Autopoiesis
Etymology
Coined in 1972 by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, from Greek "auto-" ("self") and "poiesis" ("making, creation"), from "poiein" ("to make"). They used it to define what makes something alive: a network that produces the components that produce the network.
noun · /aw-toh-poy-EE-sis/
The capacity of a system to continuously produce and maintain itself out of its own components.
What it names
A precise term for anything that is not just self-organizing but self-making — a living cell, an ecosystem, arguably a culture — that keeps regenerating the very parts that constitute it.
Example
A city has a kind of autopoiesis — it constantly rebuilds its own roads, workers, and institutions just to keep being a city.
Related idea
More than homeostasis, which holds internal conditions steady, autopoiesis produces the system’s own parts — it does not just regulate itself, it makes itself.