The concept of *event* expresses the temporal quality of elements in meaning-constituting systems.
Communication in social systems and thoughts in psychic systems are not Permanent States, but events without duration. The →Autopoiesis of these systems is forced to constantly reproduce elements that disappear in the moment they occur. Moreover, every event (communication or thought) does not simply occur; it also establishes the difference between before and after. With this difference, referential horizons for other possibilities (of communication in social systems and of thoughts in psychic systems) are also established. That is to say, other things are possible after the event, and this difference (as a difference) gives the elements of the system, despite their lack of duration, a certain operative connectivity.
The relationship between continuity and discontinuity, i.e., between the system structure and its final elements, is one of the most important consequences of introducing the concept of event into systems theory.
On the one hand, elements have no temporal duration and must be constantly produced: the system must select them anew in each moment. On the other hand, despite the discontinuity at the level of the elements, the →Structures, which allow the production of elements, guarantee a certain continuity: they must remain available beyond the moment in which a communication or thought occurs.
The relationships allowed by the structures do not coincide with the relationships between elements. For instance, the structures of →Expectations in social systems represent an initial selection of what can happen, while communications (the operations) require a further selection in order to occur.
If the relations between the elements (as events) were to coincide with the relations allowed by the structures, the structure and the system itself would disappear along with the event.
On the other hand, elements as Permanent States result in a stark reduction of the internal variability of a system. This is the case for organic systems, which reproduce themselves on the basis of long-lasting Cells.
The structural variability of organisms is highly restricted: a human organism, upon finding itself in the desert, does not suddenly transform into a camel.
The →Complexity of social and psychic systems is a temporalized complexity, and it must be constructed and structured in the temporal dimension. Thus, the complexity that a system can reach depends not only on the relationships between its constitutive elements, but also on the variability of those states in temporal succession.
The potential to exploit temporal succession of events leads to higher levels of complexity: the relationships between elements can change from one moment to the next, and the system has a wide variety of possible connections at its disposal, allowing its assumption of different states depending on the environmental situation.
Introducing the concept of event has a further consequence, which concerns the concept of relationships of interpenetration [→Interpenetration and Structural Coupling] in social and psychic systems. Since communication and thoughts occur only as events, social systems can make use of the complexity of consciousness without having to represent psychic-structural features internally, and vice versa.
Though every single event functions as an element of both consciousness and communication, it disappears immediately, and this leads to constructing differing meaning connections in each system. What is produced as a conscious operation only gains social and communicative relevance in moments without duration: every individual can begin to communicate or be the addressee of a communication, but communication disappears as soon as it occurs, and with it the coexistence of psychic and social events.
In the next moment, a new communication must be started or not started, as the case may be. The coexistence of communicative and conscious operations is reduced to an event, which, as a communication, has a selectivity for the social system, and, as a thought, a different selectivity for the consciousness.
Both types of system remain in the environment of the other and their boundaries remain intact: the momentariness of their coupling ensures that they do not merge with one another and that interpenetration is dissolved and created anew. If everything that was thought and said lasted, an uncontrollable chaos would very soon emerge.
The concept of event also concerns what is understood as “System Change.” At the operative level, meaning-constituting systems are very unstable, their basal →Self-Reference signaled by the constant destruction and production of elements. Elements as events can only be identified through the difference between before and after, i.e., elements cannot be changed.
Only Structures can change, because their identity remains relatively stable over time. For instance, a scientific discipline can change its paradigms upon the establishment of new distinctions that guide the development of research. However, in order for that to happen, communications must be produced that orient themselves to this new distinction.
This means that social systems, at the level of its structures of expectations are capable of learning. This cannot happen at the level of communication, since communication flow is irreversible. The stability of systems with temporal complexity must therefore be attributed to their structures and not their autopoiesis, where they are instead constitutively unstable.
From this perspective, memory [→Time] does not have the function of maintaining elements, but rather the function of maintaining their ability to generate structures. This is possible only due to the constant reproduction of disintegration and reintegration of elements.
Unlike objects, which manifest only their own state, identifying events requires distinguishing between two states: the state before and the state after. This gives the event a paradoxical character—it is neither the before, nor the after. Instead, it is the unity of this distinction: an event’s identity is itself a distinction and both the before and the after are always present in every event. [G.C.] – (Unlocking Luhmann, p 87– 89)
Social Systems (1995: Ch. 8.III); The Autopoiesis of Social Systems (1986); Selbstreferentielle Systeme (1987).
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