CONCEPT
Autopoiesis
The self-making characteristic of living systems — a network of processes that produces the very components that constitute the network — the boundary Margulis used to distinguish the conscious from the computational.
Autopoiesis, a concept developed by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela in the early 1970s, defines life as a self-producing, self-maintaining network of processes. An autopoietic system continuously regenerates the components that constitute it: the cell membrane is produced by the metabolic processes occurring within the membrane, and those processes depend on the membrane's selective permeability. The system is organizationally closed — its structure is determined by its own operations — yet materially open, exchanging matter and energy with its environment. Margulis adopted autopoiesis as the defining criterion of life and, in her late work, of consciousness. In a 2011 interview, she argued that 'to sense chemicals — food or poisons — it takes a cell,' and cells sense because they are autopoietic: bounded, self-maintaining entities whose responsiveness serves their continued existence. AI systems, however sophisticated, are not autopoietic. They do not maintain themselves. They have no boundary of their own making. This distinction grounds the human's irreplaceable contribution to the symbiosis.
