A CHALLENGE TO SOCIAL CREATIONISM
Relatively speaking, one of the less conspicuous radical aspects of Luhmann’s theory is his application of the theory of evolution to sociology. This may seem a somewhat strange point to make, given that the theory of evolution is no longer considered all that scandalous, at least outside of North American fundamentalist Protestant circles. The same may be the case with respect to biology, but Luhmann’s use of evolutionary theory for a theory of society is, I believe, quite provocative. Although Luhmann is not a social Darwinist and has little in common with Herbert Spencer, his evolutionary approach is nevertheless at odds with the dominant liberal and humanist views on society, which can often be understood historically as secularized successors of Christian ideas.1 Luhmann’s theory radically breaks with anthropocentric views of society, just as Darwin broke with the Christian idea of the human being as the “crown of creation.”2 Thus, Luhmann’s radical evolutionary view of society (which was decisively shaped by the post-Darwinian evolutionary biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela) when viewed from mainstream humanist post-Christian social theory, has the potential to be as offensive as Darwin’s biological theory once was.
Evolution, for Luhmann, emerges as the complex coevolution of system-environment relations. In Darwin’s vocabulary, evolution is the evolution of species that constitute environments for one another. An ecosystem indicates the coexistence of a great variety of life-systems without a center or a general steering mechanism. Within an ecosystem, all subsystems coevolve. A change in one subsystem, let’s say a change in the oxygen level of the water in a lake, “perturbs” the plants in the lake and triggers evolutionary changes in them. This also triggers evolutionary changes in the fish. These evolutionary changes will again have an effect on the chemistry of the water, and so on. All of these things happen simultaneously. Coevolution means there are permanent feedback mechanisms between a multiplicity of simultaneously evolving systems. Changes trigger changes that trigger changes and so on.
Such a basic evolutionary model contradicts the central idea of creationism, namely, the primacy of an external or initial act of creation or (intelligent) design. A coevolutionary ecosystem is self-generating and self-contained and not designed or based on any specific a priori input. The difference between a theory of evolution and creationism parallels the difference between a theory of immanence on the one side and theories of transcendence or transcendental theories on the other. While current social theories are no longer transcendent and commonly do not speak about divine origins of social phenomena, they are often transcendental theories, to use the Kantian term—and thus represent, so to speak, a kind of secular social creationism.
Unfortunately, in English academic language, the foundational Kantian distinction between transzendent and transzendental is mostly ignored and the terms “transcendent” and “transcendental” are often used synonymously or interchangeably. Kant, however, used the term transzendental in particular to distinguish his philosophy from previous transcendent metaphysics. For him, transzendent meant “beyond experience” (God, for instance, is transzendent), whereas transzendental referred to whatever precedes experience in the sense of being the (or a) “condition of the possibility of experience.” Transzendental is what is a priori in this sense, namely what is prior to or “pure of” anything empirical. Many contemporary social theories are, though certainly not transcendent, still, in a post-Kantian sense, transcendental theories of society. As such, they are still essentially incompatible with a radical evolutionary theory of society that is radically immanent and leaves no room for any a priori social principles.
Modern and contemporary social theories, like those of Hobbes, Rousseau, Habermas, and Rawls, can be called “transcendental.” They, at least hypothetically, think that society either is or should be founded on some sort of a priori mechanism or basis for intrasocial consensus such as a contract, a commitment to reason, or a definition of fairness. Society is assumed to have access to something that is not itself social but an a priori condition for society to function well. Society, according to these models, can only be enacted properly if it adheres to certain principles. These principles are most commonly believed to be civil principles, that is, they are related to specifically human characteristics such as human nature, free will, human rationality, human rights, and so on. In this way, these transcendental theories of society are also inherently humanist, or, more precisely, anthropocentric. Luhmann’s theory of society, like Darwin’s theory of evolution, is not.
