The observer immersed in the system: autopoiesis, enaction and normative systems as emergent properties

Abstract

ABSTRACT This White Paper extends the epistemological framework of the book "The Normative System Under the Lens of Complexity" (Cerboni, 2026) by integrating the paradigms of autopoiesis (Maturana and Varela, 1980) and enaction (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, 1991). It argues that legislators, jurists, and normative agents are not external observers of the system they govern—they are autopoietic agents immersed in the system itself, co-creators of normative reality through structural coupling. This perspective allows us to reread the book's three cornerstones—narrative elicitation, the graph of the area of rationality, and the proposal for ecological jurisprudence—on a deeper epistemological plane, addressing some of the most radical criticisms of heuristic theory and ecological rationality. Keywords: autopoiesis, enaction, normative systems, ecological rationality, heuristics, complex adaptive systems, Maturana, Varela, Teubner, ecological jurisprudence, narrative elicitation.