Luhmann, The Non-Trivial Machine and The Neocybernetic Regime of Truth - E. Hörl

Article
Luhmann, the
Non-trivial Machine and
the Neocybernetic
Regime of Truth
Theory, Culture & Society

29(3) 94121
! The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/0263276412438592
tcs.sagepub.com
Erich Horl
Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany
Abstract
In a time in which an exuberant, trans-classical, non-trivial machine culture redesigns
terminologies, remodels logics, produces new evidence, and reorganizes semantic
resources, a new, neocybernetic regime of truth is taking shape. Many of our recent
self-descriptions and theory formations are coined by our media-technological condition. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the work of Niklas Luhmann, especially in his inherent narrative of the history of rationality. This essay attempts to
reconstruct Luhmanns redescription of European rationality, especially the mediaand machine-historical conditions that remain apparent in Luhmanns account. The
decisive issue is that Luhmanns history of rationality reveals the technological unconscious of systems theory and indeed the epochal imaginary it belongs to. With the
help of the theories of machines developed by von Foerster, Simondon and Gunther,
Luhmanns oeuvre must be read as probably the most striking conceptual edifice to
emerge from what could be called the 20th-centurys epochal technological shift of
meaning.
Keywords
cybernetics, Heinz von Foerster, Edmund Husserl, Niklas Luhmann, machine, media
theory, technological culture
The way I see it, the entire world is a nontrivial machine. (Heinz von
Foerster)
Corresponding author:
Erich Horl, Ruhr-University Bochum, Universitatsstrasse 150, Gebaude GB 5/143, Bochum 44780,
Germany
Email: erich.hoerl@rub.de
http://www.sagepub.net/tcs/
Downloaded from tcs.sagepub.com at Geograph Institute Der on March 31, 2015
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Non-triviality is fascinating, and this fascination has its own

fascinating history. What I would like to show is that the term nontrivial, originally introduced by Heinz von Foerster in the context of
machine theory, is located at the centre of a historically highly signicant
narrative of self-description which arose in response to the grand technological transformations of the 20th century. The principal feature of this
self-description is the translation of the increasingly cybernetic aspect of
all domains of being into a new, theoretically advanced semantic register.
Niklas Luhmann, whose work represents a grandiose concretion of this
narrative, was right to claim that our self-descriptions were still under the
spell of semantic registers and linguistic frames inherited from our ancestors, hence his eort to elaborate a new terminology and a set of conceptual innovations more appropriate for describing the complexities of
modernity (see Luhmann, 2005: 11). We have, however, long since assimilated a new semantic register. It arises from our media-technological, that
is, cybernetic condition; it determines our conceptual experiences; and it is,
I am afraid to say, in large part to blame for our techno-scientic dogmatism. It may be as necessary for us to distance ourselves from it as it was
(according to Luhmann) necessary to discard the semantic and conceptual
regimes bequeathed to us by an older Europe.
If Hans Blumenberg was correct to assume that [e]very epoch invents
its imaginary standpoints, from which it thinks that it can bring its characteristic type of knowledge to its most advantageous execution
(Blumenberg, 1987: 43), then it cannot be a matter of thought embodying
and occupying the imaginary standpoint of its own epoch but, more
critically, of discerning, probing and determining its current dogmas.
In our case, the evidence of cybernetics and the existence in a cybernetic
world, above all the evidence of being under neocybernetic conditions,
has turned into our epochs imaginary standpoint. Strangely enough, this
occurs in some of the most advanced and transgressive discursive contributions. To a considerable extent the resources of current social selfdescriptions are shaped by neocybernetics. Bruce Clarke and Mark
Hansen have captured the immense range and virulence of neocybernetic
concepts and images:
Some of the most important theoretical and critical conversations
going on today in the cognitive sciences, chaos and complexity
studies, and social systems theory stem from neocybernetic notions
of self-organization, emergence, and autopoiesis. A growing body
of scholarly work is rethinking the shape and evolution of the relations among science, technology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, history, literature, and the arts through neocybernetic terms.
Expanding the initial interdisciplinary framework connecting the
natural and human sciences with information technologies, recent
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Theory, Culture & Society 29(3)
thinkers, such as Michel Serres, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari,

Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, have deployed
neocybernetic discourse extensively and transformatively.
Neocybernetic discourse is central to current historical, interpretative, and theoretical investigations using concepts such as narrative, medium, assemblage, information, noise, network and
communication to remap the territory of knowledge with reference
to the operational boundaries of systems and environments. (Clarke
and Hansen, 2009: 56)
In the following I would like to examine and question the history of
the fascination exerted by non-triviality, especially as it appears in
Luhmanns work. This undertaking, I believe, could be an important
step toward understanding the genesis and shape of the linguistic and
conceptual xation outlined above. The question is whether this particular discourse (with its underlying epochal imaginary constructs) is at all
able to observe what contemporary media theory increasingly describes
in eco-technological terms of atmospheric media, ubiquitous computing,
ambient intelligence, etc., or whether we need a categorically dierent
conceptual politics one not rooted in cybernetic and systemic
techno-scientic regimes to give a feasible account of our present
techno-medial situation.1
The Fascination with the Non-trivial Machine: Luhmann and

the Cybernetic Imaginary
Science, in the words of Niklas Luhmann, is without a doubt a recursively operating system (1990: 275). A footnote supporting this claim
reveals science to be a specic type of machine: In Heinz von Foersters
sense: a non-trivial machine (1990: 275).
At rst glance the note simply serves to clarify a conceptual proposition, yet on closer inspection it turns out to be nothing less than an
implicit historico-philosophical theorem that governs Luhmanns analysis of science and indeed his entire oeuvre. Systems theory this is
the crux of Luhmanns historical teleology that shapes the very core of
his understanding not only of science but of all social systems operates
at the behest of the history of rationality itself. After all, both the plane
of immanence on which Luhmanns concepts circulate and the environment in which they gain consistency are characterized by a fascination
with the non-trivial machine. The latter is nothing less than the principal
protagonist in his account of the evolution of European rationality,
which at this point in time has reached its latest incarnation in the
shape of systems theory. Maybe Luhmanns entire theory design is an
integral component of the ongoing fascination exerted by the non-trivial
machine, under the spell of which he attempted an emphatic new
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description of the occidental as the gradual assertion of non-trivial

rationality. According to this redescription, the distinctive features of
occidental rationality arise not from its origins but from the birth of
non-trivial machines and associated types of logic that exhibit a new
form of rationality. In order to discern its pivotal elements it is therefore
not necessary to go all the way back to ancient geometricians or preSocratic philosophers, but only to the grand non-trivial rupture that
started to emerge around 1900.
Of course the punchline of any history of fascination including this
one is that it keeps its subjects in the dark. From todays vantage point,
that is, from a certain distance Luhmanns history of rationality, so
intoxicated by non-triviality, assumes the shape of a powerful historical
projection generated by an enthusiasm for cybernetic machines. It is
characteristic not only of Luhmanns own historical self-perception but
also of those of many other contemporaries of the cybernetic age, especially of the protagonists of second-order cybernetics. Despite the comprehensive shift toward technological conditions in the course of which
the ostracized technical object, which until then had marked the absence
of all meaning, moved into the centre of a new culture of meaning
despite, in other words, the basic development that, following Scott
Lash, can be described as the ascendancy of technological forms of life
and thought (see Lash, 2002: 1325) Luhmann ignored the degree to
which his work and his very contemporaneity were as such conditioned
by a historic machine change. Although he continued, in a very characteristic fashion, to reect on the media-technological foundations that
shape the various forms of rationality and, more importantly, the genesis
and rise of modern rationality, he did not analyse and discuss the degree
to which his own theory and his own narrative of the history of reason
were indebted to the history of machines. In terms of the history of
fascination under discussion here, Luhmanns systems theory is the
purest, most striking conceptual edice to emerge from what I have
called the 20th-centurys epochal technological shift of meaning (see
Horl, 2010). At the risk of over-simplifying matters, let me phrase this
as concisely as possible: Luhmanns theory, no doubt, conceptually
incorporates the massive technological transformation it depends on.
The problem is its denial of this very dependence. The theory fully registers and reacts to the momentous technological change, yet it represses
the fact that it was itself conditioned by this change. We therefore need to
reconstruct and explicate Luhmanns implicit history of rationality in
order to reveal what it denies, for precisely this denial constitutes the
most volatile aspect of his account. What will become evident is the
degree to which the many descriptions, displaying an eagerness to
engage gures of non-triviality, regardless of all they may illuminate
and uncover, are part of a cybernetic imaginary that conceals as much
as it reveals.
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The distinction between trivial and non-trivial machines is one of

