For the purposes of this analysis, we replace those dichotomies of early, anti- or otherwise bourgeois social theory with the more abstract dichotomy of system and environment inherent in the concept of System. It is through this difference that Complexity is constituted, serving at the same time as the ultimate point of reference and integration for functional analyses.
In the case of social systems, we are dealing with a special form of processing system/environment differences, namely Meaning. On meaning rests the possibility of conceiving complexity as indeterminate determinability - the very problem that precedes the tradition obscured by metaphysics and that is to be introduced explicitly into social theory.
These seemingly simple starting points can be followed by a series of subsequent theories whose interdependencies result in a rather complex theory of society. Each of the following parts starts from a direct link to the difference between system and environment and treats it first in an evolutionary-theoretical perspective (part 2) and in a communication- and motivation-theoretical perspective (part 3), finally from the point of view of the increase of complexity by differentiation and by internal differentiation (part 4) and the reflection and rationalization of the social system made possible by this (part 5). Only in the last part we can come back to problems of philosophy of science.
However, before we enter into these investigations, which refer specifically to the social system, we need to analytically pull apart different levels of system formation. This, too, is done in connection with the difference between system and environment, because the levels of system formation differ in the way they treat the difference between system and environment. Such a level distinction at the same time gives us the possibility to distinguish different types of social systems and to justify how one of them, society, can be the whole at the same time.