Niklas Luhmann

Publisher description: The essays in this volume formulate what is considered to be the preconditions for an adequate theory of modern society. The first two essays deal with the modern European philosophical and scientific tradition. The next four essays concern the notion of observation as defined by Luhmann. They examine the history of paradox as a logical problem and as a historically conditioned feature of rhetoric; deconstruct the thinking of Jacques Derrida; discuss the usefulness of Spencer Brown's Laws of Form; and assess the consequences of observation and paradox for epistemology. The following essays present Luhmann's theory of communication and his articulation of the difference between thought and communication, a difference that makes clear one of Luhmann's most radical and controversial theses, that the individual not only does not form the basic element of society but is excluded from it altogether, situated instead in the environment of the social system.

"In The Reality of the Mass Media, Luhmann extends his theory of social systems to an examination of the role of mass media in the constitution of social reality.". "Luhmann argues that the system of mass media is a set of recursive, self-referential programs of communication, whose functions are not determined by the external values of truthfulness, objectivity, or knowledge, nor by specific social interests or political directives. Rather, he contends that the system of mass media is regulated by the internal code information/noninformation, which enables the system to select its information (news) from its own environment and to communicate this information in accordance with its own reflexive criteria."--BOOK JACKET.

A major challenge confronting contemporary theory is to overcome its fixation on written narratives and the culture of print. In this presentation of a general theory of systems, Germany's most prominent and controversial social thinker sets out a contribution to sociology that reworks our understanding of meaning and communication. Luhmann responds to the theory crisis in sociology with a genealogy of his own, which includes a cybernetician (Heinz von Foerster), two evolutionary biologists (Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco Varela), and an obscure mathematician (George Spencer Brown), not to speak of the Devil Himself. This list of names defines a set of problems that explodes the boundaries of sociology by linking social theory to recent theoretical developments in scientific disciplines as diverse as modern physics, information theory, general systems theory, neurophysiology, phenomenology, and cognitive science. In these fields, the erosion of classical paradigms suggests, not the end of science, but a fundamental revision of its theoretical premises.