Heinz von Foersters most lasting conceptual contributions to cybernetic
discourse. Introduced in the 1970 essay Molecular Ethology (von
Foerster and Poerksen, 2002: 13368), as part of his critique of the
adaptionist behaviourism of early cybernetics, this frequently invoked
distinction was as important to von Foersters epistemological and ethical arguments as it was to the subsequent elaboration of what came to be
known as second-order cybernetics (see Schmidt, 1996: 385.; Brier,
2005). Luhmann left no doubt about its signicance: Von Foersters
distinction between trivial (reliable) and non-trivial (unreliable) machines
is now a frequent quote. All higher forms of life, consciousness and social
communication systems are non-trivial machines. This led to a secondorder cybernetics (Luhmann, 1997b: 362).
However, we should rst take note of the fact that von Foerster is
dealing with conceptual rather than actual machines. Unlike other cybernetic pioneers such as Grey Walter, Ross Ashby, Norbert Wiener, or
Staord Beer, von Foerster never built any physical machines (see
Glanville, 2007). To him [t]he term machine represents an abstract
framework for speaking about input and output relationships and rules
of transformation (von Foerster and Poerksen, 2002: 53). In a decisive
move, these relationships and rules and transformations are embodied
each in their own way by two fundamentally dierent types of machine:
trivial and non-trivial. The former is characterized by a one-to-one relationship between its input (stimulus, cause) and its output (response,
eect) (von Foerster, 2003: 208). This invariant relationship following
Alan Turing, its logical-mathematical properties rather than its physical
embodiment is the machine (2003: 208). Given that this relationship
is once and for all determined, von Foerster also refers to it as a determinist and, from the point of view of an external observer, completely
predictable system.
By contrast, non-trivial machines are quite dierent creatures. The
input-output relation is described as not invariant because it is determined by the machines previous output. In other words, its previous
steps determine its present reactions (2003: 208). Owing to this recursive
structure the complex behaviour of non-trivial machines, though synthetically determined, renders them in principle, or at least in practice, analytical non-predictable systems.
For von Foerster the two machine types embodied corresponding epistemological programmes that modeled cognitive relationships as either
trivial or non-trivial. Orthodox epistemology was deemed trivial since it
was based on the assumption of a sovereign subject capable of a complete
analytical determination of a strictly separate object as part of an
exhaustive description of the world. Non-trivial epistemology, which
according to von Foerster was still in its infancy and in need of future
elaboration, was by contrast characterized by a revocation of the
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primacy of this idealized classical observer epistemology. Its point of

departure was the conceptualization of the world as a complex network
of non-trivial machines of which the observer was always already a part.
The classical or rst-order observer was replaced by a multitude of
second-order observers. Cognition turned from classical representation
into a never-ending process of recursive computation that generates
descriptions of reality (von Foerster, 2003: 21127). Elaborating a general epistemology of non-trivial machines became the principal goal of von
Foersters second-order research program (see Brier, 2005: 363).
Although von Foersters trivial/non-trivial distinction was a strictly
systematic aair, it came with a latent historical index. After all, what
this distinction entailed only became fully apparent with the arrival of
recursively operating machines like Ashbys homeostat, the research into
neuronal networks, and the introduction of computing machines
designed to produce non-expected results. It was, strictly speaking, the
arrival of non-trivial machines that demanded an epistemological overhaul in the course of which the trivial understanding of the world was
replaced by the non-trivial understanding of understanding.
Following in von Foersters footsteps, Luhmann who throughout his
oeuvre frequently refers to von Foerster champions non-trivial
machines as the model and epitome of a new form of rationality and
gives an historic twist to von Foersters systematic distinction as well as
to the non-trivial epistemology it entails: he uses the latter to furnish a
historical diagnosis according to which we already inhabit the world of
those dierent creatures. While he makes no mention of any technological underpinning, Luhmann deciphers at least between the lines
modernity, and his own present in particular, as a transition from a trivial
to a non-trivial attitude and thus the most decisive event in the history of
occidental rationality since its Greek inception.2 Luhmann views himself
as a protagonist in a grand transformation of attitude that leaves Greece
behind and appears to be nothing less than the key event in the history of
occidental rationalism, marked by the rise of cybernetics and the shift
from the trivial world of the rst to the non-trivial world of the second
observer. Luhmann turns this transformation of attitude embodied by
the new cybernetic machines into a veritable metamorphosis of rationality that appears as the very signature of modernity. His theory project
amounts to an apologetics for this transformation even though, characteristically, it remained silent about its technological conditions.
In a peculiar recapitulation of late 19th-century sociology (and in
odd harmony with Heideggers cybernetics-inspired obituary),
Luhmanns theory of science, which came equipped with all the heft
of a new culture of science and machines, intoned a farewell to philosophy. The latter was no more than a guardian of the antiquated
trivial epistemology which and this is a core element of the fascination exerted by non-trivial machines had apparently already been
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demolished by second-order cybernetics. But Luhmann, the Latinist

with a passion for Roman law (see Luhmann, 1987: 130), went a step
further and demanded that in line with the end of philosophy we also
bid farewell to Greece, the gloried mother country of all trivial theory.
This vast theoretical and discursive project of leaving behind both philosophy and Greece, a departure from venerable European concepts of
thought and understanding, constitutes the basic feature of Luhmanns
research programme. Shaped by contemporary technological conditions, Luhmann was struggling, as it were, to arrive at a historically
and systematically viable account of the shock administered by the
momentous change of machines. The latter fueled his revision, indeed
his denial of the well known early history of theory, which in his eyes
amounted to a mere prehistory. Backed by the facts and proofs of a
non-trivial cultural revolution of science and technology, Luhmann
adopted an anti-philosophical stance from which Germany has not
yet recovered.
In the hard anti-philosophical politics of knowledge that shape the
mood and thrust of Luhmanns history of rationality, the non-trivial
machine does not merely function as the central model of a postphilosophical epistemology. It is above all the carrier of post-ontological
aspirations that fuel Luhmanns own work as well as the whole technoscientic optimism of the second half of the 20th century. The dominant
attitude of Old Europe, Luhmann laconically concludes his grand investigation, can be described with the term ontology (1997a: 895). Ontology
was said to be the result of an inimitably plausible, that is, trivial, mode
of observation that starts with the distinction between being and nonbeing and from which all other distinctions follow (1997a: 895).3 It was
the core ingredient of the trivial machinery, its enduring cognitive distillate
and principal tagline for a trivial understanding of the world whose time
had long since expired under advanced technological conditions. This verdict was reserved for all ontological assertions that professed to be more
than Quinian worlds of reference, or that claimed to amount to more than
either the implicit ontological consequences of our conceptual schemata or
the unavoidable residue of our theoretical frameworks.4
A certain anti-ontological aect may already have been at work in the
techno-scientic self-promotion campaigns and the increased importance
of epistemological questions in the late 19th century, but it did not gain
full force until the arrival of our current technological conditions, above
all in the shape of the new cybernetic paradigm. Basic terms like complexity, emergence, recursion, structural coupling, operational closure,
and autopoiesis, to name the major passwords of non-triviality that
still enjoy wide circulation today, were seen not only as epistemic facts
evoked by a new culture of machines but also as an expression of ineluctable epistemological facts that remain out of reach of any trivial ontology
lacking sucient complexity. The breathless forays directed against all
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alleged primary evidence produced by trivial world understanding as well

