System Theory and Empirical Science
Luhmann's project is, most fundamentally, to limn the social (Luhmann 1982, ix). In undertaking such a task, he departs from a positivist view of how science works--by patiently accumulating knowledge through empirical investigation as opposed to actively constructing a theoretical framework that can tie all this knowledge together. Instead, he adopts the view often voiced by natural scientists that obtaining the right concepts is necessary before significant progress can be made, following the stipulation of Talcott Parsons that choosing the right "primary abstractions" is of fundamental importance (Ackerman and Parsons 1966, 24-25). His project is also guided by two other views of how scientific research should be carried out. One is that one should aim for general theories (Luhmann 1995, xlvii; 1984, 9). The other is his often-voiced observation that science tends to look for successively smaller "fundamental entities" (Luhmann 1990a, 329). Accordingly, the way he has carried out his project is by starting off from the most "general" theory possible, system theory, and then "respecifying" this theory to conform to the social domain as defined by what its fundamental constituent entities arc namely, communications.
Empirical science, on the other hand, does pay attention to specific qualities of the entities with which it deals, and the way it does so is by looking at different kinds of entities separately. Thus, physicists study physical systems while biologists study biological ones. Despite this compartmentalization of the sciences, science ultimately does achieve an all-encompassing unity by making connections between the various disciplines: biology links up with chemistry, chemistry with physics, and so on, but without everything being "reduced" to physics since "higher-level" disciplines can point out regularities that are not apparent at and cannot even be described on the physical level (Oppenheim and Putnam 1958). It is not too hard to determine the "separation of labor" between the empirical sciences and more abstract disciplines such as system theory. Only the former can provide valid and complete scientific explanations. This is because science ideally aims to extend explanations as far as possible down the links of a chain of causes, producing a given event or phenomenon (Railton 1981). If one goes far enough down such a chain, one will have to deal with the specific qualities of the entities involved, rather than the relations between entities with which system theory deals. In addition, the empirical sciences can import any insights or discoveries from system theory into themselves, so it cannot be the case that there are phenomena that only system theory can explain. One thus sees that the role of system theory is rather like that of mathematics: by working in a purely conjectural abstract realm, it is left free to explore conceptual models without concern for their immediate applicability and may thus come across ideas that would not otherwise have been found that may be of explanatory value in the empirical sciences.
The role of system theory is hence to look for analogies across disciplinary boundaries in case such analogies lead to models that can be of use in particular empirical sciences. Accordingly, it makes no more sense to say, as Luhmann (1995,12; 1984, 30) does, that "there are systems" without specifying what kind of systems--chemical, biological, or whatever--than it does to say that "there are Euclidean planes": both concepts are abstractions with no empirical referent. Failure to understand this point can lead to the construction of a harmful ontology and to what one might call a "metaphysical" mode of thinking. Now, there is nothing wrong with constructing ontologies. As we know, for example, from Quine (1969), science makes ontological decisions all the time when it tells us, for instance, that water exists. The way it comes to this conclusion, however, is by considering a multitude of empirical information in relation to a network of theory that is able to account for that information. To say that water exists is on one level merely shorthand for a whole range of empirical data, and once one says it, to make the "ontological jump" and take the statement at face value is merely to incorporate it into the commonsense point of view that there really is something out there. For the aforementioned reason that system theory, because of its abstractness, does not make well-defined links with empirical data, one is not entitled to make the same ontological decision with respect to "systems in general." The unfortunate consequence of supposing that one can is to start thinking that by remaining within system theory, one can really explain anything. This is what Maturana and Varela do. Unfortunately, this is also what Luhmann ends up doing: even though he "respecifies" system theory to deal with social systems, he does not do so in a way that enables him to deal with concrete social systems but remains immersed in the ontological/explanatory structure of the theory of autopoietic systems. Thus, in order for the theory of social systems to be an adequate scientific theory (and that means an empirical and explanatory theory), it must be able not only to describe the social domain by saying that it consists of communications but also to explain (or at least point to an explanation) how communications come about. All that it is able to do, however, is to refer to the definition of autopoietic systems, which is that they produce themselves by producing their elements. Thus, communications are produced because it is in the "nature" of social systems to produce them. As we have seen, the theory of autopoietic systems is not able to explain how biological cells produce their elements, and there is no reason to think that it would be able to do so in the case of social systems. It is hard to see how one would explain the production of communications, other than by considering the brain and/or mental processes of individual actors.(n10)
Start from the body, taken as a whole, of scientific theory that does not deal with the social and then see what additional theoretical categories and explanatory strategies one must add to it if one is to adequately explain the social.(n12) Thus, since it is commonly accepted that the higher one goes up the hierarchy of "levels of emergence" from the physical to the biological to the social, the less reliable one's knowledge becomes, one may take as given biology and especially evolutionary biology (but not, of course, on a naively reductionist understanding), take with a grain of salt theory from cognitive science--but be ready to incorporate portions of it if they appear to account in an efficient way for wide ranges of social phenomena--and only then see what else one needs if one is to be able to account adequately for social phenomena. And in taking the last step, as we noted at the outset, let us take Luhmann's theory as our starting point and try to change it as little as possible. This means, among other things, that we follow Luhmann in adopting the social system as a fundamental category of social theory. But we do so not by supposing that "there exist systems" that can be adequately understood by means of the self-contained theory of autopoietic systems but by being willing to exploit the analogies that exist between organized collections of individuals and other kinds of systems, such as cells.
