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while the precise qualities of information transfer may not be directed, the fact that there is information flow between an organism and its environment - in the context of the current discussion, between Phi and Psi - necessarily implies that a second-order unity - a meta-system - is created. It is my assertion - and the thesis of this lecture - that this autopoiesis creates what we call “reality”, that any presentation of information engages us in a feedback loop between information presenter and informed presentee until both form enter a stable meta-state. In other words, what we perceive becomes, or rather, converges, on what is real, and both what is perceived and what is real undergo epistemological transformation during the process of what I would call generative epistemology.

Knowing this, how can we hope to locate “objective” knowledge? We can't even locate a frame of reference, or identify an inside and an outside. There are boundaries between sets of information, and presence of the boundary immediately engenders a higher-order unityto which it is entirely subject.

“To forget - even for a moment - that your truths are anything more than a reflection of your beliefs will close off any chance to open the gaps, to perceive the world as it really is: Infinite ”

– Mark Pesce http://www.hyperreal.org/~mpesce/viz97.html


“In describing autopoietic unity as having a particular structure, it will become clear to us that the interactions (as long as they are recurrent) between unity and environment will consist of reciprocal perturbations. In these interactions, the structure of the environment only triggers structural changes in the autopoietic unities (it does not specify or direct them), and vice versa for the environment. The result will be a history of mutual congruent structural changes as long as autopoietic unity and its containing environments do not disintegrate: there will be a structural coupling.”

– Maturana and Varela (The Tree of Knowledge)


AutoPoiesis > Revision r1.3 - 06 Aug 2003 - 15:04 GMT


  • autopoiesis.txt
  • Last modified: 2007-06-07 16:02
  • by nik