Problems of form / edited by Dirk Baecker ; translated by Michael Irmscher, with Leah Edwards.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Baecker, Dirk.

Series:

Writing science

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social systems.

System theory.

Mathematical sociology.

Spencer-Brown, G. Laws of form.

Spencer-Brown, G.

Logic, Symbolic and mathematical.

Form (Logic).

Social sciences--Philosophy.

Local Subjects:

Social sciences--Philosophy.

Physical Description:

x, 248 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 1999.

Summary:

Sociology has long sought to find out how acting in a situation and observing that situation may differ and nevertheless belong to a single kind of social operation. George Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form (1969) provides one way to conceive of such an operation. The present book is the first to make sociological use of his mathematical calculus of form, which has been extensively applied to cybernetics, systems theory, cognitive science, and mathematics.

Spencer-Brown's theory states that any action or communication is always an operation that makes a distinction. Not only does this operation take place, but it can be observed as indicating what it is interested in, and as leaving unmarked what it is not. Distinctions thereby entail a logic of inclusion and exclusion that is subject to social debate and conflict. In social situations there is no action that does not at the same time execute, maintain, or cross a distinction.

In this collection, more general essays study the consequences of such an understanding of form for our conceptions of literature, paradox, sign, play, and language. Other essays focus on the observations necessary to construct such forms as money, the university, the state, a career, or sickness. All the essays share an interest in problems ensuing from the fact that though one can observe the form of a distinction and become aware of its arbitrary, contingent, and discriminatory nature, one nevertheless, when trying to act or communicate, must choose a distinction. The essays show how social situations deftly veil the arbitrariness of the distinctions that constitute their forms.

Contents:

The Paradox of Form / Niklas Luhmann 15

Self-Reference in Literature / David Roberts 27

Sign as Form / Niklas Luhmann 46

On the Analysis and Use of Form in Logic / Karl Eberhard Schorr 64

Two-Sided Forms in Language / Elena Esposito 78

The Form Game / Dirk Baecker 99

The Early Form of Money / Michael Hutter 107

The Form of the University / Rudolf Stichweh 121

The Contingency and Necessity of the State / Helmut Willke 142

The Form of Protest in the New Social Movements / Klaus P. Japp 155

The Dark Side of a Career / Giancarlo Corsi 171

The Other Side of Illness / Fritz B. Simon 180.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [201]-248).

ISBN:

0804734232

0804734240

OCLC:

40681663