It can be seen that this way of going about, what Parsons (1997) called "building social systems theory," has certain correspondences with Luhmann's way of thinking about it. Luhmann often remarks that in doing social theory, one should take the normal as improbable, for instance, when asking how social order is possible (Luhmann 1981,195-285). This can be taken as a distancing strategy, a way of getting one to stop taking the social for granted and to look at it from the outside. Our program of seeing what one needs to add to the natural sciences to deal with social phenomena, while trying to keep the third-person view of the natural sciences, serves the same purpose. Also, we have already noted that Luhmann remarks that he follows the practice of the natural sciences of seeking out ever-smaller constituent elements. We take that practice to be merely a consequence of the basic aim of science to aim for unification (Friedman 1981; Kitcher 1981). The further one can extend explanations, the more unified science becomes. Therefore, if one can explain the behavior of some particles by doing so in terms of the smaller particles constituting them, one should do so. Looking at it thus in terms of the goal of explanatory unification, as opposed to drawing general conclusions from what that leads to in practice in certain cases, leads one, however, to a different evaluation of the role of "elementary entity" played by communications in Luhmann's theory. Communications do indeed appear to be elementary constituents of social systems (whether they are the only ones is another matter), but this does not mean that one can stop the analysis there: the goal of explanatory unification still impels one to ask how they come about, and if to answer this one has to go down to the level of individual actors, one is forced to do so, if not to stay there forever, then at least to show how the connection can be made.
Empirical science, on the other hand, does pay attention to specific qualities of the entities with which it deals, and the way it does so is by looking at different kinds of entities separately. Thus, physicists study physical systems while biologists study biological ones. Despite this compartmentalization of the sciences, science ultimately does achieve an all-encompassing unity by making connections between the various disciplines: biology links up with chemistry, chemistry with physics, and so on, but without everything being "reduced" to physics since "higher-level" disciplines can point out regularities that are not apparent at and cannot even be described on the physical level (Oppenheim and Putnam 1958). It is not too hard to determine the "separation of labor" between the empirical sciences and more abstract disciplines such as system theory. Only the former can provide valid and complete scientific explanations. This is because science ideally aims to extend explanations as far as possible down the links of a chain of causes, producing a given event or phenomenon (Railton 1981). If one goes far enough down such a chain, one will have to deal with the specific qualities of the entities involved, rather than the relations between entities with which system theory deals. In addition, the empirical sciences can import any insights or discoveries from system theory into themselves, so it cannot be the case that there are phenomena that only system theory can explain. One thus sees that the role of system theory is rather like that of mathematics: by working in a purely conjectural abstract realm, it is left free to explore conceptual models without concern for their immediate applicability and may thus come across ideas that would not otherwise have been found that may be of explanatory value in the empirical sciences.
