Extracts from Luhmann - Zettelkasten

There are some passages from Luhmann which I wanted to make noted.

About Autopoiesis

Luhmann developed a “systems theoretic” approach to thinking about his Zettelkasten. For him, a “system” was distinguished from its “environment” by some kind of “boundary” (these quoted terms are all Luhmann’s terms). Without this boundary, there would be no “autonomy” to a system and it would merge back into its environment.

This played a critical role in the notion of “autopoiesis” for Luhmann, since it was characteristic of “living systems”. And Luhmann’s Zettelkasten was a “living system” of notes. Here’s what he had to say, specifically about communication (English translation from Journal of Sociocyberntics 6 (2008) pp 84-95):

Communications as the basic elements of social systems

To use ipsissima verba ‘autopoietic systems’ are systems that are defined as unities, as networks of productions of components, that recursively, through their interactions, generate and realize the network that produces them and constitute, in the space in which they exist, the boundaries of the “network as components that participate in the realization of the network” (Maturana, 1981: 21). Autopoietic systems, then, are not only self-organizing systems. Not only do they produce and eventually change their own structures but their self-reference applies to the production of other components as well. This is the decisive conceptual innovation. It adds a turbocharger to the already powerful engine of self-referential machines. Even elements, that is last components (individuals), which are, at least for the system itself, undecomposable, are produced by the system itself. Thus, everything which is used as a unit by the system is produced as a unit by the system itself. This applies to elements, processes, boundaries and other structures, and last but not least to the unity of the system itself. Autopoietic systems, of course, exist within an environment. They cannot exist on their own. But there is no input and no output of unity.

Autopoietic systems, then, are sovereign with respect to the constitution of identities and differences. They do not create a material world of their own. They presuppose other levels of reality. Human life, for example, presupposes the small scope of temperature in which water exists as a liquid. But whatever they use as identities and as differences is of their own making. In other words, they cannot import identities and differences from the outer world; these are forms about which they have to decide themselves.

Social systems use communication as their particular mode of autopoietic reproduction. Their elements are communications which are recursively produced and reproduced by a network of communications and which cannot exist outside of such a network. Communications are not “living” units, they are not “conscious” units, they are not “actions”. Their unity requires a synthesis of three selections: namely, information, utterance[1] and understanding (including misunderstanding).[2] This synthesis is produced by the network of communication, not by some kind of inherent power of consciousness, or by the inherent quality of the information. Also — and this goes against all kinds of “structuralism” — communication is not produced by language. Structuralists have never been able to show how a structure can produce an event. At this point, the theory of autopoiesis offers a decisive advance. It is the network of events which reproduces itself and structures are required for the reproduction of events by events.

The synthesis of information, utterance and understanding cannot be preprogrammed by language. It has to be recreated from situation to situation by referring to previous communications and to possibilities of further communications which are to be restricted by the actual event. This operation requires self-reference. It can in no way use the environment. Information, utterances and understandings are aspects which for the system cannot exist independently of the system; they are co-created within the process of communication. Even “information” is not something which the system takes in from the environment. Pieces of information don’t exist “out there”, waiting to be picked up by the system. As selections they are produced by the system itself in comparison with someting else (e.g., in comparison with something which could have happened).

The communicative synthesis of information, utterance and understanding is possible only as an elementary unit of an ongoing social system. As the operating unit it is undecomposable, doing its autopoietic work only as an element of the system. However, further units of the same system can distinguish between information and utterance and can use this distinction to separate hetero-referentiality and self-referentiality. They can, being themselves undecomposable for the moment, refer primarily to the content of previous communications, asking for further information about the information; or they can question the “how” and the “why” of the communication, focusing on its utterance. In the first case, they will pursue heteroreferentiality, in the second case self-referentiality. Using a terminology proposed by Gotthard Günther (1979), we can say that the process of communication is not simply auto-referential in the sense that it is what it is. It is forced by its own structure to separate and to recombine hetero-referentiality and self-referentiality. Referring to itself, the process has to distinguish information and utterance and to indicate which side of the distinction is supposed to serve as the base for further communication. Therefore, self-reference is nothing but reference to this distinction between hetero-reference and self-reference. And, whereas auto-referentiality could be seen as a one-value thing (it is what it is), and could be described by a logic with two values only, namely, true and false, the base of social systems is one of much greater complexity because its self-reference (1) is based on an ongoing auto-referential (autopoietic) process, which refers to itself (2) as processing the distinction between itself and (3) its topics. If such a system did not have an environment, it would have to invent it as the horizon of its hetero-referentiality.

