Function systems generate meaning through their relation to an environment.

Evidence

At the level of society, these then are Luhmann’s function systems. They are functional systems because they cope with the generation of specific meanings over time. These concepts of systems and function are quite unlike the notions inherent in traditional systems theory, including that of Talcott Parsons. The ‘functional analysis’ Luhmann undertakes in Trust and Power is not a matter of making connections either between systems of people or between bodies of existing knowledge, but of examining how precarious meaning-making and its identity, which allows the formation of society, emerges from the relation between system and environment in a complex world. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 22

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines what ‘function’ means in Luhmann’s system-theoretic sense, contrasted with Parsons.
• XREF: The ‘precarious meaning-making … from the relation between system and environment’ maps onto how Stevens’s identity as a butler emerges from his relation to Darlington Hall as environment — the reader’s core thesis. — connects to: Functional language dissolves concepts by identifying things with their functions — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 399