The concepts of Interpenetration and Structural Coupling explain the relationship between systems that are internally determined by their own operations and structures. These systems are in each other’s environment and irritate each other, without having access to each other’s operations.
Each system is a source of Irritation for the other, and it must continuously process these irritations. Irritations are not the result of transmitting information from one system to the other: they are self-produced within the system, as systems are operationally closed [→Autopoiesis].
Interpenetration and structural coupling are not based on a type of system project; they simply happen on the basis of the →System/Environment differentiation.
What is interesting in social systems theory is the interpenetration and structural coupling between →Social Systems and →Psychic Systems. Social systems are closed →Meaning-constituting systems based on the operation of →Communication, and do not have access to the operation of thinking in psychic systems. Psychic systems are closed meaning-constituting systems based on the operation of consciousness, and cannot be included in social systems. Communication cannot observe [→Operation/Observation] what happens in participants’ consciousness, although consciousness is always involved in communication.
Consciousness cannot control or determine communication; independently of what participants think about utterances and information, understanding is used in social systems to continue communication. Understanding is followed by utterances, for instance by expressions of doubt about the sincerity of a previous utterance or Surprise at unexpected Information.
Uttering information does not coincide with the content or intentions produced in participants’ consciousness, therefore participants’ thinking does not coincide with what is produced in the network of communication. Participants have their own individual intentions to buy an object, but these intentions do not determine either the economic value of the object or the consequences of the transaction. These are fixed in the communicative reproduction of payment that is generated when we understand that someone else is paying and how much they are paying. Researchers have their own intentions to present at a conference, but this does not decide the scientific relevance of their contributions, generated in a network of communications in which any presentation can find (or not find) connections. Summing up, social systems cannot result from individual intentions; they result only from the autopoiesis of communication.