Evolution and autopoiesis: narrative strategies and heuristic devices in territorial description

Abstract

This paper develops a reflection on certain biological metaphors that, over time and with varying degrees of effectiveness, have entered urban and territorial sciences. Along this trajectory, which unfolds in parallel with the emergence of biology, some concepts have assumed, at different historical moments, a strong normative and prefigurative role in shaping projects of city and territory. These are the concepts of evolution and autopoiesis. While evolution has long occupied a central place in modern thought, often through simplifications and instrumental uses that have distorted its scientific meaning, autopoiesis emerged only in the last decades of the twentieth century, contributing to a redefinition of paradigms that had appeared consolidated in the study of living systems. The paper focuses on two moments in which biological language was employed not only to establish new connections between natural sciences and territorial sciences, but also to overcome some constitutive dichotomies of modern thought. The first examines the influence of evolutionary theory, understood as a narrative strategy, on the study of urban and regional phenomena at the beginning of 1900. The second reflects on the concept of autopoiesis, understood as a heuristic device, and its implications for the study of social, urban and territorial organisations.