Abstract

A system view of the natural world posits living entities as operational wholes exhibiting organization and functions not fully explained by the properties of their molecular parts. As materially- and energetically-open steady-state systems arising from cosmochemical continuity of the physical world, living systems are distinct from the world of their physical origins by virtue of autopoietic organization. Autopoiesis is the production of a network of processes whose operation results in the transformation and replacement of system components . ;The concept of autopoiesis, amended as a system theory, provides an organizational definition of life and criteria by which the living are categorically distinguished from the non-living. Limitations are set on the domains in which autopoiesis may be exhibited . ;Not previously applied to origins of life, the system logic of autopoiesis bears directly: earliest life on Earth would have arisen as a system in which structure and organization had simultaneous origin, in which closure and energy capture engendered the simplest possible component replacement. This operational definition of life is testable in the laboratory as the minimal cell. Autopoiesis distinguishes between the molecular structure and organization of living systems and between the origin and evolution of life. Prebiotic chemistry, orgins of life, and evolution of life each has its own concepts, vocabulary, and set of problems to be addressed . ;The system-logical approach distinguishes between molecular autopoiesis and biological phenomena, that is, between the metabolic processes that produce the maintain cells and the whole-system behavior of cells once produced. Whereas growth and reproduction are consequences of life, neither is required for life. Nor is heritability required for life, although it is required for evolution . ;An epistemological sketch of the autopoietic/system-logical view points to the inadequacy of reductionist assumptions underlying cell and molecular biology today . ;Appendix I is an annotated bibliography of the primary literature of autopoiesis. Appendix II, artefactual systems and living systems, compares the conceptual viewpoints defining cybernetic and atuopoietic systems, showing that while the system logic of each is coherent and internally consistent, the two viewpoints are mutually exclusive