Chapter 2: Bringing forth the unconscious
Luhmanns theory of social systemsOne of the most impressive theories that could be placed within the new interdisciplinary field, is Niklas Luhmanns system theory, described in the book ‘Social Systems’. With inspiration from a concept proposed by the biologists Maturana and Varela, he argues that a social system is an autopoietic system. An autopoietic system can briefly be described as a system that itself creates the elements of which it consists.
I think there is a general agreement that the theory is not like anything seen before in science, it is extremely complex and difficult to understand. The following excerpt about his concept of “meaning” is taken as a sample to illustrate the style used throughout the book:
"Meaning is the unity of actualization and virtualization, of re-actualization and re-virtualization, as a self-propelling process (which can be conditioned by systems). How this proceeds becomes fully comprehensible if one considers a second difference. In describing operations we would like to follow Spencer Brown and speak of “distinction” and “indication”. The corresponding semantic results are called “difference” and “identity”. The difference between difference and identity is instituted, as it were, across the difference between actuality and potentiality, to control the latter within the former’s operations. What is possible is interpreted as the difference between different potentialities (including the one that is presently actualized and to which one can return), and the possibility of being actualized is then indicated in its identity as “this-and-not-something-else”. This indication does not eliminate what is not actualized, but displaces it into a state of momentary inactuality. It can be preserved as a potentiality in the process of re-virtualization and carried over into new horizons.. [Luhmann, 1995, 2-II]
Considering that this is how he (partially) describes “meaning” and that the theory also describes the concept “complexity”, can probably make most people loose their breath!
Key to understand the theoryBut still the theory sets loose a certain fascination in the reader, because as you work your way through the theory there is no doubt that he is describing something he knows to be true, something that he have “seen” and is trying as good as he possible can, to communicate to the reader.
A long time ago I read in L. Ron Hubbards book ‘Dianetics’ that “if you do not understand a given theory, it is because you at some point has skipped a word that you did not fully understand. So you should go back to the word you did not understand, look up the definition in a dictionary and then start from that point again” (cited free from memory). This might be a usefull method for understanding some theories, but clearly it is not sufficient here.
I think that the following quote from Jung’s ‘Psychology and Literature’ about the nature of literary work can serve as a better opening:
"It is therefore to be expected that the poet will turn to mythological figures in order to give suitable expression to his experience. Nothing would be more mistaken than to suppose that he is working with secondhand material. On the contrary, the primordial experience is the source of his creativeness, but it is so dark and amorphous that it requires the related mythological imagery to give it form. In itself it is wordless and imageless, for it is a vision seen “as in a glass, darkly”. It is nothing but a tremendous intuition striving for expression. It is like a whirlwind that seizes everything within reach and assumes visible form as it whirls upward.
Since the expression can never match the richness of the vision and can never exhaust its possibilities, the poet must have at his disposal a huge store of material if he is to communicate even a fraction of what he has glimpsed, and must make use of difficult and contradictory images in order to express the strange paradoxes of his vision.” [Segal, 1998, p. 179]
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