| Chapter 1: | Distinctions: Observation, Meaning, and the Reduction of Complexity |
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at least as much about the observer as about the referent of observation” (2001:24).
Understanding how observers make meaningful connections between operations is, in Luhmann's words, the “pre-eminent question” for a theory of self-producing systems:
The work of Whitehead, Cassirer, and others steers us to an awareness of how observers construct their world through symbols. Under the influence of George Spencer Brown, Niklas Luhmann and Stephan Fuchs lead us to appreciate what can be learned by observing how different observers process the meaning of their own observations by making symbolic, imaginary connections between them. For social system theory, the main subject of interest is not the psychic system of the individual; but society as an observer of its own kind. How does society use symbols to mediate its reality, a reality that may consequently inform the observations of multiple psychic systems?
Contemporary social system theory seeks to describe how social systems draw distinctions between themselves and their environments, how social systems self-referentially organize the complexity of their worlds with the help of symbolic forms, and how social systems reproduce themselves by remembering and connecting meaningful observations (Luhmann 2006). The central task of sociology is to describe how and under what conditions particular observers make particular selections with reference to particular distinctions. In other words, sociologists are second-order observers who trace the associations of meaning that