Introduction to Systems Theory (Luhmann, 2002, 2013)

Introduction to Systems Theory (Luhmann, 2002, 2013)

Niklas Luhmann

Translated by Peter Gilgen

Niklas Luhmann ranks as one of the most important sociologists and social theorists of the twentieth century. Through his many books he developed a highly original form of systems theory that has been hugely influential in a wide variety of disciplines.

In Introduction to Systems Theory, Luhmann explains the key ideas of general and sociological systems theory and supplies a wealth of examples to illustrate his approach. The book offers a wide range of concepts and theorems that can be applied to politics and the economy, religion and science, art and education, organization and the family. Moreover, Luhmann's ideas address important contemporary issues in such diverse fields as cognitive science, ecology, and the study of social movements.

This book provides all the necessary resources for readers to work through the foundations of systems theory - no other work by Luhmann is as clear and accessible as this. There is also much here that will be of great interest to more advanced scholars and practitioners in sociology and the social sciences.

"no other work by Luhmann is as clear and accessible as this"

JLJ - Luhmann begins: "Ladies and Gentlemen, the lecture course Introduction to Systems Theory that I begin today is being held at a university institute for sociology and is addressed first and foremost to a sociological audience... I will attempt to scrutinize interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary theoretical efforts in order to find out, and demonstrate, what elements they might contain that could be of potential interest for sociology."

This translation from German of a course taught in the winter semester of 1991-2, Introduction to Systems Theory, is your best shot at understanding the work of an important sociologist and free thinker. Apparently an audio recording was made of the lectures and this book was created from the transcript.

Luhmann is not to be marginalized by those impatient types who seek silver-bullet answers to tough questions - he ponders difficult questions and gives you his opinion and his explanations - you will have to think long and hard to out-think him on these issues. You also need to briefly glance at my notes from George Spencer-Brown's "Laws of Form" to better understand Luhmann's apparent rantings here, that a system is a "difference". Imagine a human body. While it is alive, it is different from the environment. But after death and the body decays, there is no distinction anymore. Consider a large machine, such as an MRI medical device. It is distinct from the environment, as long as it operates and produces useful images. But if it breaks, it is perhaps then removed and stored in a scrapyard as junk, it becomes just part of the environment again.

Luhmann's concepts are elegant and simple, but might frustrate those who misinterpret what he is trying to accomplish. Luhmann has no doubt developed other definitions for "system", but they are application/situation specific and likely cannot be universally applied. Additionally, he claims that whatever definition of system you might favor, perhaps relating to an essence or a function, upon second look, probably involves a distinct difference between that entity or function and the environment. In my opinion, Luhmann would be doing his students a disservice by not giving his opinions on certain matters - Luhmann presents the opinions of others and complements them with his own.

p.1 Ladies and Gentlemen, the lecture course Introduction to Systems Theory that I begin today is being held at a university institute for sociology and is addressed first and foremost to a sociological audience.

p.2 I will attempt to scrutinize interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary theoretical efforts in order to find out, and demonstrate, what elements they might contain that could be of potential interest for sociology.

p.8 Parsons starts with the assumption that action, the individual act, the "unit act," is an "emergent property" of reality as such. In other words, he assumes that there must be components that have to be combined for actions to become possible.

p.8-9 Max Weber: for a primary understanding of action... it is necessary to distinguish first of all between ends and means. (1) To what purpose does an actor make use of his action?; and (2) What means does he intend to achieve by this? ...this leads to the question of what kind of normative schema lies at the bottom of the choice of ends and the admission of means.

p.9 Parsons... his general assumption "Action is system."

p.11 Parsons inserts the rather strange expression "latent pattern maintenance." ...structures must be constantly at one's disposal, but they are not continuously actualized... And this leads to the question of what occurs in the meantime and how it is guaranteed that structures are available and can be activated and actualized in spite of being merely latent during the intervening periods. Therefore, there is the problem of "latent pattern maintenance" - that is, of the stabilizing of structures even in the case of their not being used.

p.32 the system always orients itself by means of the input boundary and produces certain decisions as a consequence of certain inputs, regardless of the consequences.

p.44 Parsons spoke of "boundary maintenance" and thus changed the definition of a system; he shifted from a system definition that relies on an essence, essentials, or other unalterable structures to a definition the depends on the question of how the difference between system and environment can be maintained, possibly even at the same time that structures are being replaced.

p.46 Nowadays, information theory is also often conceived of in terms of a theory of difference. This tendency can be traced back to Gregory Bateson's classic formulation that information is "a difference that makes a difference." Information is information only if it is not just an existing difference; it is information only if it instigates a change of state in the system.

