Knowledge: Construction
Knowledge: Construction
Lecture at the Berne Kunstmuseum on October 23, 1988
In this treaty Luhmann unfolds the theoretical foundations of his social scientific analyses, his epistemological position and his operative constructivism. This approach clearly makes itself distinct from the former, subject philosophical approaches represented by the majority as well as from the group of radical constructivists, and, in contrast with those, operates with the distinctive notions of the system and its environment. Luhmann here formulates that in the theory of autopoietic systems how the presumptions of a common world (the starting point of subject philosophy) could be replaced by the theory of the observation of the observing systems (the second-order cybernetics). Th e article would recognize thus the turn of the history of philosophy that is able to answer the question of epistemology. This text frequently, cited by Luhmann himself, also aims to illuminate the author’s otherwise shortly presented standing (“systems do exist”) in the Social Systems through its more elaborate explanation.