The elementary, undecomposable units of the system are communications of minimal size. This minimal size, again, cannot be determined independent of the system.[3] It is constituted by further communication or by the prospect of further communication. An elementary unit has the minimal meaning which is necessary for reference by further communication — for instance, the minimal meaning which still can be negated. Further communication can very well separate pieces of information, utterances and understandings and discuss them separately, but this still would presuppose their synthesis in previous communication. The system does not limit itself by using constraints for the constitution of its elementary units. If need be, it can communicate about everything and can decompose aspects of previous communication to satisfy actual desires. As an operating system, however, it will not always do this to the extreme. Communication includes understanding as a necessary part of the unity of its operation. It does not include the acceptance of its content. It is not the function of communication to produce a consensus as the favoured state of mind. Communication always results in an open situation of either acceptance or rejection. It reproduces situations with a specified and enforced choice. Such situations are not possible without communication; they do not occur as natural happenings. Only communication itself is able to reach a point which bifurcates further possibilities. The bifurcation itself is a reduction of complexity and, by this very fact, an enforcement of selection. Automatically, the selection of further communication is either an acceptance or rejection of previous communication or a visible avoidance or adjournment of the issue. Whatever its content and whatever its intention, communication reacts within the framework of enforced choice. To take one course is not to take the other. This highly artificial condition structures the self-reference of the system; it makes it unavoidable to take other communications of the same system into account, and every communication renews the same condition within a varied context. If the system were set up to produce consensus it soon would come to an end. It would never produce and reproduce a society. In fact, however, it is designed to reproduce itself by submitting itself to self-reproduced selectivity. Only this arrangement makes social evolution possible, if evolution is seen as a kind of structural selection superinduced on selectivity.

Translator Notes

[1] In German I could use the untranslatable term Mitteilung.

[2] The source of this threefold distinction (which also has been usal by Austin and Searle) is Karl Bühler (1934). However, we modify the reference of this distinction. It refers not to “functions”, and not to types of “acts”, but to selections.

[3] This argument, of course, does not limit the analytical powers of an observer, who, however, has to take into account the limitations of the system.

See also Hugh Baxter’s “Niklas Luhmann’s Theory of Autopoietic Legal Systems” (doi:10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-102612-134027) for a very readable review of Luhmann’s notions of systems and autopoiesis.

Curiously, it is intriguing to also compare this to Michel Bitbol and Pier Luigi Luisi’s “Autopoiesis with or without cognition: defining life at its edge” Journal of the Royal Society Interface 1 no.1 (2004) 99-107, doi:10.1098/rsif.2004.0012, especially section 6 (but also sections 5, 7 are worth reading as well).

Also worth quoting is Luhman’s Organization and Decision, chapter 2, where he observes:

The most important of the concretizing, circle-breaking assumptions can be briefly summarized as follows:

The basal unity of an autopoietic system takes the temporal form of an event, thus an occurrence that draws a distinction between “before” and “after”; which can therefore be observed only on the basis of the distinction between before and after. When we are concerned with results, we will also talk of “operation” and, in the case of organizations, of “decision.” In comparing theories, it is important to bear this grounding in events (and not in substances) in mind. It follows that the theory presumes discontinuity – continuous disintegration – and considers continuity (thingness, substance, process) to need explaining. A theory of autopoietic systems construed in this manner is in radical opposition to all sorts of process theories, including dialectical theories. It rejects any sort of essentialism and, on the contrary, demands that every event (or in our field every decision) leave the following one to a subsequent event. Forms of essence are only directives for the repetition of selection. Autopoiesis theory is also to be seen in opposition to action theory. For action theories rely on the ideas (such as intentions, or purposes) of actors for linking up their “unit acts,” whereas events such as communications that form autopoietic systems produce a surplus of possibilities, so that something suitable can be chosen in the next step. What is then selected need not be anticipated; the decision is better and more typically made with a preceding event in mind.