as against any desire for ontology, which upon closer inspection appear
to be rear-guard actions undertaken in the wake of new cybernetic evidence, belong to the very core of Luhmanns theoretical oeuvre. His antiontology is rmly rooted in the unquestioned discursive presuppositions
of his cybernetic, or rather neocybernetic age. Non-trivial rationality is,
as it were, the form of the cybernetic age. At least, this is, in my opinion,
the implicit punchline of Luhmanns diagnostic self-understanding.
Machinic Deconstructions of Ontology

To return to Luhmanns argument, to speak of a basic recursivity of
science is to indicate a very simple matter with far-reaching consequences. It is simple because recursivity . . . in general refers (for
instance, in mathematics) to the repeated application of operations to
the result of similar preceding operations (Luhmann, 1990: 275). When
we describe science as a system, the notion of recursivity implies that
despite indisputable structural couplings with its environment, science
remains operationally closed. In other words, down to its very foundations, science is the result of its own operations (1990: 273), since the
system only recognizes its own operations as occasions for changing its
own states (1990: 277). Recursive operations reveal science as a prime
example for the modern autonomy of function. Viewed as a recursive
system science performs and embodies the basic modern demand for an
autonomy of separate functional areas enabled and enforced by
[m]odern societys form of dierentiation, which is itself accomplished
by the dierentiation of certain operationally closed, autopoietic systems
(Luhmann, 2002a: 63).
According to Luhmann, the recursive system called science appears to
behave exactly like a non-trivial machine. It nds itself in a given historically determined initial state and operates in a past-dependent and
structure-determined manner that by virtue of its complexity and selective connectivity is open to the future and non-predictable. In other
words, the science machine nds itself in exactly that state (and in no
other) which it has reached by way of its own operations. The transformations from state to state presuppose structures determining which state
can be reached without the system breaking apart (that is, without
a disintegration of the relationship to its environment) (Luhmann,
1990: 279).
These structural features are particularly important for the specic
temporality that characterizes the recursive operations of the science
machine. The beginning or origin of a problem and an utterance, we
are told, may soon be forgotten (1990: 272), that is, lost in recursive
loops. What is ultimately important for the operations of the non-trivial
science machine is that in any given situation, regardless of how things
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may have been before, it can reactualize the history of the system (1990:
274; emphasis added) with the help of a specic code namely, the distinction between true and false. According to Luhmann, this ability to
reactualize is to be literally understood as an originary reactualization in
the sense of an essential supplementarity. It stands behind the evolutionary process of science. Regardless of its initial state, science should at any
given point in time be able to reactualize its own history in order to
mobilize it for selective connective operations. Feedbacks, recursive fallbacks, and even anticipations are always at work in the operation of the
science machine (1990: 559). Luhmann speaks in this context of recursive
evolution (1990: 280). Science, he pointedly writes with reference to
Heinz von Foerster, is a historical machine that with every change of
state becomes another machine (1990: 284).
Reactualization, the temporal mode of recursion, is said to not only
characterize the evolution of the science machine but also, and especially,
the temporality of its scientic coding operations. This specic temporality enables an autonomous history of science as a system that operates
at a certain remove from the world. As we shall see, it also provides the
basis for the historicity of science, locating it within the history of rationality. According to Luhmann, these coding operations facilitate a departure from the object, interrupting the real presence of whatever happens
to appear. As a result, the time of science came to be seen as a selfemergent form of the determination of meaning no longer linked to an
ontological scheme that stuck to the presence of things and merely
repeated the trivial everyday experience of the presence of the present
(Luhmann, 1990: 261). According to this model, the meaning of the nontrivial science machine resides in its destruction of the trivial meaning of
the world. It does away with the intrusive quotidian relationships to
things that ontological world explications are said to perpetuate. After
all, ontology is (in comparison to everything we nowadays undertake in
physics and logic) much closer to the quotidian verisimilitude but more
beautiful, festive and reective (Luhmann, 1997a: 912). Science, then, is
a process of reactualization characterized by an essentially nonontological relationship to the world especially if you, like Luhmann,
consider all ontology to be a metaphysics of presence. In Luhmanns
reading science appears as a massive counter-ontological oensive that
foils all na ve and originary xations on being and presence and instead
proceeds to lead the way out of the ontological cave. With their signicant interruption of the direct relationship between thought and being
that is said to be the basic conguration of the ontological approaches to
the world, scientic coding operations always remain incomplete and
subject to open systemic history. The core of the never-ending task of
science was to bring about a radical de-ontologizing of our relationship
to the world and thus to produce distance.5 Science, then, is not just one
of many non-trivial machines (according to Luhmann all social systems
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are such machines). The grand severance of ontological word references

and the expulsion of presentist metaphysics it brings about (a diagnosis,
incidentally, that moves Luhmann into close proximity to Bachelard)
ensures that science fulls a special to be precise, de-trivializing function in the history of rationality.
Cyberneticizing Husserl: On the Birth of the Non-trivial

Attitude
The science machines never-ending task of de-ontologizing, which constitutes its rst non-trivial aspect, was also placed in the far more comprehensive framework of a history of rationality in order to provide a
historical marker for the appearance and function of non-triviality as
such. Science was not only deemed to be an essential part of the process
of modernization that brings about the transfer from trivial to non-trivial
conditions. It also had to modernize itself by removing all its intrinsic,
increasingly antiquated trivial conceptualizations. One of the main goals
of this auto-modernization was to raise de iure the traditional epistemological understanding stemming from a philosophical idea of science to
the complex level of the contemporary conditions on which the autonomous functional system science was de facto already operating. This
meant rst and foremost that science had to rid itself of all possible
ontological inscriptions and become a pure theory devoid of all explicit
and implicit statements on the being of something. Luhmann viewed the
conceptualization of a non-trivial science machine as a valid and timely
post-ontological option (1990: 280).
Under complex modern conditions it no longer appeared possible to
adhere to the obsolete, deeply traditional, and ontologically oriented
approaches of science by furnishing a description of the world as an
object given to (or standing opposed to) the observer (Luhmann,
2002a: 71) as it had behooved theoria since the time of the Greeks.
Science can no longer comprehend itself as a representation of the world
as it is, Luhmann continued, and must therefore retract its claim of
instructing others about the world. It achieves an exploration of possible
constructions that can be inscribed in the world and, in so doing, function as forms, that is, produce a dierence (2002a: 71).6 In other words,
science must refrain from dening the world for society (2002a: 63) and
from depicting the world as such. Instead it had to dismantle all primary
evidence (1990: 328), the evidence of observable objects and a describable world as well as the evidence of the obsolete theoretical attitude that
insists on a privileged observation. Science had to advance, as it were,
against its own Greek ur-scene.
This demand for an expulsion of the profoundly trivial spirit from the
sciences was supported by a powerful construct derived from the history
of rationality. For Luhmann, the discontent over the modern culture of
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knowledge (1990: 328) that had emerged since the beginning of the 20th
century for instance, in complaints about the loss of reference, the
waning of experience or the disappearance of the life-world was
merely an expression of a not yet understood change of attitude. It
arose from the scientically supported transformation of being from a
pre-modern trivial, mono-contextural world to the conditions of a nontrivial, polycontextural world. Especially in the intense engagement with
Husserls critique of science on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of
the latters Viennese lecture on sciences, Luhmann highlighted the new
non-trivial conditions that mandated a departure from Old European
ways of thinking. The new state of science, which according to
Luhmann had long since superseded the communicative situation
underlying Husserls diagnosis of a European spirit threatened by technology, was described as follows:
The natural sciences, from physics to biology, have become selfreexive. They are concerned with objects that observe
themselves . . . The ction of a reality that exists free of cognition
already had to be given up with Heisenberg; and if such a reality
does exist, it does not display any qualities to which an observation
could latch on . . . For the time being, let us merely note that for such
cognitions, contrary to what Husserl maintained, Geist is not necessary. Rather, they arise out of the universalization of projects of
cognition in the natural sciences, and hence out of a program that
compels autologies, self-applications or that remains incomplete
in its world-intention. (Luhmann, 2002a: 36)
The autological departure from the last great gure of the observer,
the transcendental subject of intuition equipped with its own worldintentionality, which had received a massive boost from Heisenbergs
discovery of the problems associated with the observer, appeared to be
part of the modern shift into polycontexturality:
Modern society is a polycentric, polycontextural system. It applies
completely dierent codes, completely dierent frames, completely
dierent principal distinctions according to whether it describes itself
from the standpoint of religion or the standpoint of science, from the
standpoint of law or the standpoint of politics, from the standpoint
of pedagogy or the standpoint of economics. (Luhmann, 2002a: 52)
Though he makes no mention of the new technological conditions in
the shape of a/the non-trivial culture of machines, Luhmann asserts that
the transition to polycontextural congurations of observation and
meaning enforces a shift from a trivial to a non-trivial mindset.
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The changed situation that separates Luhmanns clarications of the

