Human-dog system: from Maturana’s view of autopoiesis

Abstract

This theoretical essay proposes the social enlargement of Maturana’s theory as an explicative hypothesis of the human-dog social system. It also introduces some central concepts about living social systems, articulating them with the properties identified in the relationship between humans and dogs as they constitute a new reality domain: the legitimation of the other in the relationship and the attachment from the history of consensual coordinations that are recurrent between humans and dogs, thus producing a new domain.