Cosmo-Autopoiesis
= "a cosmos that sustains itself through nested, self-producing cycles of transformation". [1]
Description
Joe Corbett:
"If the Krebs cycle illustrates how a living system extracts energy and regenerates essential components within a larger metabolic web, and if the hero’s journey shows how individual transformation catalyzes social renewal within a cultural web, then a broader question arises: might these nested cycles reflect a universal pattern of nature? The notion of autopoiesis—first articulated to describe self-producing, self-maintaining systems—offers a lens to consider such a possibility. In biology, cells are autopoietic: they continuously produce their own components and regulate their boundaries to maintain identity. In culture, myths and narratives contribute to the self-organization of communities, guiding rituals, institutions, and technologies in ways that sustain a social organism.
Extending this idea beyond biology and culture, cosmo-autopoiesis posits that the cosmos itself may organize in recursive loops of transformation and regeneration. Stars form and exhaust their fuel, releasing energy that seeds new generations of matter and influences planetary systems. At larger scales, galaxies and cosmic structures arise, evolve, and reorganize in cycles of birth, maturation, and decay, all within a framework that preserves systemic coherence. The Krebs cycle’s return to oxaloacetate after energy extraction parallels how a cosmological cycle returns to a baseline state ready for a fresh iteration. The hero’s journey’s return with the elixir mirrors how a culture absorbs a transformed agent (the hero, or a social idea) and reintegrates it as a resource for collective advancement. In both cases, energy, information, and material form circulate through a network of subsystems, each loop enabling the next stage of self-production and adaptation.
This speculative framework—cosmo-autopoiesis—does not reduce biological or cultural complexity to a single law. Rather, it invites a view of nature in which recurring patterns of transformation, conservation, and reintegration recur across scales."
(https://holo.substack.com/p/spiritual-biology-and-cosmo-autopoiesis)