new epistemological conditions from Husserls diagnosis of a crisis
becomes most apparent in the context of the re-evaluation and reconceptualization of that pivotal event in the history of rationality that had been
on Husserls mind when, in the 1930s, he attempted to employ his notion
of the life-world to recast the sciences. As is known, Husserl reconstructed
the rise of a new sort of attitude of individuals toward their surrounding
world (Husserl, 1970: 276) that took place in the sixth and seventh century BC in Greece. He described the signicant change of attitude which
altered the spiritual shape of Europe (1970: 289) and which was now said
to be threatened by the modern processes of technologization and formalization. Husserl spoke of the birth of a theoretical attitude. He saw it
as the origin of an ideality that now, faced with a critical loss of meaning
to technological procedures and a momentous shift of meaning, was more
relevant than ever. With the rst conception of ideas that occurred back
then, man gradually becomes a new man (1970: 277).
Humanity this was the basis of the argument in its historical
situation, always lives under some attitude or other. Its life has its normstyle and, in reference to this, a constant historicity of development
(1970: 280). The norm-style of human existence, which Husserl took
to be a rst type of historicity, was the so-called natural primordial
attitude of original natural life that appeared to be na vely, straightforwardly directed at the world (1970: 281). Though present as a universal
horizon, the world was not thematic as such (1970: 281). It is only when
the theoretical attitude replaces the natural and introduces a new style of
existence that [m]an becomes gripped by the passion of a world-view and
world-knowledge and turns into a nonparticipating spectator, surveyor
of the world; he becomes a philosopher (1970: 285). To strive for and
bring about theoria and nothing but theoria (1970: 280) was for Husserl
the main slogan of the new program of world-knowledge through pure,
universal seeing (1970: 285).7
According to Husserl, the outbreak of the theoretical attitude (1970:
285) did not only give rise to a new cognitive stance but also to a farreaching transformation of the whole praxis of human existence (1970:
287). Philosophy was assigned an archontic function which it was now,
in the crisis of rationality around and after 1900, once again called to
full. Ever since the momentous Greek transformation philosophy had
acted as the guardian of the theoretical attitude. In Husserls eyes, its
very platonic present-day task lay in the reection on and remembrance
of that ur-scene of the sciences. The latter were to reside under the roof of
philosophy and no place else. This was the initial program of philosophy
as a universal science that now, in the face of foundational crises, was to
be reactivated using phenomenological means. The completely new
beginning (Husserl, 1970: 239) Husserl called for in the 1920s proved
to be a repetition of the beginning of all theoria.
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In a peculiar way, Luhmanns reconstruction of the history of rationality recongures Husserls historically sweeping, though evidently obsolete, doctrine of attitude. The early spectator theory employed by
Husserl despite the fact that already in his time it had little chance
of a future (Luhmann, 2002a: 54) to counter the technologically
induced crisis of reason proved to be hopelessly antiquated in the age
of non-trivial machines and their inscrutable complexity. In Luhmanns
eyes the range of that comprehensive change of attitude which Husserl,
faced with the whole non-idealist technological mobilization, had so
emphatically conjured up was pretty limited. The Greek transformation
was at best the beginning of a long-lasting process of change that, as a
history of European rationality, only hit its home stretch in the 20th
century. The birth of the theoretical attitude had occurred, as it were,
within the horizon of the trivial attitude and its characteristic observer
position. It was the new autonomy of the sciences that is, their exodus
from the world of philosophical spectators that had restricted them to
trivial world observations and above all the invention of the non-trivial
machine that brought about a truly dramatic change of attitude. Husserl
may have highlighted an important occurrence in the history of rationality, but for Luhmann the pivotal event was not the onset of the theoretical but the onset of the non-trivial attitude. Its immediate ospring was
systems theory. And this, precisely, was Luhmanns chief concern: to
transform a theoretical attitude still bound to trivial acts of observation
in such a way that it would give birth to a wholly un-Greek, non-trivial
theoria.
Luhmanns theory project, especially its remarkable take on the history of rationality, clearly fell in line with Husserls ambitious renewal
venture. The guiding interest behind the systems-theoretical reformulation of the phenomenological project, however, no longer entailed a
return to the beginning but a search for a form in which the unconditional theoretical interest accepted under the name of philosophy can be
continued in the face of changed conditions (Luhmann, 2002a: 37). The
goal, in Luhmanns trenchant formulation, was to introduce Husserls
intuition of theory into a completely dierent lifeworld (2002a: 56) a
technological and thoroughly cybernetic lifeworld, no less, shaped by
non-trivial machines. Epoche now stood for the bracketing of all trivial
preconceptions of thought such as subject, spirit and, in particular, all the
obsolete gures of ontological world descriptions. Intentionality now was
the name for the form in which consciousness carries out its operations
(2002a: 44) and had to be described in terms of self- and hetero-reference.
And lifeworld, according to Luhmann one of the centurys most consequential neologisms, now referred to the irreducible referential context
of all familiar condensates of meaning (Luhmann, 1986: 182). The lifeworld distinction of familiar versus unfamiliar appeared to be the oldest,
most primitive and primordial dierence because it pertains to any given
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distinction, yet under polycontextural conditions it was no longer possible to fall back on the distinction familiar vs. non-familiar as if it were
a distinction, let alone a foundational one (1986: 186; emphasis added).
The clarity of Luhmanns motto left nothing to be desired:
[T]ranscendental philosophy [has to be described] anew by the modern
means of the theory of self-referential systems or by means of second
order cybernetics (2002a: 59). In other words, a contemporary theory
design had to be on par with the non-trivial attitude. The brand names
embodying this new attitude included formal calculus; second-order
cybernetics; the theory of closed, autopoietic systems; or radical constructivism (2002a: 53). And rather than residing under the roof of a
philosophy that acted as a universal science, they originated from mathematics, biology, neurophysiology, automata theory, linguistics in
short, from a whole array of theories that, starting in the 1950s, emerged
from under the new roof of rst- and especially second-order cybernetics
and that, in the very way they operated, condensed the form of nontrivial rationality.
Exits from the Cave: Observing Technology

