FIVE Autopoiesis The Organization of the Living IN LIFE EVERY BEGINNING IS UNIQUE, but none is isolated and sel contained. We start out as single cells, formed from the union of wo (cells, an eq andl a sperm. Our parent cells, 00, are offspring, produced in the bodies of our mothers and fathers, who owe their ort gins to still earlier couplings of egg and sperm, Every beginning has a eginning before it and another one before that, leading back rough the receding biological past co its time and place of origin, the beginning ofife on Earth, Around out billion years stand Between our time an acon of fife’ emergence. A number of that ma uman mind to comprehend Its vastness seems to diminish the force of pointing to our common living things on Earth Closer to home are the one hundred billion nerve cells oF neurons that make up the human brain. All are the progeny of a small fold of | cells that emerged when we were embryos of about four weeks. Inside ‘each one of them, i its protein and DNA, we can finda family resen blance to the genes and enzymes ofall the other living cells We harbor the past everywhere within our bores. To the cells inside us the chemical composition of the somatic environment plays a role reminiscent of th Three billion years ago bacteria swam in the warm shallows of the Earth's primeval seas. Among their descenclants today are the bacteria dwelling within our bodies, without which se could not live, while 1s of their progeny, such as mitochondria and mobile side our modern cells (Margulis 1084, 1908). hat distant tce is hard for the str with all th a Earth,2 ie in Min evolved from a common ancestor and hen that there is an tnderling unity to the widespread of life is ral to modem biology. We are taught in school that the wnity of ‘based on three things: (1) all living things are made of eels; (2) he Iife eyeles of all cells al reactions among st way that amino acids are put to- by DNA and RNA according to a gether to form pr precise and neatly universal scheme, ‘To these poimts we can add a fourth, following theorists who address ‘the question "what is lie?” by searching for principles of biological or There is a basie formal organization of fife, and its para ninimal ease ist be found in the single cell. singlo-cellor- sganism is a sel making or selfproducing being. SelEprod different from reproduction: In reproduction, a cell selfproduction, a cell continuously produces itself as a spatially Ddounded st «from its medium or miliew, What is remark- able about selfproduction is that every molecular reaction in the system is generated by the very same system that those molecular tions produce. Some years ago the neurobiologists Humberto Mat rana and Franciseo Varela drew attention 10 th lar, self producing organization and called it eutopoiesis (Maturana and Var 1980; Varela, Maturana, and Uribe 1974). My purpose in this is to present some key ideas of the autopoietic approach to vides in 0; in The Cell Theory year before the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of ‘Simcies, the German biologist Rudolf Virehow propounded what is noe nnown as the cel arise from preexisting cells, In his book Cell Pathongy Virchow wrote: yeory the basie unit ofall fife isthe cell and all ees Each day brings forth fresh discoveries but it also opens up fresh mat ters for discovery: Is anything postive in sees, What are Which are the ative elements, and which the passive? These are ‘queries whieh have given rise to great difficulties, dominating the field isology, we have to ask our ofthe body whence commence the vital te Autopoiesie The Organization ofthe Licing 9s ‘of physiology and pathology, and which I have sohed by showing that “the cell constitutes the true orgunie unit” tha its the ucible form of every living element, and that from it emanate al ‘Actstes of ife both in health al in sickness, (Virchow 1967, p. 23) Virchone was not the first to observe the living cell, The earliest ob servations of cells date back to 1674 when Anton van Leeuwenhoek, the Dutch nanuralist and lens grinder, looked! at pond water through a jieroscope and sav tiny ereatures swimming there, In Virchow’s own, century many naturalists observed th 1g organisms are composed of cells. But known as “the free the tissues of i come into being. He summed! up his rival view in a famous Latin apho- rism: “The existence of a cell presupposes the prior existence of some fuer cell—amnis callus ¢ calule (every cell must come from so other cell} just the same asa plant cannot occur exeept it be derived from some other plant, oF aX animal from some other swimal” (Vir- ). Teamight seem that biology has moved beyond Vi cell as “the ultimate irreducible form of every living element.” Molec- lular biology has taken us deep inside the cell, into the microscopic iniverse of DNA, RNA, and amino acids. There can be mo doubt that replaceable insight and discovery have been gained from the molee- lular perspective. Yet asa number of biologists have discussed in recent years, molecular biology ean lose sight of the organism as a whole (Goottwin 1994; Rose 1997). Her calling: “There is no doubt that the molecular changes ocentring i Side the cells are referted to some part or other cou U result is, horwever, de to the cell from which the vital action started and the living element is not active except in so far as it prese 4 complete whole enjoying its own separate existence” ). the cell is a complete whole and that all cells arise from preexisting cells would seem to pose a diletsma: Bither Hie has al ways existed or there must have heen a first cel. B cells arise from preexisting cells, how could life ever come into being oF get started in the first place? “There is only one way t form cells, cllukar material, Vichow rejected this idea about how cell howe 1967, p. rchow's vw of the oo, Virehow's words are worth re posing thew Wirctiow 1967, The idea th Virchow