Differentiation of autopoiesis
From Geography
Differentiation and autopoiesis
That Niklas Luhmann creates a distinction between social and physic systems does not mean that there are no connections between them. Without the other neither one of these two types would have evolved. But Luhmann maintains in essence they are distinct. Society, therefore consists of communication. There is nothing ‘social’ outside this (Luhmann, 1999). Out of this notion of society as communication, Luhmann develops a theory of functional differentiation. The analysis of the differentiation of society in different sub-systems that Luhmann performs is, again, much inspired by Parsons. However, the outline of sub system also bears a resemblance to Bourdieus fields. The fundamental description of the systems is, in any case, Luhmanns own. Each of the function systems – law, politics, economics, art, science, family and so forth, are domains of communication that have structured their recursive meaning-processing to such a degree, that they have become codified (Luhmann, 1982, 1987, 1997). The boundary of a function system, then, is the form of meaning of is communication, its semantic codification. It is thus de differences in modes, of meaning-processing that constitute the boundaries between function systems which, for Luhmann, are impenetrable. Self-reference means that function systems are autonomous. This autonomy does not mean that they are socially closed. On the contrary, in principle everyone has access. The autonomy is due to the operational closure.
One of the consequences of this self-reference of meaning is that any social system can only observe according its own code. This is the paradox of modern society. With the functional differentiation of society, the existence of a central position from which universal observations can be made is impossible. The meaningful world of the economic system is not the meaningful world of political system and so on.
Ecological problems are a good example. How can society react to ecological problems if these cannot be incorporated in de operationally closed observations which are, ultimately, society? As a result, ecological problems are in danger of remaining, literally speaking, environmental noise instead of being processed as meaningful information.
references
Arnoldi, J. (2002). Niklas Luhman. An Intorduction. In: Theory, Culture & Society. Vol. 18, No. 1, pp 1355-1372
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