One profound difference between creationism and a theory of evolution is the idea of a plan. Creation is not random or involuntary; it involves intentionality. It involves action and agency. This agency can be transcendent or transcendental. In the first case the agent is of divine nature, that is, a God; in the second, agency is this-worldly. Evolutionary theory, however, denies both sacred and secular agency. An ecosystem cannot intentionally evolve. It neither enacts God’s will nor freely determines how to develop itself. Luhmann’s social theory has been criticized, in precisely this context, as being “metabiological” by Habermas,3 because it follows evolutionary biology in denying not only transcendent, but also transcendental agency and intentionality. This is what makes Luhmann as scandalous in social theory today as Darwin’s theory was in the context of nineteenth-century biology. Humans are no longer capable of their own development, but are simply an element within highly complex system-environment entanglements. To take evolution seriously means to take the notion of environment seriously, and therefore to undermine the concepts of intentionality, planning, and free will. None of the post-Kantian transcendental and anthropocentric social theories can be truly ecological so long as they ascribe the capabilities of design and agency to a privileged species.
Conventional transcendental social theories are incompatible with radically ecological and evolutionary social theories such as Luhmann’s. While many progressive and, to a certain extent, leftist (at least in their own view), social theoreticians, like Habermas, take great pains to come up with nonhierarchical or egalitarian visions of society that eliminate structures of domination, they cannot be classified as noncentrist thinkers. Typically, these theorists affirm the central role of politics (or the economy, or both together) in society. If society is, in a post-Kantian sense, to rationally determine its own future, then there has to be a central planning agency for directing this development. This agency, as is the case for Habermas, may well be supposed to be democratic, that is, collective, nonrepressive, and nonauthoritarian, but it nevertheless has to have some sort of social centrality. It must have some authority over law, the economy, education, religion, and so on in order to ensure that society progresses in the right way. Luhmann, the evolutionary theoretician, goes against such a centrist vision. Instead, he “develops a polycentric (and accordingly polycontextural) theory in an acentrically conceived world and society.”4
An ecosystem has no center. Evolution does not follow any guidelines or directives given by any of its subsystems. Subsystems are not egalitarian or democratic in the sense that each system has a the right to make a contribution in determining where evolution goes. Subsystems may compete for survival, and, in the long run, most of them will simply dissolve since they cannot plan their own future or the future of the whole. There is no institution inherent in evolutionary processes that a system may appeal to, or, for instance, complain to that its extinction is unjust, unfair, or irrational. A social theory that takes evolution seriously will therefore not only disappoint, but most likely offend those social theorists who think that even if such institutions may not yet exist or may not yet be perfect, they should at least be aspired to. Evolutionary theory, however, does not allow for such aspirations.
Modern social theories rooted in the Enlightenment hope that society can elucidate itself in a twofold sense; it has the ability to see itself more clearly and gain, at least potentially, a more or less complete understanding of itself, and it can work toward making itself brighter, that is, happier and better in a moral or pragmatic way, or both. An evolutionary theory is, in a sense, a counter-Enlightenment theory, since it theoretically excludes both of these achievements. A thoroughly immanent ecosystem, be it biological, mental, or social, does not, so to speak, include its own light switch. As Luhmann pointed out regularly, an observing system can, paradoxically, often see only what it cannot see—and what others cannot see. It can detect the blind spots of other systems and thereby draw some conclusions about its own. A perfect illumination is theoretically impossible. Light and darkness, metaphorically speaking (and alluding to Daoism), constitute each other in an evolutionary context. The very condition of seeing something is not to see everything. The ability to observe, paradoxically, also implies limitations, and thus inabilities, of observation.
The partial blindness that comes with evolution also implies a certain ethical and pragmatic blindness. Since it is impossible to see everything, it is also impossible to see what is good for all. An ecosystem that cannot know itself and that cannot know its future also cannot know what it should ultimately hope for. How can today’s species know what will be good for future species? A bright future for one species implies necessarily, according to Darwin’s theory, a dark future for others. The application of such a view on social theory must be deeply disconcerting for any sociologist or philosopher who shares the Enlightenment vision of a self-illuminating society.
A major Enlightenment narrative immediately connected with the program of self-illumination was the belief in progress.5 Enlightenment as a process of human self-illumination is, both cognitively and practically, quite necessarily, geared toward improvement. The natural sciences provide us with more knowledge; new technologies enhance our capacities and productivity, and increase our material well-being. The social sciences, it was hoped, would provide us with expertise in social engineering so that we would be able to rationalize and optimize our political and economical life. Education was consequently seen as the means to lead ourselves out of our “self-inflicted immaturity”—to use the famous Kantian expression. Thinkers like Hegel, Marx, and the French positivists (Comte and others) subsequently came up with some of the grand nineteenth-century descriptions of a historical march to the light—of inevitable progress toward greater human self-realization—in the double meaning of this term, that is, both epistemologically and existentially.
