Observing Society: Meaning, Communication, and Social Systems By ...

all three of these components while also preserving their distinctiveness, a paradoxical unity in difference that represents what social systems theory recognizes as a “form” (Luhmann 2001a:257). The distinction or severance between the form's inside and outside is produced by the drawn line because that is the boundary between them. There is virtually no limit to what is included on the outside of the circle. To observe the circle we indicate or mark the space inside the line, but we could just as easily “cross over” and indicate the outside, which might yield the appearance of a paper with a hole in it, a rusty screw on the compass, or a dog lying in the corner of the room. Our self-referential calling determines whether we indicate the inside or the outside, but observing the circle requires drawing a distinction between the two sides. Every observation (and every system) entails a marked space, an unmarked space, and a self-referentially constructed border that produces the difference. The two-sided unity in difference or “the form” with which an observer continually operates may become the subject of self-reflection and critique because it was itself selected among alternative forms (see Baecker 1999). Once again, both the form and the particular side of that form chosen result from an observer's decisions; they are two different choices, both of which reveal the self-reference of the observing system.

Observations make sense because of self-reference. Every observer—by drawing a distinction and indicating one side—does so according to their own logic. Working alone, an observing social or psychic system produces its own account of why it selects one side of a distinction and not the other. While it cannot choose both sides without trapping itself in a loop of uncertainty, the observing system can pick one side in this moment and switch to the other side in the next, oscillating between the two possibilities of the form. An indication and a crossing cannot happen simultaneously—each captures its own moment in time. Nonetheless, whenever the observing system has a reason to select one side and not the other, it is certain that the meaning behind the choice was generated inside the system itself. This point will eventually take on fundamental importance when we connect it to the binary codes and programs used by social systems. Codes set up distinctions, but programs inform