Social systems form only through communication as interdependent selection processes.

Evidence

The attempt to formulate a general theory of symbolically generalized communication, and to tie it in with the concept of societal differentiation as well as with statements about mechanisms and phases of socio-cultural evolution, is aimed at filling this gap. In this we are aiming to avoid recourse to the ‘subject’, in the way that transcendental philosophy has used the term, as well as any claim to deal with the physiologically and psychologically concrete individual. The one alternative would be too abstract, the other too concrete for sociological theory. Instead, we shall proceed from the basic assumption that social systems are only ever formed through communication, i.e. they always assume that multiple selection processes determine one another by anticipation or reaction. Social systems first arise from the need for agreed selections, just as, on the other hand, such needs are first experienced in social systems. The conditions which make this correlation possible are the result of evolution, and change alongside it. Just as evolution articulates the temporal, and differentiation articulates the material, so communication articulates the social dimension of the societal system. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 587

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core Luhmann axiom: communication (not subjects) is the unit of the social; selections determine one another by anticipation or reaction.
• DEEPTHINKING: The three-way mapping — evolution articulates the temporal, differentiation the material, communication the social dimension — is a compact, paradigm-level structuring principle worth sitting with.
• XREF: Luhmann’s ‘no recourse to the subject’ prefigures how Stevens in Ishiguro is narrated through his role rather than any inner subject — the butler persona as a communication system. — connects to: Data extraction stabilizes only when naturalized as a normal social form. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 134