1. Understanding the circular economy as autopoietic system
Patrick Schroeder
Date: 19:06:2018

2. What is an autopoietic system?
Concept of autopoiesis (from Greek αὐτo- (auto-), meaning 'self', and ποίησις (poiesis), meaning 'creation, production').
The concept of autopoiesis has been developed by the Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela and refers to “a system capable of reproducing and maintaining itself” (an example is a plant which produces cells with its own cells). According to Maturana and Varela, autopoiesis the fundamental characteristic of living systems.
Autopoietic systems replenish their own environment and thus can become self-sustaining.
In contrast, allopoietic systems (< Greek: allos = other; poiein = to produce), where the elements are produced by something outside the system. autopoietic systems replenish their own environment and thus can become self-sustaining.

3. From biological phenomenology to the circular economy
We can conceptualise the linear “take-make-dispose” economy as an allopoietic system which depends on constant external inputs, therefore allopoietic systems necessarily deplete their environment.
Hypothesis: a regenerative, restorative and self-sustainable circular economy would need to be an autopoietic system.
Question: How can a regenerative and restorative circular economy be designed as an autopoietic system to become self- sustainable in the context of planetary boundaries?
(Or will the circular economy self-organise without active external design?)

5. Concepts and insights from biological phenomenology and theory for the circular economy
Under which conditions come autopoietic systems about?
Cell division (mitosis), reproduction - one unity giving birth to another unity of the same quality and complexity
The origin of organic molecules.
“Living beings are characterised by their autopoietic organisation. They differ from each other in their structure, but they are alike in their organization.”

6. Concepts and insights from biological phenomenology and theory for the circular economy
A central element within the theory of autopoiesis is the concept of ‘structural coupling’ which refers to the relation between systems (e.g. consumption and production systems) and their environments (e.g. the natural resource base, communities, policy frameworks).
A system is said to be structurally coupled to its environment (or other systems in its environment) if its structures are in some way or other adjusted to the structures of the environment.

7. Concepts and insights from biological phenomenology and theory for the circular economy
“If we turn our attention to the maintenance of the organisms as dynamic systems in their environment, this maintenance will appear to us as centered on a compatibility of the organisms with their environment which we call adaptation.”
Structural coupling occurs where a history of recurrent interactions exists.

8. Concepts and insights from biological phenomenology and theory for the circular economy
The “natural drift” of living beings as distances of complexity with respect to their common origin.
“Maturana &Varela characterize evolution as a “natural drift,” a process not driven by any mechanism of its
own, but a result both of certain self-organizing deterministic processes and of many
contingencies in the interaction of organisms with the environment, selection being an effect of all of them.”

9. “The Autopoiesis of Architecture”
Parametric Design: A Schumacher example of how the continuation and natural flow of natural elements and urban elements into an efficient parametric form

10. Second order and first order autopoietic systems (single and multi cellular organisms)
Symbiosis of metacellular organisms

11. Autopoiesis in organizational theory and economic systems

12. Autopoiesis in Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory
Luhmann likens the operation of autopoiesis (the filtering and processing of information from the environment) as programs making series of distinctions (Unterscheidungen)
Luhmann treats systems as autopoietic and operationally closed (in contrast to Parsons who sees systems as operationally open and interactive through input-output schema).
Social systems are defined by Luhmann not as action but as recursive communication.

13. Autopoiesis and the circular economy
For the circular economy to be self-sustainable in the context of the Earth’s planetary boundaries, it would need to be organised and designed to be autopoietic. In terms of transformations, we can conceptualise the shift from the linear economy to a circular economy as a shift from an allopoietic to an autopoietic system. Improved understanding of the system functions of ‘structural coupling’, ‘reproduction’ and ‘communications’ will be useful to advance the transformation to a circular economic system.