The term autopoiesis refers to a system capable of producing and maintaining itself by creating its own parts.
The term was introduced in the 1972 publication Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela to define the self-maintaining chemistry of living cells.
3D representation of a living cell during the process of mitosis, example of an autopoietic system
Humberto Maturana Romesín was a Chilean biologist and philosopher. Many consider him a member of a group of second-order cybernetics theoreticians such as Heinz von Foerster, Gordon Pask, Herbert Brün and Ernst von Glasersfeld, but in fact he was a biologist, scientist.
Maturana in 2015
Maturana, 2012
A drawing in zero time