---
slug: paper-maturana-h-r-and-varela-f-j-1972-1980-autopoiesis-and-cognition-the-realization
title: Maturana and Varela: Autopoiesis and Cognition
canonical: https://miscsubjects.com/a/paper-maturana-h-r-and-varela-f-j-1972-1980-autopoiesis-and-cognition-the-realization
---

## What the authors observed

Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela examined living systems as autonomous unities. They observed that cells and organisms maintain their identity through continuous self-production. The core result defines living systems as autopoietic: networks that produce their own components and boundaries.

The 1972 Chilean edition appeared as De Máquinas y Seres Vivos. The 1980 English edition, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living, published by D. Reidel, expands the argument. An autopoietic machine is a network of processes that produces the components that through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes that produced them.

## Exact passages and definitions

The book states the definition in the section on autopoiesis. An autopoietic system is a network of component-producing processes with the property that the interactions between the components generate the very same network of processes that produce them, as well as constituting it as a distinct entity in the space in which it exists.

Operational closure follows: the system’s operations refer only to the system itself. Structural coupling describes recurrent interactions with the medium that trigger structural changes without loss of autopoiesis.

Cognition receives definition as the effective action of an autopoietic unity in its domain of existence. The observer appears inside the description: every account of a living system occurs from within another autopoietic domain.

## Convergence with OIP and GRAIN patterns

Autopoiesis supplies the mechanism that turns dissipative physical flows into bounded living structure. The Ladder receives direct support at the life and mind steps. Self-production links energy dissipation to operational closure. Plasticity through structural coupling supplies memory. Effective action supplies the transition from structure to cognition.

Convergence patterns appear in operational closure, boundary formation, and recursive self-reference. These match scale-invariant organization and bounded chaos in living networks. The Mirror Layer receives explicit treatment: the reader of the system stands inside the system.

See /a/oip-the-ladder for the full sequence and /a/oip-the-mirror-layer for the observer position.

## Distance from the full synthesis

The work reaches autonomy and cognition from physical self-organization. It stops short of explicit treatment of branching, spirals, or waves as primary patterns. It remains within biological and cognitive domains. Physical grain descriptions stay implicit in the dissipative background of closure.

## Honest limits and disconfirming edges

The theory remains abstract and formal. It offers no quantitative predictions or laboratory measurements of autopoietic rates. Reductionist objections note that emergence claims rest on organizational description rather than component-level mechanisms. Some readers identify circularity in the self-referential definition. The text acknowledges the observer-dependence of all descriptions without resolving every epistemic gap.

No empirical disconfirmation appears in the primary text. Later extensions by other authors test the framework in artificial life and systems biology.

## Claims in atomic form

The body above states each material assertion once. Further atomic claims appear below for addressability.

## Sources and verification

Primary source remains the 1980 edition. Secondary accounts confirm the quoted definition and the placement of cognition inside autopoietic operation.
