie vor ist der Gesundheitsbegriff nicht abschließend zu definieren. Umso mehr dient er als Worthülse für eine Vielzahl mehr oder weniger differenzierter Vorstellungen. Ausgehend davon, dass die Auseinandersetzung mit Gesundheit immer auch (1) eine Wertsetzung bedeutet, (2) zu beschreiben versucht, was Gesundheit ist, und (3) häufig implizit Empfehlungen darüber enthält, wie sich Gesundheit vom Einzelnen realisieren lässt, beschränke ich mich auf die Diskussion von evaluativen, deskriptiven und präskriptiven Aussagen über Gesundheit (vgl. hierzu auch Göckenjan, 1991). Der vorliegende Beitrag befasst sich auf der Grundlage einer radikalkonstruktivistischen Position, wie sie von Maturana und Varela (1992) vertreten wird, mit dem Krankheits- und Gesundheitsbegriff. Diese Position hat hier deshalb Verwendung gefunden, weil sie auf die Vorwegnahme einer wie auch immer gearteten “Objektivität” verzichtet und damit Krankheit respektive Gesundheit im Grundsatz zu diskutieren erlaubt. Zum besseren Verständnis des vorliegenden Beitrags werden im folgenden Abschnitt die wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen des Konzepts der Autopoiese nach Maturana und Varela knapp erläutert.