Soziale Systeme

Niklas Luhmann attempts to go beyond the current state of discussion in sociology. He assumes that a paradigm shift in general systems theory also opens up new opportunities for the theory of social systems and addresses the usual objections against a technological application of the concept of systems. The book seeks to represent a conceptual complexity and interdependence using the means of ordinary language. The unity of the theory lies in the coherence of a large number of conceptual decisions, which are partly derived from a retrospective view of the sociological tradition and partly based on guidelines from cybernetics, biology, communication theory, and evolutionary theory. Luhmann sees this combinatorial attempt as an essential prerequisite for further work on a theory of modern society.