A scientific measure of power would destroy social reality’s substitutes

Evidence

These are all functional equivalents for measuring power and for tests of power as decision premises in societal reality. The institutional anchoring and practicability of such substitutes renders exact calculations unnecessary, and even makes any attempt to do so problematic. The result of this is that if science were to produce a way of measuring power, it would alter social reality; that is to say, it would destroy the substitutes and reveal them as false assumptions. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 600

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that measuring power would alter social reality itself echoes the observer-effect debates — worth chasing in later chapters whether Luhmann treats power as essentially unmeasurable in principle.
• XREF: connects to: Scientific quantification of nature parallels society’s reduction of humans to abstract labor power. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 583; A reality system collapses when private knowledge outstrips what the big Other credibly allows — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1941