From Wikipedia:
Who is Niklas Luhmann
Luhmann was born in Lüneburg, Germany, where his father's family had been running a brewery for several generations. After graduating from the Johanneum school in 1943, he was conscripted as a Luftwaffenhelfer in World War II and served for two years until, at the age of 17, he was taken prisoner of war by American troops in 1945. After the war Luhmann studied law at the University of Freiburg from 1946 to 1949, when he obtained a Dr. jur. degree, and then began a career in Lüneburg's public administration. During a sabbatical in 1961, he went to Harvard, where he met and studied under Talcott Parsons, then the world's most influential social systems theorist. In later years, Luhmann dismissed Parsons' theory, developing a rival approach of his own. Leaving the civil service in 1962, he lectured at the national Deutsche Hochschule für Verwaltungswissenschaften (University for Administrative Sciences) in Speyer, Germany, until 1965, when he was offered a position at the Sozialforschungsstelle (Social Research Centre) of the University of Münster, led by Helmut Schelsky. 1965/66 he studied one semester of sociology at the University of Münster. Two earlier books were retroactively accepted as a PhD thesis and habilitation at the University of Münster in 1966, qualifying him for a university professorship. In 1968/1969, he briefly served as a lecturer at Theodor Adorno's former chair at the University of Frankfurt, being appointed full professor of sociology at the then new-founded University of Bielefeld, Germany (until 1993). He continued to publish after his retirement, when he finally found the time to complete his magnum opus, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft ("The Society of Society"), which appeared in 1997.read more
From Wikidpedia..
Theory
MJ comments below each section.
The core element of Luhmann's theory is communication. Social systems are systems of communication, and society is the most encompassing social system. Being the social system that comprises all (and only) communication, today's society is a world society. A system is defined by a boundary between itself and its environment, dividing it from an infinitely complex, or (colloquially) chaotic, exterior. The interior of the system is thus a zone of reduced complexity: Communication within a system operates by selecting only a limited amount of all information available outside. This process is also called "reduction of complexity." The criterion according to which information is selected and processed is meaning (in German, Sinn). Both social systems and psychical or personal systems (see below for an explanation of this distinction) operate by processing meaning.
My take is that Luhman is correct in describing a system as living within a well bounded space. While the hard line between inside and outside was necessary for theory development when he was writing, there may now be a possibility of modeling complexity, and therefore a different way to conceptualize boundary conditions.
In social systems, similar to what we have recently learned about biologic systems, it may turn out that the process of "reducing complexity" and "processing meaning" within a system is similar to the process that occurs at the boundaries of systems.
Furthermore, each system has a distinctive identity that is constantly reproduced in its communication and depends on what is considered meaningful and what is not. If a system fails to maintain that identity, it ceases to exist as a system and dissolves back into the environment it emerged from. Luhmann called this process of reproduction from elements previously filtered from an over-complex environment autopoiesis (pronounced "auto-poy-E-sis"; literally: self-creation), using a term coined in cognitive biology by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. Social systems are autopoietically closed in that they use and rely on resources from their environment; yet those resources do not become part of the systems' operation. Both thought and digestion are important preconditions for communication, but neither appears in communication as such.
Self-creation is a rich concept. But the idea that a social system is "autopoietically closed" is no longer a necessity for theory creation. Complex affordable computer modeling and multi player interactive environments like Second Life, among many other new developments, might be just the tools that can allow theory and complexity to join.
Luhmann likens the operation of autopoiesis (the filtering and processing of information from the environment) to a program, making a series of logical distinctions (in German,Unterscheidungen). Here, Luhmann refers to the British mathematician G. Spencer-Brown's logic of distinctions that Maturana and Varela had earlier identified as a model for the functioning of any cognitive process. The supreme criterion guiding the "self-creation" of any given system is a defining binary code. The influence of Spencer-Brown's book, "Laws of Form," on Luhmann cannot be overestimated.
As binary code is now moving forward into modeling complexity, the insight is still correct, but the possibilities now are much greater. -Link to Spencer-Brown website
Although Luhmann first developed his understanding of social systems theory under Parsons' influence, he soon moved away from the Parsonian concept. The most important difference is that Parsons used systems as a merely analytic tool to understand certain processes going on in society; Luhmann, in contrast, treats his vision of systems ontologically, saying that "systems exist." Another difference is that Parsons asks how certain subsystems contribute to the functioning of overall society. Luhmann starts with the differentiation of the systems themselves out of a nondescript environment. He does observe how certain systems fulfill functions that contribute to "society" as a whole, but this is happening more or less by chance, without an overarching vision of society. Finally, the systems' autopoietic closure is another fundamental difference from Parsons' concept. Each system works strictly according to its very own code and has no understanding at all for the way other systems perceive their environment. For example, the economy is all about money, so there is no independent role in the economic system for extraneous aspects such as morals.
In this one, I think Luhman got it right. But again he was limited by the notion of a "nondescript environment". Real environments may well be non describable, but it is unrealistic to argue that they are therfore non descript.
One seemingly peculiar, but within the overall framework strictly logical, axiom of Luhmann's theory is the human being's position outside any social system. Consisting of "pure communication," any social system requires human consciousnesses (personal or psychical systems) as an obviously necessary, but nevertheless environmental resource. In Luhmann's terms, human beings are neither part of society nor of any specific systems, just as they are not part of a conversation. Luhmann himself once said concisely that he was "not interested in people."
With his concentration on theory of social systems that makes a lot of sense. But he then misses the fact that it is only the activities of people that bring invisible social systems into an observable state. There is a real sense in which it is only observed activites that can provide an indicator to the operative system within the many potential networks of systems that could be called into observable reality.
Luhmann was devoted to the ideal of non-normative science introduced to sociology in the early 20th century by Max Weber and later re-defined and defended against its critics by Karl Popper. However, in an academic environment that never strictly separated descriptive and normative theories of society, Luhmann's "anti-humanistic" sociology has widely attracted criticism from "emancipatory" scientists, including, most famously, Jürgen Habermas.
Not sure how all this breaks down, but normative and emancipatory don't seem to make useful distinctions. The purpose of a theory is to guide successful interventions. If it does, it creates value. If it doesn't, why should more than a very small public of specialists care.
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