is an attempt to find descriptions for phenomena which are neither so simple that they are causal, nor so random that they can be described statistically.
Systems theory is concerned with phenomena of Self-Organization and with the question of how the observer can be equipped with a conceptuality that allows him to understand that he, with his descriptions, is a part of the world and does not act in an imaginary outside.
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BAECKER, Dirk (ed.), 2016. Schlüsselwerke der Systemtheorie. 2., erweiterte und neu gestaltete Auflage. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. ISBN 978-3-531-20003-3.
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There seems to be a tendency of "bourgeois" thinkers to solve the problem by dichotomizing and dialectizing. Just as the "state" and then the "community" once were, today the "system" seems to be the necessary counterpart of society; at least that is how those who call for system criticism or for overcoming the system put it. At the same time, it remains more obscure than ever what society is, if not the system. This question is dissolved – and again we have a bourgeois motif of thought and bourgeois reflexivity before us – into a relation of time: the system is society in its (capitalist) present, the real society is what comes after the overcoming of the system.
For a political interest in this debate it may suffice to explain that the society of the future will be the system dominated by the system overcomers. Then it is necessary to take sides. For a scientific interest the question is of primary importance whether the analytical potential of systems theory is adequately used with this contrasting – or not rather given away.
The thesis of Luhmanns' book *Systemtheorie der Gesellschaft* (Systems theory of society) is that the system concept is suitable for solving the problem of indeterminacy. It postulates – as a system concept – that society solves its own indeterminability problem by constituting itself as a system; by reducing an indeterminable complexity by drawing boundaries and, in the field of science for example, by schematizing it under the aspect of truth/untruth. Systems theory assumes, in other words, that its objects organize themselves as systems, enable and limit themselves in their possibilities; and that only for this reason they are comprehensible as systems.
⇒ Dichotomy of System and Environment
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LUHMANN, Niklas, 2017. Systemtheorie der Gesellschaft. Berlin: Suhrkamp. ISBN 978-3-518-58705-8.