Observing Systems: a Cybernetic Perspective on System/Environment Relations

Descriptions of society have changed during the preceding decades. Expressions such as “knowledge society” or “information society” are nowadays generally used. In science, and social science in particular, the concept of information has entered as fundamental concept. It is no longer relegated to special fields of inquiry, such as public opinion research, mass communication or educational technology (cf. Craig, 1999). Instead, this concept, and the closely related concepts of communication and knowledge, are replacing the fundamental analytical categories of social action, social exchange, social role, etc. As is well-known, the entry of these concepts into the foundations of science after World War II coincided with the diffusion of new technologies of information processing. It has been convincingly demonstrated that there is a relatively direct lineage from the early cybernetic information theories to the adoption of constructivist theories of information and communication in contemporary social theory (Hayles, 1999). In this paper, I want to argue that the potential of cybernetics has not yet been fully utilized. A careful (re)consideration of the insights of cybernetics opens up new horizons for social theory. The first sections of this paper will focus on the rise of second-order cybernetics and its constructivist epistemology. Special attention is paid to the epistemological consequences of the mathematical calculus of George Spencer Brown. Afterwards, I will highlight its impact on the writings of the sociologist Niklas Luhmann. In the final section, I argue for a redefinition of social rationality that incorporates the insights of second-order cybernetics.