The Development of Autopoiesis

Abstract

What is the nature of life? What distinguishes living systems from those that appear equally complex but we do not call living? What is the basic unit of biology—is it the species, or the gene, or the individual? What is the nature of cognition? Is it pure abstract thought, or is it intimately connected to our bodily structures? Are our cognitions, our descriptions of the world, reflections of an independent reality or constructions of ourselves, the observer? Is there an independent reality at all, and if there is can we interact with it? What is the nature of social reality? Are we unwitting participants in supraindividual systems that are autonomous and beyond our control? How can we deal with self-reference and the contradictions it appears to create?

Physis also, the arising of something from out of itself, is a bringing-forth, poiesis. Physis is indeed poiesis in the highest sense. For what presences by means of physis has the bursting open belonging to bringing-forth, e.g., the bursting open of a blossom into bloom, in itself (en heautoi). In contrast, what is brought forth by the artisan or the artist, e.g., the silver chalice, has the bursting open belonging to bringing-forth, not in itself, but in another (en alloi), in the craftsman or artist.

Heidegger (1977, p. 293, my emphases). Published originally in German in 1954.