A phenomological characteristic of a domain of interaction is autonomy and each domain of interaction maintains its own phenomological basis.


Thus, relations, as states of neuronal activity arising from the concurrent interactions of the observer in different domains (physical and relational) constitute the elements of a new domain in which the observer interacts as a thinking system, but do not reduce one phenomological domain into another. (BC 89)

Autonomy is the distinctive phenomology resulting from an autopoietic organization: the realization of the autopoietic organization is the product of its operation. As long as an autopoietic system exists, its organization is invariant: if the network of productions of components which define the organization is disrupted, the unity disintegrates. Thus an autopoietic system which has a domain in it which it can compensate for perturbations through the realization of its autopoiesis, and in this domain it remains a unity. (A 189)

Due to this organization a living system is an autonomous unity. (CS 460)


This page was last updated on July 8, 1996, by Rob Sable.