A system that generates itself has to observe itself; that is to say, it has to be able to distinguish itself from its environment. This is sometimes denied, but since “organization” cannot be taken to mean the entire world, some criterion or other has to be given for defining what is indicated as an organization. The theoretically decisive question is then whether this demarcation is carried out by the organization itself or, if this is not the case, by whom.

In observing itself, the organization does not observe itself as a fixed object whose properties are recognizable but uses its own identity only to present and abandon ever new determinations. Autopoietic systems can therefore also vary their structures (one speaks of “self-organization”), provided that this is compatible with the continuation of autopoiesis. All reflection on identity that enduring self-descriptions with substantive characteristics propose therefore has to proceed highly selectively, opting for normative assumptions in the process and mostly remaining controversial.

The variability of the self taken in each case as point of reference is guaranteed by the circumstance that the organization observes itself in observation. Even the organizational system itself operates on the level of second-order observation; it constantly diagnoses its own observations (albeit not in every single case). The theory of organization must therefore set in at the level of third-order observation. It observes a system that is observing itself and can consequently extend its observation to the matters that are inaccessible to self-observation. This brings us to the classical sociological problem of latent structures and functions.

Autopoiesis is accordingly possible only if the system is in a constant state of uncertainty about itself in relation to the environment and can produce and monitor this uncertainty through self-organization. The system cannot convert the built-in (we shall also say self-generated) uncertainty into certainty. The absorption of uncertainty (which we will be dealing with in detail) can only be a transformation of the given, current form of uncertainty in adjustment to changing states of irritation. Reflection or self-description can do nothing to change this state of affairs. Every “transcendental” identity could endanger the further reproduction of the system by itself.

The best possibility for coping with uncertainty is to stick by what has already happened. Organizations therefore clarify the meaning of their action largely in retrospect. This in turn tempts them to pay little attention to the given state of the environment. This outdifferentiation at the operational level must, however, be balanced out at the structural level. The appropriateness of structures (e.g., decision-making programs or the typical time needed for operations is mostly decided with an eye to the environment.

Concepts such as self-reference, self-observation, or self-description presuppose operations that realize what is meant. These operations have to be carried out in the system (where else?). If, at the same time, one takes into account that this is not possible in the form of unconnected, singular events, one comes up against the problem of the recursive interconnection of these operations. To make itself possible, every operation has to presuppose recursion to and anticipation of other operations of the same system. This is the only way in which contexts can be identified and boundaries produced and reproduced in relation to the environment. Regardless of the fact that this state of affairs was first mentioned by a biologist, Humberto Maturana, we therefore also speak of autopoietic systems in our context. 29 When the term was first applied to organizations, it was therefore explicitly marked out as a metaphor. Too broad a concept of cognition and too narrow ties to biochemistry have strongly influenced further discussion and often led it astray.

In view of a complex, often confused debate on the subject, a number of explanatory remarks are called for.

As the term “poíesis” indicates, it is a question of producing a work, of generating the system as its own product. This naturally does not mean that the system itself has all the causes necessary for self-production at its disposal. No causal theory could accept such a concentration of all causes in one system (unless it be God). This is already true of concepts like product, production, and reproduction at the conceptual level. Indeed, only when a system not simply exists but has to reproduce itself out of its own products can it, in precisely this regard, be independent of the environment. But it is important for the system to have causes at its disposal (in an organization, for example, members bound by instructions), so that under normal circumstances it can ensure its own reproduction.