The nineteenth century has been qualified as the century of historicism. This not only indicates a focus on the inherent historicity and dynamics of life, but also a belief in the possibility of a science of history.6 History could finally be understood by those who make it. Marx is probably the prime example for such an attempt to identify the laws of history which, in the past, had shaped social developments unbeknownst to those who actually constituted or performed them. It was believed that an adequate analysis of the historical movement would enable humankind to actually make history rather than simply be moved forward through it. Instead of merely interpreting history, a historically informed social science would enable us to enact change rather than be merely subjected to it. In this sense, liberation for Marx also meant historical liberation: rather than being determined and dominated by history, humankind would now be able to determine and dominate it. Progress came to mean not only a development toward a better state but also, and perhaps even more important, a self-conscious motion. Progress thus meant to deliberately and actively move forward, to go on, by one’s own will and in the direction that one set out beforehand.
The Enlightenment narrative of historical progress was soon questioned. Nietzsche replaced history with genealogy. Nietzsche, as well as many of the leading theorists of the twentieth century who were substantially influenced by him (one may think of Freud and Foucault in particular), was less optimistic about the idea of progress. On the one hand, these thinkers fully acknowledged the idea that what we are is an effect of what we have been—Wesen ist, was gewesen ist, as Hegel succinctly put it.7 On the other hand, they did not really share the belief in the possibility of rationally improving the course of history. Simply put, genealogy may be defined as history minus progress. To understand our heritage does not necessarily mean that we can change or control it. Genetic engineering may in fact, from the perspective of a genealogy, turn out to be as futile as attempts at social engineering. Just as it is highly questionable how improved genetically modified food actually is, it is questionable how much improvement was brought about by the experiments in transforming historical knowledge into social progress.
In this sense, Luhmann’s theory of social evolution fundamentally differs both from the historicist social theories of the nineteenth century and from Darwin’s biological theory of evolution. For Darwin, in line with his historicist contemporaries, biological evolution was a story of progress. Evolution meant “survival of the fittest,” and to be fit, as in contemporary popular usage, connoted being good, or at least better than the unfit. Similarly, natural selection meant the selection of the better over the worse. Darwin explicitly pointed out how “immeasurably superior” natural selection was, compared with “man’s feeble efforts” to perfect living organisms over time.8 This meant, for Darwin, that nature was even more concerned with bringing about biological advancement than, let us say, human horse breeders. Given this focus on improvement through selection, Herbert Spencer’s social theory has rightly been labeled “social Darwinism” since it also conceives of evolution as progress, as a development toward the better.
Luhmann is not a social Darwinist in this sense. Social evolution for him, like biological evolution for post-Darwinist biologists, is not to be automatically equated with social progress.9 Functional differentiation is an effect of social evolution, but it is not in any general way “better” than stratified or segmentary differentiation. Evolution is not teleological. Its partial blindness does not allow it to take aim. Furthermore, the lack of a central force or a socially progressive element (such as, for Marx, the proletariat, with the Communist Party as its avant-garde) makes it impossible to anticipate any specific course that history may take.
Post-Darwinian ecological evolutionary theory, in both biology and sociology, is genealogical rather than historicist.10 It tries to understand its “genes,” or its inherent heritage, and does not continue the Enlightenment narrative of progress. It refrains from scientifically evaluating species according to their respective merits and does not rank social systems or social structures. This does not mean a postulation on the equality of all biological or social systems; it means refraining from constructing a narrative based on value judgments. Not making value judgments also means not proclaiming that all systems are equally valid.
