Gehlen argued synthesis now resides in society, not in human minds

Evidence

Gehlen’s view, in a lecture on Cultural Crystallization' almost simultaneous with Schelsky's, was that it should not be disturbing that the sciences were no longer able to produce a consistent world-picture, because all the sciences are in fact consistently related, not in people’s headsthe last place a synthesis could be achievedbut in the reality of society as a whole’. … Integrated reality, and the scientific processing of reality, which could be achieved neither intellectually, nor morally, nor emotionally, but only in the `superstructure of the social context’, were welcomed by Schelsky and Gehlen as a kind of mega-institution of the industrial, technological and scientific age. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 615

Categorization

• XREF: Inverts Adorno’s insistence that synthesis is a coercive act of spirit — here it is relocated into the social whole rather than the head. — connects to: Hegel’s synthesis prefigures modern ‘synthetic’ meaning recomposed rather than composed — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1265; A negative dialectic must affirm synthesis while negating it in every concrete case — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 119; Gehlen synthesized Scheler, Plessner, and Mead into a philosophical anthropology of instinct-free human agency. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 623 (+1 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Hegel’s synthesis prefigures modern ‘synthetic’ meaning recomposed rather than composed — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1265; A negative dialectic must affirm synthesis while negating it in every concrete case — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 119; Gehlen synthesized Scheler, Plessner, and Mead into a philosophical anthropology of instinct-free human agency. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 623 (+1 more)