Luhmann relentlessly pursued a distancing from tradition that appeared
to correspond to the new conditions. One of his most concise reckonings
is the essay European Rationality.8 Arguably Luhmanns most beautiful and precise treatise on the end of philosophy, it locates all ontology as
antiquated messages from the Old European world of trivial observations. It is no more than a remnant and a survival of a long vanished
stage of European rationality which remained tied to a history of
observers.
The history of European rationality can be described as the history of
the dissolution of a rationality continuum that had connected the observer in the world with the world (Luhmann, 1998: 23). For Luhmann, the
assumption of a convergence of thought and being, which had sustained
ontology from Parmenides all the way to Heidegger (that is, the occidental Parmenidian variations, as Heidegger himself observed), was at the
very core of the early European, initially Greek belief in a continuum of
rationality that always already merged thought and being in a common
origin (1990: 321). The structural increase in complexity, that is, the loss
of the parallel views of a unied world (1998: 28) and the corresponding
increase of observer positions, was said to have rendered untenable the
notion of a privileged point of ontological world observation that
allowed for a unifying, certain and binding perception of being. The
privileged philosophical observer of being from bygone trivial days,
who like Husserl assumed that anybody can see what I see (Husserl,
1989: 77), was replaced by the observer of an observer as the bearer of the
new, non-trivial attitude. He appears as the central conceptual persona in
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the age of non-trivial machines; on his shoulders rests the renunciation so

characteristic of the epistemological politics of systems theory of the
philosophical-ontological assumption that we can see and survey the
world.
As Luhmann was able to gather from the work of the cyberneticist
Gotthard Gunther, the two-valued ontological guiding distinction
between thought and being or being and non-being did not only manifest
itself in the classical two-valued logic as the principal instrument of trivial
world description. Together with the two-valued logic it also found
expression in a pre-modern, that is to say archaic and stratied, formation
of society whose residues, Luhmann claimed, still cling to us in the shape
of interminable two-valued and above all ontological world descriptions:
Historically, we can see a distinct correlation between the traditional assumption of an ontologically describable world that is,
a world describable with the aid of the distinction between being
and nonbeing and a two-valued logical instrument. This assumes a
society in which dierences between dierent world and social
descriptions are not all that great and can be decided from incontrovertible reference points from the top or the center of the system.
(Luhmann, 1998: 28)
Whatever non-trivial theoretical intuition it may have possessed from
time to time, philosophy was burdened by its trivial ontological inheritance. In addition, it appeared to be nothing less than a pre-modern
instrument of power, as indicated by its systematic handling of distinctions. It consistently displayed a preference for distinctions with inbuilt
asymmetry that allow the person who has the positive side of the distinction at his or her disposal [to] make him- or herself master of both
sides (Luhmann, 2002a: 39). Subject to polycontextural conditions, however, ontology could be no more than a remnant from the age of the
principle of a universally valid rationality (Luhmann, 1998: 24) when it
still seemed self-evident that all observers have to be observed in the
same way (Luhmann, 1998: 26). Without the agreed-upon condition
that the world is the same for all observers and that it can be determined
(Luhmann, 1998: 26), Luhmann argued, there was no possibility of a
consistent and meaningful discourse on being, that is, no ontology.
Thus the end of the two-valued ontological world rationalization was
supposed to culminate in the shift from what questions to how questions (Luhmann, 1998: 26). From the point of view of a systems theory
informed by second-order cybernetics, the general transformation from
philosophical questions of essence that did not for a second doubt the
continuum of thought and being and the complete determinability of
the latter, to a drift into an age of relational questions of complexity
and indeterminacy that are part of the domain of sociology, revealed the
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ongoing dissolution of the continuum of rationality. Ontology, in short,

was to Luhmann the theoretically most potent and enduring gure of
trivial world narration. To quote Heinz von Foerster, it basically belonged
to the great love aair of Western culture for trivial machines (von
Foerster, 2003: 310). It was, as it were, the pre-modern school of trivialization whose time was coming to an end as science came to doubt its love.
Ontology and with it philosophy appeared as trivial fates of rationality.
This, in any case, is the systems-theoretical version of the end of ontology. By giving rise to complexity and securing the nal disappearance of
a unied observer perspective, the history of European rationality disposed of ontology itself as the rst major European form of rationality.
The end of ontology therefore appeared as an originally European event.
The very term Europe was to refer to the gradual dismantling of the
ontological world view, that is to say, the dismantling of its own origins
in the Greek hell of triviality. As Luhmann would have it, the signature
of Europe was its auto-deconstructive constitution, for though Europe
may have ensured the mastery of the trivial world view that was, so to
speak, the meaning of the grand European semantics only Europe has
[also] brought forth worldwide social descriptions that reect the experience of a radical, structural, transformation of society since the late
Middle Ages (Luhmann, 1998: 22) and thus abolish its own origins.
If philosophy, that old European institution, was to have any future at
all, it had to leave behind all forms of ontological thought and terminate
the hegemonic discourse politics it had pursued since early European days:
Critique that only means, anymore, observing observations, describing
descriptions from a standpoint that is itself observable (Luhmann, 2002a:
37). Above all it had striven for a subtler language . . . that functions even
under polycontextural conditions (2002a: 53). There was, Luhmann
argued, strictly speaking no alternative to the new critical emphasis on
redescriptions of descriptions that refrain from all conclusive formulas.
They rank among the characteristic features of the modern descriptions
of the world (2002a: 59) that correspond to the intellectual habitus of
modern societies. [T]he continual new description of redescriptions was
the only option for a society that was no longer willing to cling to old
descriptions, but instead perceived the prospect of further new descriptions of its own concepts as its future (2002a: 60). Redescription that is
the new epistemological password in the age of non-triviality and the new
form of European meaning.9 However, this new intellectual style consisting of ongoing description should not be confused with thinking.
Luhmann claimed that, unlike philosophy, modern science had
already left the world of the rst observer behind. Science, conceived
as a recursive system, pointed toward a post-ontological form of
world description that corresponded to the complex world of the
second observer which followed the dissolution of the rationality continuum. The only thing missing was to give full epistemological credit
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to this form, even against the resistance of orthodox, ontologically

xated cognitive relations. Precisely this expulsion of all apparitions of
trivial thought appeared to be the order of the day and, in particular, that
of systems theory. Or, in Heinz von Foersters own words: The task at
hand is: de-trivialization (von Foerster, 1984: 13). The crossover from a
world of direct observations which relied on unproblematic distinctions
and simply focused on what was being distinguished rather than how
these operations were performed, to one in which observations are
observed, that is, to observing ones own operations of distinctions and
indications and thereby doing away with any reference to outside, external conditions, or a supporting world this crossover appeared to be in
line with the history of rationality by representing the immediate consequence of the shift from a monocontextural to the plural constitution of a
polycontextural world. Spencer Browns logic of re-entry, which took the
basic act of observation to be the operative unity of distinction and
indication, marked the spot where Europe, or the process of
Europeanization, was to come round to itself. It could be, Luhmann
wrote in what amounts to a fundamental historico-philosophical statement, that the central question of European rationality is hidden in the
re-entry of the form into the form (1998: 32). The logic of re-entry
models recursive operations, and Luhmanns entire history of occidental
rationality was geared toward their appearance.
Nonetheless, we must note in passing that Luhmann, too, did not
escape the long reach of Old European ontology and its metaphysical
program. On the contrary, he remained rmly in its grip: In one vital
regard Luhmanns non-trivial program is subject to the Platonism eect
described by Derrida as the grand generator of occidental metaphysics.
Derrida identied the interruption of the communication between two
opposing values (Derrida, 1981: 98) of a dierence as the core of Platos
philosophical politics, that ever since has determined the occidental
handling of dierences. He further emphasized that within the network
of oppositions that organize the regime of Platonism as well as Platos
own text, one specic opposition is assigned a privileged structural signicance. In order for the opposing values to be opposed in the rst place
and initiate the strict regime of opposition, each of these terms must be
simply external to the other, which means that one of these oppositions
(the opposition between inside and outside) must already be accredited as
the matrix of all possible opposition (Derrida, 1981: 103). Precisely this
Platonic matrix of inside and outside is celebrated by Luhmann as the
great post-ontological option that moves us into a dierent, no longer
old, European ontological world:
In ontologically altogether implausible fashion the primary distinction between being and non-being is replaced by the distinction
between inside and outside or that between the self-reference and
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hetero-reference of the observer. According to this new version

