Word.ws English Dictionary

autopoiesis

/ˌɔːtəʊpɔɪˈiːsɪs/

autopoiesis noun: self-creation; self-organization.

Noun

autopoiesis (uncountable)

  1. Self-creation; self-organization.
    • 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...1980 [1972], Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela, “On Machines, Living and Otherwise”, in Autopoiesis and Cognition, D. Reidel, page 82
    • 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...1996, Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems, Doubleday, →ISBN, page 98

Examples of autopoiesis in a sentence

  • In other words, we claim that the notion of autopoiesis is necessary and sufficient to characterize the organization of living systems.1980 [1972], Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela, “On Machines, Living and Otherwise”, in Autopoiesis and Cognition, D. Reidel, page 82:
  • Having clarified that their concern is with organization, not structure, the authors then proceed to define autopoiesis, the organization common to all living systems.1996, Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems, Doubleday, →ISBN, page 98:

Origin of autopoiesis

Coined in 1972 by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, from auto- + -poiesis. (see also Ancient Greek αὐτόποιος (autópoios, “self-produced”)).

Questions about autopoiesis

What does autopoiesis mean?
Autopoiesis means self-creation; self-organization.
How do you use autopoiesis in a sentence?
In other words, we claim that the notion of autopoiesis is necessary and sufficient to characterize the organization of living systems.
What part of speech is autopoiesis?
Autopoiesis is a noun.
How do you pronounce autopoiesis?
Autopoiesis is pronounced /ˌɔːtəʊpɔɪˈiːsɪs/.

Words near autopoiesis in the dictionary

  1. autopodal
  2. autopodia
  3. autopodial
  4. autopodium
  5. autopods
  6. autopoiesis
  7. autopoietic
  8. Autopoint
  9. Autopoints
  10. autopoisoning
  11. autopoisonings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: autopoiesis (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-autopoiesis.wav.

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