05 Book Review: J Mingers Self-Producing Systems

John Mingers. Self-Producing Systems: Implications and Applications of Autopoiesis.

New York: Plenum Press, 1995. xvii + 246 pp.

I. Introduction

A. Topic of the book

This is an introductory yet comprehensive text about a process called Autopoiesis – which means ‘a process whereby an organization produces itself’ . The book is meant to be an introduction to the large body of work in this field, usually referred to collectively as the ‘autopoietic theory’. This theory was developed by two Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco J. Varela, since the early 1960’s as a result of their work on visual perception and the organization of the living (Maturana and Varela, 1980).

Autopoiesis means ‘Self creation’ – a circular process in which components of a unity participate in processes of production, which in turn produce the components (pp.12). Maturana and Varela contend that all living systems are autopoietic – i.e. they have a circular, self-referencing and self-creating organization, and that autopoiesis explains their particular characteristics.

The above theory is posed as an alternative to the more conventional and mainstream theoretical constructs – like vitalism, systems theory and listing of characteristics – that try to answer the question: what distinguishes entities or systems that we would call living from other systems, apparently equally complex, which we would not? (pp. 9-10).

The key concepts of the autopoietic theory are:

(a) Structure and Organization: An existing, composite unity has both an organization and a structure, the main distinction being between a whole and its parts (pp. 14).

(b) Structure-determined system: A system is determined by its structure at that instance (pp.30).

(c) Autonomy of the unity: All autopoietic systems are autonomous – they essentially depend only on themselves for their continued production, and physically they define themselves through the production of their own boundaries (pp. 37).

(d) Structural coupling: Although the autopoietic systems are autonomous, they are not structurally closed i.e. they do interact with the environment. This is done through a process of structural coupling, in which the unity interacts with its environment that bring changes to its structure (pp. 34).

Although autopoiesis offers an interesting alternative to the other well-established and contemporary theories about what makes a living system living, and it is appealing to a variety of other academic disciplines apart from molecular biology, the following debates have kept autopoiesis from coming into mainstream science:

(a) Autopoiesis is not meant to be an explanatory proposition, and it does not explain the purpose, function or goal of a living system (Maturana and Varela, 1980). So the fact that autopoiesis is a process that can define a living system does not take the explanation of the living system any further.

(b) It is not definitively proven either way whether there can be non-physical autopoietic systems. Maturana is clear that there can be. He has famously said that his computer model is autopoietic (pp. 45, Maturana 1991a). But how about law, societies, organizations? This question is still open. Can social systems and organizations be characterized as autopoietic, and to what extent? Is it merely metaphorical?

(c) Autopoiesis leads to ‘radical constructivism’ developed by Maturana (pp. 90, Maturana 1990) which invokes an epistemic fallacy of confusing or collapsing the nature of knowing with the nature of being. Autopoiesis takes us dangerously close to the borderline of the ontological debate of the nature of reality and the famous Cartesian circle - Is there some stratum of reality, independent of human existence? Or are we inherently limited to the realities generated by our own language and activity?

Although the book under review does not approach these debates and limitations directly or take a stand on any of these, it explores the overall concept of autopoiesis (Part I, pp. 1-28), its epistemological and philosophical implications (Part II, pp. 29-116) and its application in various fields like social systems, law, family therapy and cognitive science (Part III, pp. 119-201).

B. The intended audience

The book is intended for two kinds of audience – (a) people who are interested in autopoiesis but have found Maturana’s and Varela’s work closed and difficult, and (b) people who know about autopoiesis in their own disciplines (like biology or neurophysiology), but are interested in finding out about other areas of application.


II. Coverage of the book

C. The author’s central position

One of the critiques on the book is that it does not have a central position as such. The author seems to be saying that there is a body of theory called autopoiesis and it can be applied to a few fields like social systems, law, family therapy etc.

One place where the author seems to be taking a stand is in the application of autopoiesis in social systems. The book spends a substantial part of the text on application of autopoiesis in social systems (Chapter 8, 119-152). It covers some of the applications contended by N. Luhmann (1986), Zeleny and Hufford (1992a), Maturana (1980b), and author’s own work Mingers (1992b).

Although the author acknowledges Luhmann’s (1995) interpretation of social autopoiesis, noting that Luhmann’s theory ‘specifies communication as the basic component’ (pp. 139-150), the author takes a deterministic, realistic standpoint to negate the validity of social autopoiesis by highlighting the impracticalities in doing so. However, the basic presumption behind this is, as mentioned by author is:

“Generally, people can choose to belong or not to belong to particular institutions, and will be members of many at any time. What is it that would constitute the boundaries of such [social] systems and, moreover, how can it be said that such institutions act as unities – is it not only individual people who act?” (pp. 150)

This rationale seems a bit flawed, as in the above argument, the author is inverting the role of observer and unity by specifying the unity as an actor rather than as an observable entity that is ‘distinct from a background’ (Maturana & Varela, 1980).