The concept stresses not the regular – let alone unconditional – certainty of production but reproduction, that is to say, production from own products. With Heinz von Foerster we can also speak of a “historical machine,” in other words, a system that produces further operations from the state in which it has put itself.

Autopoiesis is accordingly formally defined. As concept, it therefore leaves completely open what material operations it performs. They can be biochemical or neurophysiological operations, but also conscious disposal over attention or communications. Neither analogy nor metaphor enters the argument. What is involved are various applications of a general theory.

The simple concept of autopoiesis serves to distinguish and indicate a state of affairs. It has no empirical explanatory value as concept. What it does, above all, is to oblige other concepts to adapt – for example, the concept of evolution or the understanding of the relationship between system and environment. Everything else depends on what operations materialize autopoiesis, and through what structures produced by evolution and learning.

The autopoiesis of the system is realized at the level of operations. It is therefore compatible with all structures that permit operation to connect with operation. In this context the concept of structure correlates with autopoiesis, and not as it usually does with the division of work. Through operations, structures are generated and reproduced and possibly varied or simply forgotten for use in operations. We can therefore not infer structural conservatism from the concept of autopoiesis. On the contrary, it is the very closure of the system against the environment that gives it opportunities for structural variation that direct ties would not afford. Autopoietic modes of operation are typically one-off inventions of evolution, which in the course of history tend toward structural diversification. “Autopoiesis” thus refers only to a limit to possible structural variation. But as evolution over long periods and domains teaches us, it is precisely the difference between inside and outside that accelerates change. However, it naturally also teaches us that change does not obey the wishes of particular observers, so that to the observer the systems involved may appear rigid and immobile.

The recursive interconnection of operations follows neither logical nor rational rules. It merely produces connections and the prospect of connectivity. Sales figures, for example, can be treated as proof of the success and quality of the given organizational structures. Information can thus arouse suspicion of interest-specific distortions and encourage further efforts to confirm this suspicion. In international relations between organizations, for instance, ecological criteria for products may be interpreted as trade barriers. Recursions, therefore, ensure the maintenance and reproduction of suppressed paradoxes. Anything particular is always something else at the same time.

Autopoietic systems are operationally closed, and for this very reason they are autonomous systems. The concept of operational closure allows for no gradualization; in other words, it does not allow the system to operate in its environment or the environment to operate in the system. A system cannot be more or less autopoietic, but it can be more or less complex. If only for mathematically demonstrable reasons, operationally closed autopoietic systems cannot be described in terms of input/output functions. This gives rise to impressions and descriptions like freedom, arbitrariness, and intransparency, which we shall be going into in detail. The concept of operational closure, too, abstracts from causal assumptions, and thus by no means claims (even relative) causal isolation. A system can be operationally closed and, like the brain, rely strongly on the constant input of resources of a very specific sort (in this case blood circulation). Operational closure means only that the system can operate only in the context of its own operations and in so doing has to rely on structures generated by these very operations. In this sense we can speak of self-organization or, as far as operations are concerned, of structural determinedness.

These theoretical propositions have far-reaching consequences for the relationship between system and environment. In this case, operational closure does not mean that an organizational system can have no contact with the intra-societal environment. Society makes intra-societal communication possible across subsystem boundaries. On the other hand, an organization cannot participate in communication without observing itself as participant. As recipients of communications, the organization’s own structures control what information the system is irritated by and stimulated to process information itself. As sender of communications, the organization makes decisions about what it wishes to communicate and what not. To this extent, the environment remains for the organization a construction of its own whose reality is naturally not questioned. In this, we agree with Karl Weick. What is observed as environment in the organizational system is always a construct of its own, filling in the otherreference of the system. As it were, the environment validates the decisions of the system by providing the context that allows the system to determine in retrospect what has been decided (Weick speaks of enactment). It allows uncomfortable causes for the system’s own decisions to be externalized, thus “punctuating” its own operations. It is a backup area for problems, which allows the system to ignore the part it plays in generating problems. In sum, it allows the system to relate its own operations to a niche without asking why the world and society in particular contain such niches. This is what the old concept of “milieu” means.

