Social Systems

The concept of "reference" should be defined in a way that moves it closer to the concept of observation. With it, we would like to designate an operation composed of the elements distinction and indication (in Spencer brown's sense). This concerns the indication of something within the context of a (likewise operatively introduced) distinction from something else. Referring becomes observing when the distinction is used to acquire information about what is indicated (which generally requires distinctions that are understood more narrowly). Normally referring is accompanied by an interest in observation and thus by an interest in acquiring information. Nevertheless, we would like to keep the terms observation and interest or motive separate to maintain the possibility of using concepts like system reference and self-reference without implying the possibility of or interests in observation.

The concepts of reference and observation, including self-reference and self-observation, are introduced with respect to the operative handling of a distinction. They imply that this distinction is posited as a difference. This positing operates as a presupposition in the system's operations, and nothing more is usually required than working with that presupposition. One wants to make some tea. The water is not yet on. Thus one must wait. The differences between tea/ another drink, putting the water on/ not putting the water on, having to wait/ being able to drink structure the situation without it being necessary or even helpful to thematize the unity of the difference used at any one time. We need a concept for the special case of orientation to the unity of the difference, which we will call distance. In other words, systems gain distance from information (and possibly form themselves) if they make the distinctions that they use as differences accessible to themselves as a unity. The concept should make it possible to formulate connections between the differentiation of social systems and gaining distance.

If one wants to thematize the unity of a difference, one must determine both sides of the distinction. It would be pointless to confront something determinate with something entirely indeterminate, and therefore nobody does it. Introducing the unity of a difference into the process of acquiring and processing information thus requires introducing limitation as a condition of the productivity of operations. Perhaps the simplest procedure uses classification: one distinguishes one illness from other illnesses because one can accept an indeterminable counter-concept to health which cannot be resolved into different types of health. With the help of this technique, one can deal with differences as unities, can decide whether one is dealing with health/ illness or with something else. When this is possible, one can form difference-specific social systems - for example, systems that concern themselves with illness.

This classificatory procedure is not the only one possible. There are functional equivalents. Among the most demanding forms are binary schematisms within which every determination must be acquired by negating its opposite: truth, for example, by negating falsehood (and not by intuition or tradition!). Unlike classification, such schematisms effect no secure exclusions. They produce their material themselves. They postulate that from their specific angle of vision everything takes on one or the other value. Therefore they require function systems that scan the entire world for information according to their own schematism and that can afford indifference to all other schematisms.

While classifications not only can but must be handled in rapid succession because they are so concrete, binary schematisms provide a basis for differentiating social systems that are correspondingly specialized. Thus a social system for handling patients is not differentiated on the basis of a distinction between different illnesses. It becomes possible only when the difference between illness and health is used as the occasion to hold a specific system responsible and at the same time to concede this system indifference in other respects.

If the handling of difference becomes more and more ambitious in this sense - and obviously this is a characteristic of modern society - the distance from the phenomena, from the sources of information and from communication partners, also increases. The sociology of professional occupations addresses this, but it has a more general significance. It distances practically all function systems from differences practised in the lifeworld (which does not exclude reciprocities). Thus an artist who speculates about a composition sees other differences in "nature" than do those in the lifeworld. Thus economic theory is needed (or else it would not be a useful theory) to keep a cool head with respect to the difference between rich and poor, which is of burning interest for anyone who considers himself. And thus science uses the distinction between true and false to produce a knowledge that science itself may not be able to survive.

pp.442-444.

Even "self-reference" is reference in the strict sense, indication according to a distinction. The distinctiveness of this concept lies in that the operation of reference is included in what it indicates. It indicates something to which it belongs. This is no tautology. The operation of reference does not indicate itself as an operation. Always guided by a distinction, it indicates something with which it identifies. This identification, and thereby the attribution of self-reference to a self, can assume different forms depending on which distinction determines the self. One can distinguish three forms of self-reference...

1) We will speak of basal self-reference when the basic distinction is between element and relation. In basal self-reference, the self that refers itself is also an element, for example, an event or, in social systems, a communication...

2) We will speak of reflexivity when the basic distinction is between before and after. Here the self that refers itself is not an aspect of the distinction but a process constituted by it. A process emerges with the help of the before/ after difference if the additional condition of an increase in selectivity is fulfilled. Thus communication as a rule is process, namely, is determined in its elemental events by the expectation of a reaction and the reaction to an expectation.... Thus within the course of a communicative process one can communicate about that communicative process (communication about communication), (observation of observation)...

3) We will speak of reflection when the basic distinction is between system and environment ... This occurs, for example, in all forms of self-presentation that assume the environment does not immediately accept the system in the way it would like itself to be understood.