Secondly, in the same Chapter 8 ‘Autopoietic Organizations and Social Systems’ (pp.132-138), the author has attempted to compare Gidden’s Structuration Thoery (1976) and Maturana’s work on ‘Society as a medium for autopoiesis’ (1980b), which is an interesting comparison, since the author agrees that autopoiesis may provide an abstract basis for a sociological theory of communication .

D. Kinds of evidence used

The book draws mainly from the following publication: Maturana H., and F. Varela, 1980, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living, Reidel, Dordrecht.

The author also cites some of the early papers and key works like Maturana H., and F. Varela, 1987, The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding, Shambala Publications, Boston.

Some of the groundwork for this book comes from the author’s papers on the subject (Mingers 1989a, 1990, 1991), and partly from an earlier book meant as an introductory overview of autopoiesis: J. Mingers, An introduction to Autopoiesis - implications and applications, Systems Practice, vol. 2 (2), pp. 159-180, 1989.

However, it is noted that the book does not draw from some of the existing resources at the time of publication of the book. Significant exclusions are works by R. D. Beer (1993) and George Kampis (1994, 1995), except a reference to Kampis and Csanyi (pp. 145).

Also in the recent times, there has been a sizable amount of work published on this subject by scholars like P. L. Luisi (2003), K. D. Palmer (2004), Maula Marjatta (2006), Ronan Hallowell (2009), and Maturana’s recent publications on the subject (2010), where some of the debates that the book has expounded have been taken further ahead, and so any further study on the subject would necessitate reference to these contemporary publications.



III. Evaluation and Critique

A. Critical evaluation of the book

Although the book is well-organized in three parts – the concept, the implications and the applications, the books spends only 8 pages (pp. 9-17) out of 246 pages on the actual concept of autopoiesis. Considering that autopoiesis is not a commonly accepted or widely known theory in mainstream science, it is required by the reader to search elsewhere to get an accurate and complete understanding of autopoiesis.

Interestingly, however, the introduction expends two pages on the ‘Analysis of citations’ regarding autopoiesis (1.2, pp. 2-3), confirming the author’s online profile, which says that he ‘has an unhealthy interest in journal rankings and citations’ .

Also, there is a slight difference in the way the author explains one of the key concepts of the autopoietic theory – Organization vs Structure – and how Maturana explains it. According to the author, the difference between the two is that between a whole and its parts (pp. 14). However, according to Maturana (1980), a system conserves its class identity (Organization), and stays the same while its structure changes, only as long as its organization is conserved through those structural changes. If the organization changes, the system disintegrates and something different appears in its place. The structure of a system is open to change, and that is the difference between a structure and an organization.

In all, the book is written in a language that is simple to understand, and does not expect any pre-reading, except Chapter 4 ‘Mathematics and models for autopoiesis’ (pp. 49-63), which presupposes that the reader is familiar with the Calculus of Indications (CI) and Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form (1972).

The book does not seem to have a central position as mentioned earlier. The book introduces some of the debates around the theory of autopoiesis, but does not take a critical stance. Also, there is no explanation why the specific applications – social systems, law and family therapy – are chosen in the book and so the selection appears to be random in nature.

Many aspects of the autopoietic theory are rather high-level, abstract, and essentially descriptive. The theory was born as a description of processes occurring at the physical level of the biological cell, it can then be rather difficult to directly ‘apply’ the idea of the process of autopoiesis in other domains. The book is relatively silent on this matter.

Also, quite a few facets of autopoietic theory can be taken independently of the process of autopoiesis - which is in often a sufficient but not necessary condition for many interesting phenomena identified and characterized in the work of Maturana and Varela. E.g. Structural Coupling depends on the existence of a structurally determined plastic system operating within a dynamic linear environment, and does not require autopoiesis. But the book does not seem to cover these aspects of the field of theory.

Also, since the book does not cover the cognitive process that Maturana went through to come to the theory, and how the theory got developed over time, the text remains closed about how such scientific theories get developed and built, which would have been expected from a book about a theory that is not mainstream. Incidentally, recent interviews and papers by Maturana available elsewhere have made this a public knowledge.

Overall, the book is a useful reference as a comprehensive text on autopoiesis in English language, which lists down some of most widely used applications of the theory in different disciplines and the ongoing debates around these applications.

B. Learning from the exercise

The book is an interesting and introductory reading about the application of the theory of autopoiesis to various non-physical fields. It has given me a new way of looking at the systems apart from the conventional theories of open / closed systems, soft / hard systems. The author is Director of Research, Kent Business School, University of Kent and also works on ‘multi-methodology’. So I got to learn something about the process of publishing papers in top quality journals and about paper citations as an additional reading (Mingers, 2002). And finally, it has fueled my appetite to learn about Social autopoiesis in particular and Constructivism and Systems theory in general.


Book Review by:
Shreekant Vijaykar
22nd October 2010