Dear Soren,
In my opinion, there are two issues here (again J ): 1. the issue of non-verbal (e.g., bodily) communication; 2. the meta-biological or transdisciplinary integration vs. the differentiation among the disciplines. Ad 1. Although I don't agree with Luhmann on many things, his insistence that everything communicated among humans is culturally coded, is fully acceptable to me. "Love" is not a counter-example. Unlike animals, our behavior is regulated by codes of communication. Preparing "Love" as a passion, Luhmann spent months in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris reading the emergence of romantic love in the literature of the early 18th century. A similar intuition can be found in Giddens' book "The Transformation of Intimacy". Of course, one sometimes needs bodily presence; Luhmann uses here the concept of "symbiotic mechanisms"; but this is only relevant for the variation. The selection mechanisms - which impulses are to be followed - are cultural. Among human beings, this means: in terms of mutual and/or shared expectations. The realm of expecting the other to entertain expectations, shapes a "second contingency" which is otherwise absent in the animal kingdom. (If you wish, you can consider it as a function of the cortex as a symbiotic mechanism.) This special status of human society should make us resilient against using biological metaphors. Socio-biology has a terrible history since it links social processes with evolutionary ones. The rule of law, however, protects us against "survival of the fittest" as a structure of expectations. One cannot define "the fittest" without using one (coded!) vocabulary or another, and these vocabularies (discourses; Foucault) can be different; but always disciplining. The codes function as selection mechanisms different from an assumed "nature". (Inga Ivanova used the term "fractional manifold".) The selection mechanisms are also coordination mechanisms; their differentiation enables us to process more complexity. 2. As Krippendorff once emphasized, one should be suspicious about using the word "system" in this context because it entails a biological metaphor of integration and wholeness. Because the codes tend to differentiate and thus to generate misunderstandings (variation), the social system can process complexity by an order of magnitude more than any biological system. The notion of "system" tends to reify, whereas in sociological theorizing it is important to keep a firm eye on the second contingency of interacting expectations. The clarification of misunderstandings, for example, enables us to solve problems; sometimes one may need to invent new metaphors and words. From this perspective, the sciences can be considered as rationalized systems of expectations which operate in terms of codes retained above the individual level. (Note that this is different from belief structures - cf. the sociology of scientific knowledge of Bloor and Barnes -- because beliefs remain attributes to agents of communities of agents.) "Transdisciplinary integration" may be needed for one's internal well-being (or soul), but it can be expected to remain a local instantiation. Since we decapitated the ointed body of the King of France, there is no center left (Lyotard). One may feel a need for integration and community. Community is another coded form of communication (religion?). I provocatively advised my students to keep that celebration for the Sunday mornings. Aren't we celebrating our community today? Central to our community is the notion of "information". A mathematical theory of information (e.g., Shannon) enables us to entertain models that one can use from one level to another, for testing hypothesis. These models may come from biology (e.g. Lotka-Volterra), engineering (anticipatory systems; Dubois), complex systems theory (Simon, Ashby), etc. For example: can interactions among codes be modeled using Lotka-Volterra? (Ivanova &Leydesdorff, 2014; in Scientometrics). The math is not meta, but epi because the other domains can also be considered as specific domains of communication. Maturana, for example, argues that a biology is generated whenever molecules can be communicated (as more complex than atoms exchanged in a chemistry). 3. Let me return to the theme of "love": note the transition from "Love" as Christ, and thus the only intimate relations (17th century) to love as passion in interpersonal relations. Here, Husserl is relevant: the intersubjective is secularized. Luhmann proposed to operationalize this as communication. In later work (after 1990), Luhmann than moved from the communication of expectations to "observations". Observations, however, serve us to update the expectations. The dynamics of expectations are the proper subject of a sociology. Observations presume observing "systems"; but it is problematic to consider evolving discourse as a "system" (see above). The codes in the communication of expectations enable us also to be surprised by observations. (In the Shannon formulas, the denominator than goes to zero and the expected information value therefore to infinity.) Let me add that I don't wish to deny the fruitfulness of the Piercean system of analyzing signs can have fruitful applications in the information sciences. However, its status is not different from a methodology or a mathematical theory of communication. Best, Loet _____ Loet Leydesdorff Professor, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) <mailto:l...@leydesdorff.net> l...@leydesdorff.net ; <http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/ Honorary Professor, <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/> SPRU, University of Sussex; Guest Professor <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/> Zhejiang Univ., Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html> ISTIC, Beijing; Visiting Professor, <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/> Birkbeck, University of London; <http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en> http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en
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