Autopoiesis

If living systems are machines, that they are physical autopoietic machines is trivially obvious: they transform matter into themselves in a manner such that the product of their operation is their own organization. However we deem the converse is also true: a physical system if autopoietic, is living. In other words, we claim that the notion of autopoiesis is necessary and sufficient to characterize the organization of living systems.

Having clarified that their concern is with organization, not structure, the authors then proceed to define autopoiesis, the organization common to all living systems. It is a network of production processes, in which the function of each component is to participate in the production or transformation of other components in the network. In this way the entire network continually “makes itself.”

Being smart means being dynamic and nomadic, and against centralized bureaucracy; believing in dialogue and cooperation as against central authority; in flexibility as against routine; culture and knowledge as against industrial production; in spontaneous interaction and autopoiesis as against fixed hierarchy.

The German word for unfolding–entfaltung—also means development, and the process of emergent creation, or autopoiesis, was also the process by which Hegel's absolute spirit was not only working in the world but creating itself at the same time.