there rst of all needs to be an observer present before he can
draw the distinction between being and non-being. But there is no
metaphysical or logical rule for the choice of primary distinction,
there are only socio-historical plausibilities, among them a modern
interest in de-ontologizing the world. (Luhmann, 1997a: 911)
Ever since Plato the ontologically altogether implausible distinction
between inside and outside, which under current non-trivial conditions
assumes the rank of a primary distinction, resulted in an ostracization
of the technical as the merely external, with all the associated negative
ascriptions of exteriority such as death, articiality, absence of creativity,
and lack of knowledge. Philosophy was shaped by this exteriorizing marginalization; it was the very core of the traditional philosophical politics
of more precisely, against technology. Granted, Luhmanns inside/
outside distinction is operative rather than substantial and, following
George Spencer-Brown, it allows for a switching of sides but it nonetheless remains a rigorous, impermeable distinction (otherwise concepts
like structural coupling would make little sense). Maybe Luhmanns
prominent use of this central distinction, which served to marginalize
the technical object, highlights a certain forgetfulness of the technical
that secretly ties him to Old European semantics. Indeed, one of the
more signicant features of Luhmanns theory is the fact that technology,
in particular digital technology, is always, so to speak, an outsider. In
systems-theoretical terms, however, technology is not just the outside of a
given system, it is external to system-environment couplings. It is indifferent, that is to say, it is part of that side which forms the environment
of systems but is unable to irritate them and trigger internal processes of
self-determination (though it is capable of destroying systems) (cf.
Esposito, 2001: 242).
No doubt the question concerning technology and its forgetting in
Luhmanns oeuvre requires an extensive analysis. To what extent does
his observation of technology re-enact the occidental marginalization of
the technical? Indeed, where exactly is the current, contemporary question concerning technology located within Luhmanns theory edice? In
light of ubiquitous computerization and the network-based emergence of
intelligent environments, which increasingly undermine the distinction
between machines and media and give rise to the possibility of a structural coupling of computers and cognition, these questions are not only
of great importance to systems theory and its future design but also serve
to foreground the foundational importance of non-trivial machines for
that theorys conceptual apparatus.10 Without addressing these issues,
any attempt to deal with the history of fascination exerted by nontriviality remains incomplete. Such an analysis, however, will have to
be conducted elsewhere. But to provide a few hints: On the one hand,
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Luhmann insists on abandoning the traditional notion of technology

linked to know-how, performance and decision (Luhmann, 1997a:
527). He emphasizes that notions of technology that operate by way
of opposing themselves to nature or spirit are no longer of any help
(1997a: 535). Equally obsolete are attempts to contrast technology and
reason or technology and lifeworld, and so on (1997a: 522). Instead,
Luhmann maintains that changing the concept . . . [should] open up the
possibility of seeing new connections (1997a: 529). The statement that
the evolution of technology is followed by a directly corresponding
structure of rationality (1997a: 519) seems to indicate that he was at
least in part aware of the fact that the non-trivial attitude is grounded
in changes in machine history as well as in the changing meanings of the
technical itself. In view of the proliferation of non-trivial machines, this
statement could have been an opportune point of departure for the reformulating of the question concerning technology in ways which challenge
traditional, pre-technological descriptive semantics and maybe even go
beyond the obsolete understanding of technology itself. Ideally, this
question should have been on a level with the latest stage of technological
evolution. Yet despite all attempts to pull clear from tradition,
Luhmanns description of technology remains caught in a bygone dogmatic view. Though technology is supposed to enable a coupling of
completely heterogeneous elements (1997a: 526), it is seen as a rigid
(as opposed to loose) coupling (1997a: 526). Ultimately, technology
refers rst and foremost to technical systems characterized by causal
closure and that . . . only in certain respects react to environmental inputs
(Luhmann, 2002b: 95). Despite all the talk about the evolution of technology and the corresponding renunciation of traditional concepts,
Luhmann in nal analysis invokes the old mechanical notion of technology as a determined, closed machine an approach that has its roots in a
bygone stage of technological evolution. Compare, for example, the
many residues of traditional descriptions of technology in Luhmann
with Gilbert Simondons far more radical evolutionary theory of the
technical object which he had been advancing since the late 1950s.
Luhmann retains concepts that originated prior to the 20th century,
while Simondons work focuses on the new age of technical ensembles,
open machines, open objects and nets characterized by growing margins
of indeterminacy (Simondon, 2005, 2006).
Transclassical Machines and New Domains of Rationality

Luhmanns attempt to locate if not hypostasize the non-trivial attitude in the history of rationality was indebted to a philosophical mentor
who had abandoned the camp of poets and thinkers and crossed over to
cybernetics: Gotthard Gunther. Luhmann probably referred to him as
well as to Heinz von Foerster, who collaborated with Gunther at the
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Biological Computer Laboratory in Urbana11 when it came to the

scientic alignment of his own post-trivial project. Gunther must count
as the great philosophical actor of the non-trivial shift, who unlike
Luhmann did not conceal the conditio technologica of this transformation. He had been concerned with the possible metaphysical signicance
of the machine-technical revolution as far back as the early 1950s.
Gunthers work on the formal and ontological consequences of this
transformation reveal the technological shift of meaning that is also evident in Luhmanns project, though even in the case of Gunther it still
appears, in the words of Klaus Heinrich, to be a history of fascination
with its share of blindness and infatuation. More than others, Gunther
was under the inuence of and transxed by the new machine which he,
however, called trans-classical rather than non-trivial. Gunther was the
rst to conceptualize the impact of the new recursively operating cybernetic machines including, rst and foremost, the computer on the history
of rationality.12 Basing himself increasingly on a hard machine-theoretical and calculatory foundation, he sought to overcome the long-standing ontological tradition of Western thought and this is precisely why
Luhmann was so passionately interested in Gunthers discussion of polyvalence and polycontexturality.13
Gunther repeatedly described what he called the transition from a
classical to a non-classical age and the dawn of a new sense of the
world. The guiding dierence classical/trans-classical that structured
his perception of epochs was based on a solid machine-theoretical foundation. First, in 1952, Gunther pinpointed the dierence between the
Archimedean-classical and the trans-classical or non-Archimedean
machine:
In the course of technological development man has conceived of
two radically dierent types of machine. The rst is the classicalarchimedean machine whose purpose is to produce work. It has
been joined by the idea of a second machine from which we
expect information rather than work. The rst machine was
designed in analogy to the human arm (and hand), the second is
expected to be a technological reproduction of the human brain.
For only the brain processes information. (Gunther, 1976: 96)
The new type of machine that has never been there before in the
human history of technology (1976: 94), and whose origins were just
about to become apparent in the birth of cybernetics, was not only
poised to shake the sense of the world determined by classical ontology
(1976: 99). With it, Gunther also saw the dawn of a new culture and a
new idea of science, even a new occidental man who no longer identies
with the pure forms of classical thought (1976: 114). In the wake of the
new machine the human condition of being itself appeared to have been
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changed to a degree that matched the transformation from a primitive