The role of system theory is hence to look for analogies across disciplinary boundaries in case such analogies lead to models that can be of use in particular empirical sciences. Accordingly, it makes no more sense to say, as Luhmann (1995,12; 1984, 30) does, that "there are systems" without specifying what kind of systems--chemical, biological, or whatever--than it does to say that "there are Euclidean planes": both concepts are abstractions with no empirical referent. Failure to understand this point can lead to the construction of a harmful ontology and to what one might call a "metaphysical" mode of thinking. Now, there is nothing wrong with constructing ontologies. As we know, for example, from Quine (1969), science makes ontological decisions all the time when it tells us, for instance, that water exists. The way it comes to this conclusion, however, is by considering a multitude of empirical information in relation to a network of theory that is able to account for that information. To say that water exists is on one level merely shorthand for a whole range of empirical data, and once one says it, to make the "ontological jump" and take the statement at face value is merely to incorporate it into the commonsense point of view that there really is something out there. For the aforementioned reason that system theory, because of its abstractness, does not make well-defined links with empirical data, one is not entitled to make the same ontological decision with respect to "systems in general." The unfortunate consequence of supposing that one can is to start thinking that by remaining within system theory, one can really explain anything. This is what Maturana and Varela do. Unfortunately, this is also what Luhmann ends up doing: even though he "respecifies" system theory to deal with social systems, he does not do so in a way that enables him to deal with concrete social systems but remains immersed in the ontological/explanatory structure of the theory of autopoietic systems. Thus, in order for the theory of social systems to be an adequate scientific theory (and that means an empirical and explanatory theory), it must be able not only to describe the social domain by saying that it consists of communications but also to explain (or at least point to an explanation) how communications come about. All that it is able to do, however, is to refer to the definition of autopoietic systems, which is that they produce themselves by producing their elements. Thus, communications are produced because it is in the "nature" of social systems to produce them. As we have seen, the theory of autopoietic systems is not able to explain how biological cells produce their elements, and there is no reason to think that it would be able to do so in the case of social systems. It is hard to see how one would explain the production of communications, other than by considering the brain and/or mental processes of individual actors.(n10)
Start from the body, taken as a whole, of scientific theory that does not deal with the social and then see what additional theoretical categories and explanatory strategies one must add to it if one is to adequately explain the social.(n12) Thus, since it is commonly accepted that the higher one goes up the hierarchy of "levels of emergence" from the physical to the biological to the social, the less reliable one's knowledge becomes, one may take as given biology and especially evolutionary biology (but not, of course, on a naively reductionist understanding), take with a grain of salt theory from cognitive science--but be ready to incorporate portions of it if they appear to account in an efficient way for wide ranges of social phenomena--and only then see what else one needs if one is to be able to account adequately for social phenomena. And in taking the last step, as we noted at the outset, let us take Luhmann's theory as our starting point and try to change it as little as possible. This means, among other things, that we follow Luhmann in adopting the social system as a fundamental category of social theory. But we do so not by supposing that "there exist systems" that can be adequately understood by means of the self-contained theory of autopoietic systems but by being willing to exploit the analogies that exist between organized collections of individuals and other kinds of systems, such as cells.
It can be seen that this way of going about, what Parsons (1997) called "building social systems theory," has certain correspondences with Luhmann's way of thinking about it. Luhmann often remarks that in doing social theory, one should take the normal as improbable, for instance, when asking how social order is possible (Luhmann 1981,195-285). This can be taken as a distancing strategy, a way of getting one to stop taking the social for granted and to look at it from the outside. Our program of seeing what one needs to add to the natural sciences to deal with social phenomena, while trying to keep the third-person view of the natural sciences, serves the same purpose. Also, we have already noted that Luhmann remarks that he follows the practice of the natural sciences of seeking out ever-smaller constituent elements. We take that practice to be merely a consequence of the basic aim of science to aim for unification (Friedman 1981; Kitcher 1981). The further one can extend explanations, the more unified science becomes. Therefore, if one can explain the behavior of some particles by doing so in terms of the smaller particles constituting them, one should do so. Looking at it thus in terms of the goal of explanatory unification, as opposed to drawing general conclusions from what that leads to in practice in certain cases, leads one, however, to a different evaluation of the role of "elementary entity" played by communications in Luhmann's theory. Communications do indeed appear to be elementary constituents of social systems (whether they are the only ones is another matter), but this does not mean that one can stop the analysis there: the goal of explanatory unification still impels one to ask how they come about, and if to answer this one has to go down to the level of individual actors, one is forced to do so, if not to stay there forever, then at least to show how the connection can be made.
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