autopoiesis

n. process by which an organism or organization produces itself by repeating the reproduction process and constantly recreating itself (such as cells or organisms)

Autopoiesis literally means "auto (self)-creation" (from the Greek: auto - αυτό for self- and poiesis - ποίησις for creation or production) and expresses a fundamental dialect between structure and function. The term was originally introduced by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela in 1973:"An autopoietic machine is a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network." (Maturana, Varela, 1980, p. 78)"[…] the space defined by an autopoietic system is self-contained and cannot be described by using dimensions that define another space. When we refer to our interactions with a concrete autopoietic system, however, we project this system on the space of our manipulations and make a description of this projection." (Maturana, Varela, 1980, p. 89)
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Maturana 's and Varela 's term, autopoiesis is  the system that makes living beings autonomous systems.

autopiesis