level consciousness to that of a high culture.
This metaphysically oriented machine-theoretical observation served
to inspire the Hegelian Gunther. It provided the basis for the conguration made up of the distinction between classical/trans-classical logic,
ontology, science and culture in general that came to characterize
Gunthers work on the transformation of the fundamental metaphysical
stance associated with the second machine. Starting in the 1950s his
comprehensive formal studies on trans-classical calculus were time and
again accompanied by a technologically grounded theory of culture that
dierentiated between one-, two- and many-valued cultures. The meaning of a culture was said to depend mainly on its technological meaning,
which was lowered, as it were, into its symbolic order, its worldview and
its basic operating procedures and modes of thought, and that, historically speaking, proceeded from primitive tools to classical and on to transclassical machines.
One-valued cultures were said to be characterized by an archaic state
of consciousness in which the latter merges with its environment and does
not achieve any separation between soul and thing or subject and object.
Primitive tools, Gunther argued, revealed this ambivalent structure as
well as the unstable form of primitive consciousness in as far as they were
half nature and half mind, that is, materially part of a natural context
and yet at the same time an articial form dened by its purpose (1976:
92). Only when tools became autonomous and were completely separated
from the natural context as well as from the spirit and intention of their
creators and this, Gunther pointed out, is the primary meaning of the
history of technology can we speak of the birth of the pure object, of an
objective being in the strong machine sense. A machine is nothing but a
tool that within certain boundaries has become autonomous (1976: 93).
The appearance of the machine, therefore, marks a signicant rupture.
The autonomy of technology was said to create the consciousness of
classical two-valued high cultures whose operations were based on
machines rather than on tools and that introduced the regime of traditional ontological oppositions, rst and foremost that between dead
object and live subject. Gunther emphasized that in the psychic realm
of a dualist culture only that was regarded as subjective and psychic
which had to be understood in non-machinic and non-mechanical fashion (Gunther, 1980: 223). The classical machine shaped the classical
regime of meaning to the core. This rst machine culture allegedly
found its formal expression in the strictly two-valued dierence machine
known as Aristotelian logic, that is, in its corresponding dualist ontometaphysics that operated with two values, being and non-being.
Furthermore, the classical machine also inaugurated and implemented
the long-lasting classical observer along with the associated world of
observation.
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Supported by new technological means, trans-classical machines are

said to push the formative central boundary between Ego and World
ever further back into the background of subjectivity and attribute ever
more of what emerges from that background to the objective world of
things. Gunther had in mind no more and no less than a cultural cleansing brought about by the spirit of the new machine. As he put it, the
business of cybernetics consisted in demythologizing the general classical regime of meaning and its principal mythologem, the distinction
between nature and mind, subject and object. Formally this corresponded to a departure from the long-lasting Aristotelian world of the
observer that had arisen around the classical machine. A shift in the
meaning of machines was said to entail a shift in the meaning of logic
away from a two-valued system of propositions that focused on objective
being toward a trans-classical calculus of complex self-reexive processes. According to Gunther, the crux of the matter was that the
trans-classical machine promotes a truly technological shift of meaning,
that is to say, a synchronized shift of technical and logical meaning, and
pointed the way out of the classical onto-metaphysical frame of
reference.
Already in Gunthers case the predicted exodus from the enclosure of
classical thought (Gunther, 1978: viii) on the basis of trans-classical
machines amounted to secession from Greece a philosophical breakup with Athens that Gunthers close reader Luhmann is sure to have
noted. Gunther, too, saw this as a decisive turning point in the history of
rationality, a historical change of climate of such magnitude that it
equaled the original Greek events. In the rst instance the technological
shift of meaning revealed to him that the domain of rationality dened
by classical axiomatics was surprisingly narrow. Much, much narrower
than hitherto assumed (1978: viii). The main point was that the conceptualization of rationality and its opposite was to be determined by the
machinic realm that characterized cultural and indeed psychic conditions. Gunther viewed the destruction of classical axiomatics brought
about by the trans-classical machine primarily as a comprehensive correction (Gunther, 1980: 225) of patterns of rationality that were taken
for granted and that, incorrectly, were considered either ineluctable or
only to be exceeded at the price of descending into irrationality. Gunther
already disposed of a machine-based account of the history of rationality
that Luhmann completed in grand style, albeit oblivious of all
technology.
Gunther subsequently tried to advance beyond historical speculations by attempting a calculus-based move into the trans-classical
domains of rationality, especially with the help of his logical theory
of morphogrammatics and polycontexturality. Beyond Greece, Gunther
realized, it was no longer a matter of thinking but of computing. In the
context of the history of fascination, the crucial point was that the
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trans-classical machine was explicitly awarded the rank of a mind

prosthesis which
reveals problems whose mere existence remains inaccessible to any
type of natural thinking unassisted by technology. It is an essential
part of natural consciousness not yet supported by cybernetic mind
prostheses that it cannot address certain psychic questions simply
because it is unaware of the domain of reality in which these questions emerge. (1980: 231)
Gunthers entire transformation theory was sparked by the appearance of the trans-classical machine. As opposed to classical machines
they were prostheses in a new sense, that is, no longer organ or body
prostheses but nooprostheses modeled on the most complex of all transclassical machines, the human brain. But when talking about the history
of fascination exerted by non-classical machines, we always have to keep
in mind that in the case of Gunther and Luhmann (and, not to forget,
von Foerster) something is suppressed: a mode of thinking that eludes
both trivial and non-trivial thought processes in the words of Gilles
Deleuze and Felix Guattari a non-thinking thinking, as it were, a thinking beyond cognition and recognition.
Conclusion: Questioning the Neocybernetic Regime of

