Publication 2475

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.