Chapter 3: Shaking the reality
Luhmanns reality The view that a scientific theory, like for instance Luhmanns, is made with the purpose to transform your consciousness is untraditional for the western mind and has to do with the way we think of reality. In the preface Luhmann writes:
"Abstraction, however, should not be misunderstood as pure artistry or as a retreat to a “merely analytically” relevant, formal science. No one would deny that there are such things as meaning, time, events, actions, expectations, and so on in the real world. All of this is both an actuality that can be experienced and a condition of possibility for the differentiation of science. The corresponding concepts serve science as probes by which the system controlled by theory adapts to reality (...) one could even say that concepts form science’s contact with reality (including, here as anywhere else, contact with its own reality) as the experience of difference. (...) In the process [of organizing experiences of difference and acquiring information], a reference to reality must, on the one hand be safeguarded. On the other, however, science, especially sociology, should not allow itself to be duped by reality.” [Luhmann, 1995, preface]
Luhmann indicates that concepts form science’s contact with reality, and also that science has its own reality compared to something else which is not clear to me from the text. Maybe to the readers concept of reality or he indicates that there can be different realities within science, since different parts of science use their own concepts. In the last sentence he states very clearly that science should not allow itself to be duped (i.e. deceived) by reality. Obviously he uses the word “reality” to refer to something that change depending on your perspective.
Later in the book he advocates for the transcendental nature of his theory:
"One of the worst aspects of language (and the entire presentation of systems theory in this book is inadequate, indeed misleading, because of it) is that predications is forced on the subjects of sentences; this suggests the idea, and reinforces the old habit of thinking, that we deal with “things”, to which any qualities, relations, activities, or surprises must be ascribed. But the thing schema (and correspondingly the interpretation of the world as “reality”) offers only a simplified version of the fact dimension. (...) Therefore we will often have occasion to reiterate that the primary object of systems theory is not the object (or kind of object) “system”, but the difference between system and environment.” [Luhmann, 1995, 2-VI]
The leading difference used throughout the book, the difference between the two “objects” system and environment, is itself sneaking a metaphysical / trancendental form of thinking inside the readers mind. Thinking and focusing on the difference between two objects has a transcendental effect, in that it shakes the reality perception of the mind.
Meditation to prevent a rigid reality perceptionThe technique to focus on a difference are used for instance in some forms of meditation, where the meditating person visualises (with closed eyes) an object in front of him. When he have learned to visualize it clearly, he moves to the next step, where he meditates on ‘himself visualising the object’, i.e. not himself neither the object but the relation between the two, which I interpret as what Luhmann means by the difference between two things. When step 2 is mastered, step 3 is meditating on himself meditating on the difference between himself (the first self) and the object, and so on.
The purpose is to transcend or break through the veil that covers our daily perception of reality. Also yoga, which is another form of meditation, focus at times on a difference/ relation, e.g. the surface between the body (lying on the floor) and the floor.
If, as Luhmann states, that concepts form science’s contact with reality, and different disciplines use different concepts, then the different disciplines are in a way doing science in different realities, which explains their problems with interdisciplinary communication. A less rigid reality perception is needed if the disciplines are to find common grounds, which meditation can contribute to. The Maharishi University of Management has through a 27 year period used meditation (Transcendental Meditation) and infact experienced that it facilitate cross-disciplinary communication [Boothby].
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