Although biology has given us the concept of autopoiesis, we can very well leave it open whether and how the reproduction of relatively stable large chemical molecules in cells can be understood as autopoietic: perhaps because it is possible only in cells, perhaps because they are highly unstable entities that have to be constantly replaced. In the case of social systems, autopoiesis is much easier to recognize, or at least quite differently structured, for social systems are not entities requiring replication that constantly have to be replaced. Like consciousness systems, they consist only of events, which pass in arising and which have to be succeeded not by the same events but by others. The ongoing transition from one element to another – the ongoing reproduction of otherness – can be understood only as autopoiesis, for it presupposes connectivity generated within the system itself. No environment could input anything suitable at the speed required. Only the system itself can stop its own decay, which takes place from moment to moment. And this makes very specific demands on structures; they must not strive for repetition but first of all regulate the transition from one to the other. As we have seen, this requires orientation on highly referential but also determinable meaning.

Autopoiesis relies on a system being able to generate internal improbabilities deviating from what is usual. Structurally limited contingencies then take effect in the system as information – as information not from the environment, which the system cannot contact, but at best via the environment (not in biological systems such as cells, immune systems, brains, but only in systems that can distinguish between themselves and the environment in the medium of meaning). An autopoietic system can thus inform only itself, and in the system information has the function of selectively limiting the options for continuing the system’s own operations, with the further function that decisions can be made relatively rapidly through connectivity options.

Closure in this operational sense is a condition for the openness of systems. Older systems theory had, with respect to the law of entropy in thermodynamics, spoken of open systems to explain how order is developed and maintained against the trend. But it failed to ask what enables a system to be open; in other words, what systemic order has to exist for a system to be able to afford openness and possibly even increase the complexity of the aspects in which it can be open. This question was not put because empirical examples and/or the input/output model had been the orienting factors. Although even older cybernetics had spoken of systems that were closed with regard to information and open with regard to energy, only the more recent theory of self-referential systems clearly states that operational closure is the condition for openness.

The theory of autopoietic systems distinguishes strictly between the continuation of autopoiesis and the maintenance of certain structures that serve to ensure sufficient redundancy and connectivity, and thus make autopoiesis possible in the first place – in one way or another. Structures are thus assumed to be functional, contingent, and differently possible. From the disposition of the theory, this permits understanding for the ambiguity of structural arrangements, the need to interpret them, and their circumventability. We could also say that the theory of autopoietic systems draws the attention of the observer particularly to the circumstance that structures have meaning, and thus have to be constituted in open horizons of reference to other possibilities, whereas autopoiesis itself is not a topic in autopoietic systems. This brings us very close to theories of “symbolic interactionism” or theories of the hermeneutic “interpretation” of reality, without, however, having to take recourse to behaviorist (Mead) or subjectivist assumptions. In what follows, we will repeatedly see that uncertainties have to be reduced and ambiguities clarified in the decision-making process; but also that uncertainty and ambiguity in the processing of meaning are always regenerated, and that the autopoiesis of organizations, in particular, is kept in motion precisely by uncertainty being both reduced and renewed. The impressive gain this complex conceptual maneuver affords is to shift the basic problem in systems theory from maintaining resources to that of maintaining a difference. This also means that one no longer speaks of “existential” necessities (an organization can exist only if…) but of conditions of possibility for observing organizations. If they cannot be distinguished, they cannot be observed. If we describe organizations as autopoietic systems, we are therefore always concerned with the generation and reproduction of a difference (systems-theoretically: between system and environment), and the concept of autopoiesis means that an observer who uses it presupposes that this difference is generated by the system itself and reproduced by systemic operations.

What this means

Communication as an autopoiesitic system means communication is in response to earlier communications.