For a post-Darwinian ecological evolutionary theory, be it biological or sociological, development is contingent rather than necessary.11 But contingency is an ambiguous term. It means to exist despite other alternatives having been equally possible, and to come into existence as a result of previously existing conditions in the sense of being contingent upon. It implies, on the one hand, the coexistence of a plurality of options or alternatives without hierarchical order, and, on the other hand, a nonarbitrary connection between what is and what has been. That there are horses is a contingent result of biological evolution in the sense that the emergence of other species or the extinction of the horse species would have been equally thinkable, given the extreme variety of evolutionary possibilities at all times. But it also means that the current existence of the horse species can be traced genealogically to a very specific evolutionary development that actually took place. Luhmann often stresses the unlikelihood of whatever is actually brought into existence by evolution, given all of the innumerable developments that might have taken place instead. This takes nothing away from the important role that everything that did evolve has within evolution. That horses came into existence was not evolutionarily necessary. Now that there are horses, they influence further evolutionary developments and thereby limit evolutionary possibilities. That something like stocks and bonds came into existence in social reality was not historically necessary. However, now that there are stocks and bonds, further economic, and thus social, evolution is contingent upon their existence.
Luhmannian ecological genealogy combines historical awareness with nondogmatic pluralism. In an evolutionary context, the notion of contingency affirms both historical heritage and the openness to the future. It implies both a confirmation of the relevance of the actual and recognition of its aleatory character. Everything might have come about differently, but now that the die has been cast there is no going back. And the options for the way forward are, although not predetermined, relatively limited by what is now the case.
Historicist theoreticians of progress share, unlike evolutionary genealogists, some of the teleological fantasies of the secular creationists. If there is, at least potentially, a plan for the course of history, and if we can both know and guide, or at least accelerate, this course, then radical contingency is unacceptable. For creationists and historicists, the course of history has a specific and necessary meaning and not only a contingent sense.12 That history has a meaning is to say that there is some thread that runs through it, that it somehow unfolds as a plan, that it has a discernable design and is therefore determined to lead somewhere. Evolutionary genealogy recognizes or observes that evolution makes sense, but this making of sense is an immanent evolutionary construct, a dynamic process of continual reinvention.
From a genealogical evolutionary process, development is neither a priori nor teleologically determined. “Sense,” as a linguistic alternative to the term “meaning,” is made, while something has a meaning. In an ecosystem consisting of complex system-environment relations, sense is not singular. The system does not have a meaning, nor does it have any intention of pursuing a certain direction. What makes sense for one species does not necessarily make sense for another, and the evolutionary direction that the development of one species or biological system takes does not correspond to the direction of other species or systems in its environment. Human beings, for instance, have on average become a lot taller in recent centuries. This does not imply that other species became taller as well, or that evolution is generally aimed at tallness. Nevertheless, I am sure that the increased height of human beings will have perturbed the various subsystems within the human body and triggered certain evolutionary developments that biologists might be able to trace and make sense of. While there is no general meaning of having gotten taller (e.g., approaching a perfect human height), this change will help biologists make sense of a number of evolutionary changes in the human body (e.g., in the muscular system). It can even help sociologists explain how sociological change occurs, such as the production of longer beds. While a social systems theorist might make sense of an increasing variety in furniture size, Marxists may detect the meaning of this development in an ever-expanding capitalist economy, and liberals may see it as an indication of the liberation of consumer choice.
Traditional historicist attempts to define the trajectory of historical progress are, from an evolutionary perspective, comparable to biological attempts to define the trajectory of “progress” in human height. Biologically, it is uncommon to conceive of increased human body height as advancement toward an evolutionary goal. The idea of improving and purifying the biological development of human life was in fact one of the sociobiological experiments infamously conducted in twentieth-century Europe. Such a biopolitical project is certainly not compatible with an ecological post-Darwinian view of evolution. Ecological evolutionary theory avoids evaluations of what is desirable and what is not. It does not identify a developmental direction and it certainly does not try to give advice on how to help evolution move forward. From an Enlightenment perspective, this attitude may be criticized as a lack of engagement, but so far the concrete results of attempts to help either biological or social evolution reach its respective goals a little quicker have not been without their problems.
If, as Habermas has done, one labels Luhmann’s social theory as “metabiological,” then it should also be added, in order to avoid misunderstandings, that this means “metaevolutionary” and not “metacreationist.” While social theorists like Habermas worked on the unfinished “project of Enlightenment” and its secularized creationist ideals, Luhmann subscribed to a radically different paradigm, namely the paradigm of ecological evolution.