p.49 Draw a distinction, otherwise nothing will happen at all. If you are not ready to distinguish, nothing is going to take place.

p.50 the difference between system and environment can be understood as a distinction. A systems theoretician reacts first of all to the injunction "Draw a distinction!" This distinction is not just any distinction but the distinction between system and environment. The theoretician must use the pointer or indication in such a way that it indicates the system and not the environment. The environment remains outside. The system is on one side, the environment on the other.

p.53 A social system emerges when communication develops from communication.

p.55 A system that intends to control its own conditions of connectivity must have at its disposal a type of operation that, for the time being, we may call "self-observation." ...A system has to be capable of controlling its own conditions of connectivity.

p.65 Causality is a judgement, the observation of an observer, a coupling of causes and effects, depending on how the observer formulates his interests and in what way the observer considers effects or causes to be important or unimportant. Causality is a selective proposition: one is interested in certain causes because one is uncertain about the effects. Or else one would like to achieve certain effects, and therefore one poses the question backwards from this endpoint and looks for the causes that make them possible. Formally speaking, causality is a schema of world observation.

p.67 Von Forester distinguishes between trivial and non-trivial machines. In this context, "machines" should be understood in the cybernetic sense; they include mathematical forms, computational rules, rules of transformation, and similar entities. In this context, the term "machine" is not limited to mechanical or electronic actualizations... Trivial machines are characterized by the fact that the input is transformed into output according to a specific rule

p.68 In contrast, non-trivial machines always interpose their own state and pose questions in between - questions such as: ..."How strong is my interest at this point?" ...and only then do they produce their output... the machine uses its output as its input. It orients and steers itself by means of what it just did... conscious systems are non-trivial machines.

p.70 The structures of an operationally closed system must be created through the system's very own operations. In other words, there is no importation of structures! This is what is meant by "self-organization." ...Whatever I am thinking about just now, whatever happens in my consciousness at this very moment, whatever I perceive - all of this is the point of departure for an understanding of subsequent perceptions. [JLJ - perhaps this is why a diagnostic test benefits from rich detail. Our perceptions and orientations in the present deeply impact our posture for the future - what is not seen and perceived in the now cannot be used in preparations for unknowable events which arrive down the road.]

p.71 within the confines of an operational theory, structures are effective only in the moment when the system operates... this point contradicts the idea that structures are what last while processes and operations fade away. In this theory, structures are relevant only in the present... The system must be in operation to make use of structures... One identifies the structures... The structure is in each case effective only at the present moment, and whatever past data are used are linked to those future projections that are summoned up.

p.86 The reduction of complexity, the exclusion of a mass of events in the environment from the possibility of affecting the system, is the condition for the system's ability to do something with as few irritations as such reduction permits.

p.121 The system does not have the capacity to connect a state of its own to everything that happens in the environment and to juxtapose one of its own operations to every environmental occurrence, in order either to enhance or to curtail what is happening. Instead, the system has to bundle and even ignore occurrences, and it must deploy indifference or create special arrangements for the management of complexity.

p.123 Loosely coupled systems are more stable than tightly coupled ones. "Tight coupling" is a very improbable arrangement. It is not to be found in nature. Organisms are built on the basis of loose coupling, and so are social organizations.

p.123 If technical systems are so tightly coupled that the event of a disturbance makes the entire system explode and creates comprehensive damage, then this is a type of unnatural arrangement. The dangers of such an arrangement are familiar from systems theory. It would be necessary to build a security fence, an encapsulation, or a containment around it that would have to be based on loose coupling.

p.128 A further issue that has always fascinated me concerns the question of what happens when two complex systems get involved with each other, when they are coupled or enter into interaction

p.164 The idea of "medium" is that there is an area of loose couplings of abundant elements, such as particles in the air or physical carriers of light... Without light, we see nothing.

p.165 What is stable is loosely coupled and has no form... what we have here is a loose coupling of mixed components that are bound in tight forms, but only temporarily, for a longer or shorter amount of time, depending on how the respective systems operate.

p.244 Structures exist only when they are used. [JLJ - my version: a thing becomes a "thing" in the course of a trial or ordeal of being. Luhmann misses the fact that a structure "might" be used]

p.252 If social [JLJ - jointly-interactive] processes are tightly coupled, conflicts spread. If they are loosely coupled, it is easier to isolate conflicts.

p.252 The thesis that stability... is based precisely on the interruption of connections, on loose coupling, and on the non-proliferation of effects is in turn compatible with the thesis of the omnipresence of conflicts and possibilities for conflict, and of society's dependence on the most diverse possibilities of holding such conflicts in check.