This review is mostly a comment I left on the 1 star review for the work. I thought that I should add it as a review, because I loved this book as an introduction to systems theory.
If you are interested in systems, this is a great place to start. Luhmann walks through the processes topic by topic. Yes, he is not the most exciting person to read, but if you know that before you start then you'll be prepared with the patience necessary for understanding the concepts. The book is the transcript of a class that Luhmann taught in 1992 so Luhmann's voice is more conversational and clear than one might expect. He also has a very good sense of humor throughout the work...though his humor is slight, it is loaded with irony--this is something that I loved about the book because I kept forgetting that he might make a joke or light-hearted comment and they kept creeping up.
Luhmann presents in the first section of the book--particularly lecture 4 and 5--a thorough, clear, and detailed account of his view of systems theory. While Luhmann does say things that may be hard to concretely grasp upon the initial encounters such as, "a system is defined by a boundary between itself and its environment," he qualifies such statements at length and reveals the subtly necessary in understanding the complexity of a system. It is not that Luhmann is trying to make his theory of systems as vague as possible in order to successfully create a "theory of everything", but that what he is saying is complicated and has to be explained from multiple angles in order to be properly taught and properly understood.
His two lectures on Time and Meaning are both very impressive as well. The way he spells out how systems are a way of reducing complexity immediately shifted my perspective in how I can view the things, actions, and social relationships in the world.
Reductive accounts of systems and their emergent qualities may be more satisfactory to a casual reader, but an approach is misguided from its origins, and Luhmann recognizes this: systems are made of multifaceted relationships that rely on their historical development, making it impossible to separate components without losing information about their purpose, function, or relationships to other systems. Much like it is impossible to satisfactorily describe a work of art to someone blind, fully recounting complexity and the processes of emergence would involve embodying the process itself. ...This might be why the epigraph to his Theory of Society is a quote that says, "that which cannot be conceived through anything else must be conceived through itself."
Attached at the end of the work is a helpful list of suggested readings based on the lecture topics.
Other good introductions to Luhmann's work are Moeller's short "The Radical Luhmann" or maybe Luhmann's own "The Reality of the Mass Media"
ENJOY
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(I suppose) awful warehouse handling
The book is great, this author is evidently the one of the best you can find on the topic. However, the cover of the book was damaged, with clear signs of it being moved against a rough surface. I knew it was used but i expected more.
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- Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2013
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- Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2024
(I suppose) awful warehouse handlingThe book is great, this author is evidently the one of the best you can find on the topic. However, the cover of the book was damaged, with clear signs of it being moved against a rough surface. I knew it was used but i expected more.
Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2024
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- Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2016
Top reviews from other countries
- Thomas MavrofidesReviewed in the United Kingdom on October 8, 2015
For anyone interested in Niklas Luhmann's theory, this transcription ...
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DRPRReviewed in Germany on October 2, 2014
Nicht immer ist es einfach, die richtigen Worte zu finden ...
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