The main difference between “man-made” machines and other simple physical #structures (#products) and #autonomous, living #systems is in the way they are “produced”.

Machines are #built from the #outside by an #allopoietic process similar to #sedimentation of placing layer upon layer of “things” and connecting them to “inform” a unified single structure.

Organisms, on the other side, are single unified and integrated entities from the moment of their inception, and all their “components” #grow from the #inside out in parallel and at the same time in a closed circular #autopoietic process.

Reading this recent (2022) article from Fritjof Capra:
The organization of the living:
Maturana’s key insights
included in the latest Constructivist Foundations volume 18(1): 005–011

https://constructivist.info/18/1/005

and I am continually bewildered by the fact that no one in the #Constructivist field figured out yet that #Autopoiesis, although necessary, is not the sufficient condition for #Life.

All #LivingSystems are in fact #DynamicalSystems with memory made of #Material, #Energy, and #Information structures participating continually in both auto- and allopoietic processes.

In fact, the recursive, #Autopoietic processes of learning and growth depend only on (are “structurally coupled” with) the linear #Allopoietic work processes dealing with all the things (resources, waste) in the system’s environment and producing the externally observable #behavior of the living (dynamical) system.