The Term ‘Sense’ in Niklas Luhmann’s Theory

Abstract

The paper is about a key term of Niklas Luhmann’s System Theory: the term ‘Sense’. According to System Theory, ‘Sense’ can be defined as the medium of social reality: a universal medium of the systems of consciousness and communication that enables the reduction of the world’s complexity (the environment of the systems). The world is made up of senseful operations, and as such it is bound to the systems also formed by these operations. The world as environment (the ‘outside’) and the identity of the observer (the system; the ‘inside’) are both eff ects of senseful operations. Sense is not a substance, but a relation. It is not essential but processual. The paper places the term ‘Sense’ in the context of some other important terms of System Theory, like ‘medium’, ‘form’, ‘system’ ‘environment’, and also gives a brief summary of the theoretical frame, inasmuch it presents the tradition of ‘second order cybernetics’ developed by Heinz von Foerster.

Keywords

• sense
• cybernetics
• system theory
• social constructivism
• form
• medium
• Luhmann