Beyond Luhmann - Cybersemiotics
This article (Søren Brier, 1 september 1996) praises the development of second-order cybernetics by von Foerster, Maturana and Varela as an important step in deepening our understanding of the biopsychological foundation of the dynamics of cognition and communication. Luhmann's development of the theory into the realm of social communication is seen as a necessary and important move. The differentiation between biological, psychological and social-communicative autopoiesis and the introduction of a technical concept of meaning is central. Furthermore, Varela's development of Spencer Brown's ‘Laws of Form’ from a dual to a triadic categorical basic structure is considered vital. Finally the paper shows that second-order cybernetics lacks explicit and ontological concepts of emotion, meaning and a concept of signs. C.S. Peirce's theory is introduced for this purpose. It is then shown that both theories are triadic and second order, and therefore can be fruitfully fused to a cybersemiotics.
The central idea of autopoiesis in second-order cybernetics put forward by Von Foerster, Maturana and Varela was an important step for understanding the dymamics of cognition and communication in living creatures. Luhmann stretched the second-order cybernetics concept in the realm of social systems. This provided a strong foundation for understanding the complexities in such systems. However, some aspects in Luhmann's theory are less developed, most notably the concept of what makes a human being human, such as emotions, and the concepts of meaning and signs.