Evan Thompson (2014) provides an outstanding and detailed description of autopoietic life. We’ll discuss the details in a future article, but essentially an autopoietic organism can produce and sustain itself, through exchanging materials with the external environment. Human beings are autopoietic. For example, we seek out external food sources, process them, and use them to sustain our lives. We form relationships with others so we can maximize our exchange with the environment by sharing perspectives, improving plans, and pooling our resources.
All forms of autopoietic life have three features which help maximize the exchange with the environment and improve chances of survival-
- Cognitive- autopoietic organisms situate themselves within their environment to optimal effect
- Adaptive- autopoietic organisms can avoid harm and move towards benefit
- Sensemaking- autopoietic organisms can give meaning to objects around them, such as good/ bad (Based on Thompson, 2014)
A bacterium is an autopoietic organism. The bacteria situates itself within an environment, detects favorable conditions, for example, such as the presence of sucrose, avoids unfavorable conditions such as higher temperatures, and makes sense of the environment such as plus sucrose, minus sucrose. A bacterium does not have the complexity of existence which a human being has, however, it’s focus on optimizing its existence through the three categories is fascinating and potentially revealing.
We could usefully reflect on our own circumstances through these categories to detect if we are using our natural autopoietic drives to maximize our own existence –
- Cognitive- have we situated ourselves within an environment which provides more benefit than harm?
- Adaptive- can we detect unfavorable situations and are we able to move away from them effectively? Can we detect benefit and effectively move towards it?
- Sense making- what do we consider relevant in our environment? What do we focus on and ignore?
If we answer these questions, we can deepen our understanding of our own situations and how effectively our autopoietic drives are working for our survival and ultimately our thriving. With multiple distractions, and variables to juggle it is sometimes worth taking a step back and looking at life at our most simple, autopoietic level.
Reading
Thompson, E (2014) Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Harvard University Press.
