Social systems

A major challenge confronting contemporary theory is to overcome its fixation on written narratives and the culture of print. In this presentation of a general theory of systems, Germany's most prominent and controversial social thinker sets out a contribution to sociology that reworks our understanding of meaning and communication. Luhmann responds to the theory crisis in sociology with a genealogy of his own, which includes a cybernetician (Heinz von Foerster), two evolutionary biologists (Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco Varela), and an obscure mathematician (George Spencer Brown), not…