Social systems are my academic fetish. I *WANT* to study them as
autonomous self-organizing systems, and am implementing this idea
computaitonally. It would be NIFTY from an epistemological
srtandpoint if I could say they were autopoietic, but I'm not going to
go making my own DEFINITION just so I can sound cool....greg
stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu
Sorry, I think you can take the most radical definition of autopoiesis to
do that. If you really want to do that and if you really are able to see the
world with new eyes. Social systems don't have to do very much with
people and their thougts if you take the argument of an autonomous (but not
autark) social system seriously. Social systems reproduce themselve, as
communication-systems, by social situations. The basal elements are
communications, which grow up, "live" for a time through a topic, and die.
There are components and relations between the components. The classical
way to make science is, take first the relations (ontological kategories:
"Wechselwirkung" (physics), relations (mathematics) or conflict
(social-theory) and logically: contradiction (dialectic)) and say, that
both: the real and the logical level ground, are the same. The most
important category for classical sciencemaking (and speaking about the
world (natural, social, psychical) is the relation. At last, all elements
are relations of relations. For example: In a classical oriented sociology
you have classes and, much more important because it is the relation, the
class-struggle, which structured and organized the organisations classes
(and second the classes structured the class-struggle. You know then what
class-struggle is, but you dont know what classes are.) We all think in
this tradition-line: "first relations then components" til yet, if we want
to construct and analyse clear. But with the autopoietic turn
in systemtheory you take as sociologist the way round: Now the components
(systems in systems ("classes")) are "self-intelligent", and the relations
("class-struggle") are perturbations to the systems.
The social-systems are closed by binary operatings: For example: The
oeconomic system scaned its surrounding by payment/not-payment. This is
its inner code. No other system understand this code. The programming of
this code and its openess for surrounding are prices. The oeconomic system
reconstruct its surrounding only with prices. On this level the oeconomic
system ant the other systems reconstruct each other. But the systems dont
understand (understanding in the hermeneutic meaning) eachother, they
reconstruct eachother by its own codes. With this construction (difference
between code (binary-difference) and programming (many quantity-differences
in the same medium)) you can understand the openess and clothness
of social systems on the same time. An oeconimist can see his special
world only in dollars and nothing else. Law and truth, love and religion
are shown on his oeconomic-monitor as conditions of paying.
The specific quality of autopoiesis is not selfreference/
selfreproduction, this is an old topic (with G.W. Hegel at its top). The
new revolutionary element of autopoiesis is its elementary character: "the
ontological monism". With the construction I have referred in my meagre
english words, you take the chance of a new start to understand the
emergence of social systems after Marx, Durkheim and Parsons.
- Martin
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Martin Rost / Germany, Kiel / maro@maroki.toppoint.de