Truth
We have merely touched upon the still unwritten history of the fascination of the trans-classical and the non-trivial machine, as it reveals itself
especially in Luhmanns occidental recursions. Ultimately, it is part and
parcel of a process that, in the words of the French mechanologist
Gilbert Simondon, may be described as the majorization of the technical
object. The latter no longer appears as an object of utility circumscribed
by the metaphysical register of a trans-technical or merely instrumental
reason; rather, by gaining independence it enforces a fundamental revision of the order of things, of the interpretations of the world and self,
and even of our basic understanding of rationality and thinking itself. In
terms of this history of fascination, Luhmanns history of rationality is
despite all the fascinating perspectives it enables a phantasmal deposit
of the great structural transformation of meaning in the course of which
the technical object sheds its status as the ostracized object of meaning,
located at the zero point of meaning and acting as the embodiment of
non-meaning, and instead turns into an exponent of an entirely new
constellation of meaning by moving into the very centre of the cultural
production of meaning. The process reveals how after an extended period
of technophobia the theoretical attitude experiences a technological
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shock, as a result of which its self-description falls under the spell of the
technical object while simultaneously denying it.14
Great moments of technological innovation, Bernard Stiegler writes,
are moments of suspension. In its development, the technics that interrupts one state of things imposes another (Derrida and Stiegler, 2002:
149). Under technological conditions it is critical to understand the virulence of the technical object and this moment of suspension, to grasp the
force exerted by it and take note of the epistemic folds and political
strategies it produces. It is critical that we do not simply replace old
evidences with new ones which are then regarded as the fate of discourse
and rationality. Yet this is precisely what, to a considerable extent,
Luhmanns politics of knowledge as well as his construction of the
history of rationality and, especially, his anti-philosophical and antiontological strategy and narrative, do.
The epoche demanded of us does not involve, as Luhmann claimed,
the bracketing of metaphysics. After the destruction of object-centred
ontology brought about by Heidegger, Deleuze, Derrida and, nally,
Nancys co-existential ontology, as well as by the process ontology of
Whitehead and others, this is no longer our most pressing problem.
Trivial ontology, which Luhmann, backed by a vast history of rationality, decried as an absolutist bastion, was already in his days nothing but a
projection of a certain politics of knowledge. The epoche called for today
involves the bracketing of cybernetic presumptions and their uncritically
accepted basic terms fateful terms that have inaugurated an entire
cybernetic (more precisely, neocybernetic) regime of truth. Be it as
theory or technology, the spreading cybernetic hypothesis has a rm
grip on our conceptual politics and self-descriptions (see Tiqqun, 2001). It
may be necessary to bracket (though not eliminate, avoid or delete),
among others, terms like complexity, emergence, autopoiesis, coupling
and recursions, all of which characterize the form of non-trivial rationality. Instead we need to nd non-technological terms to describe our
technological condition.
Notes
1. I recently edited a media-theoretical collection featuring a broad array of new
conceptual attempts to illuminate our techno-medial situation, especially with
a view towards a more general ecological perspective (see Horl, 2011). Mark
Hansen in particular has provided several descriptions of the new mediatechnological environment, be it by explicitly appropriating established
cybernetic semantics (cf. Hansen, 2009) or, as in his most recent contribution,
by decisively distancing himself from it (cf. Hansen, 2011). In this context see
also Luciana Parisis attempt to reformulate the eco-technological situation
beyond the cybernetic imaginary (Parisi, 2009).
2. I am indebted to a reviewer who pointed me to an important passage in which
Luhmann in passing mentions the technological basis for his use of the term
118
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
machine (data-processing machines). However, in a significant gesture

Luhmann immediately adds that this appropriation of the term constitutes
a relatively harmless linguistic usage as long as it remains clear that this is
not a reference to trivial machines, which in completely unchanging ways
keep transforming input into output, but to non-trivial machines executing
recursive operations (Luhmann, 1990: 402).
Elsewhere Luhmann provided an even more succinct definition of the trivial
condition of all ontology: In our usage of the term, ontology refers to a
pattern of observation, that is, a mode of observation based on the distinction
between being and non-being. This implies first and foremost that the distinction between being and non-being is and always remains dependent on an
antecedent operative separation between observation (or observer) and
observed (Luhmann, 1997a: 896).
See Quine (1961: 119; 1969: 2668). I am indebted to Elena Esposito,
who after reading an early draft of this essay pointed out that Luhmann,
of course, had no objections to a relativistic ontology a` la Quine. On the
contrary, he considered it all but indispensable and restricted his opposition
to the absolute, if not absolutist, metaphysical ontology based on the
distinction between being and non-being. This is no doubt correct. Even
though Luhmann for the main part only spoke of ontology, his criticism
was primarily directed at onto-metaphysics. Yet the question arises whether
this distinction between absolute and relative ontology is sufficient when
it comes to marking the entire ontological problem, and whether there are
not other forms of ontological thought that Luhmann always already misses
out on.
According to Luhmann, the temporality of science is in accord with
modern structures of temporalization (on the replacement of the presentist
Old European semantics of time by modern temporal consciousness see
Luhmann, 1980: 235300). Beyond mere chronology, Luhmann conceives
of time primarily as a system time produced by the temporalizing of
complexity, more precisely, as a dimension of determining meaning and
managing complexity. Increasingly complex societies, Luhmann argues,
have to further temporalize their complexity and expand their time
horizons, they even have to change their concepts of time . . . because
it becomes increasingly inevitable to order complexity in sequence
(Luhmann, 1980: 256). For this reason there exists a strong correlation
between social evolution and the structures of temporal consciousness
(1990: 248). Hence Luhmanns systems theory can be viewed as an attempt
at a fundamental sociology that succeeds an allegedly antiquated fundamental ontology.
See also: The function of science rests on a possible reorganization of the
possible, on a new combinatorics and not on a reproduction of the given, on
a mere doubling of objects in cognition (Luhmann, 1990: 328).
Only in the fragment on the origin of geometry, in which he contemplates the
function of reading and writing for the archigenesis of ideality (where
hypomnesis precedes all anamnesis), does Husserl glimpse the basic role of
cultural technics for the birth of ideality, which in Vienna he had still
described as an essentially pre-technical affair (for an extended reading of
this decisive passage see Stiegler, 2001).
Horl
119
8. Another important document for Luhmanns liquidation of tradition is the

final chapter of the Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft [The Society of Society],
especially the section The Semantics of Old Europe I: Ontology
(pp. 893912). Unfortunately, I can only briefly touch upon this important
anti-philosophical text.
9. Geophilosophically speaking, however, we should note that redescription
represents a watchword of American pragmatism and of Richard Rorty in
particular, who (following John Dewey) used it to move beyond observer
theory and metaphysical formulas of closure, which he thought indispensable for developing a philosophy that remains open to the future. The concept of redescription, including the theory of non-closure it contains, goes
back to Charles Sanders Peirces processual sign theory (see Hampe, 2006:
5375, esp. 60ff.).
10. On the challenge the computer poses for Luhmanns systems theory in
particular, the fact that it undermines the positioning of technology on the
outside of the system/environment difference see Esposito (2001) and
Baecker (2001).
11. Further see Muller and Muller (2007). Luhmann frequently refers to
Gunther, especially in connection with the attempts to leave behind the
trivial ontological program (e.g. Luhmann, 1997: 895). In the context of
Luhmanns own perception of the non-trivial shift as focusing on the
appearance of the conceptual figure of the observer, Gunther is mentioned
immediately after von Foerster and even before Maturana (see Luhmann,
2002b: 64).
12. For more on Gunthers theoretical concept and its historical and noopolitical context, see Horl (2008: 182ff.).
13. Elena Esposito, one of Luhmanns most important students, has researched
the great significance Gunther had for Luhmann. During a conversation she
offered the pointed formulation that Luhmanns social theory could be seen
as a consistent attempt to continue Gotthard Gunthers project of developing a polycontextural and polyvalent way of thinking.
14. Luhmann himself reflected on the connection between self-construction and
imaginary construction (see Luhmann, 1997a: 8668).
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Erich Horl is Professor of Media Philosophy and Media Technology at

Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. He is head of the Bochum
Colloquium for Media Studies (bkm). He studied philosophy, cultural
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Erratum
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Luhmann, The Non-Trivial Machine and The Neocybernetic Regime of Truth - E. Hörl

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Non-triviality is fascinating, and this fascination has its own

Theory, Culture & Society 29(3)

thinkers, such as Michel Serres, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari,

The Fascination with the Non-trivial Machine: Luhmann and

description of the occidental as the gradual assertion of non-trivial

Theory, Culture & Society 29(3)

The distinction between trivial and non-trivial machines is one of

primacy of this idealized classical observer epistemology. Its point of

Theory, Culture & Society 29(3)

demolished by second-order cybernetics. But Luhmann, the Latinist

alleged primary evidence produced by trivial world understanding as well

Machinic Deconstructions of Ontology

Theory, Culture & Society 29(3)

are such machines). The grand severance of ontological word references

Cyberneticizing Husserl: On the Birth of the Non-trivial

Theory, Culture & Society 29(3)

The changed situation that separates Luhmanns clarications of the

Theory, Culture & Society 29(3)

Exits from the Cave: Observing Technology

Theory, Culture & Society 29(3)

the age of non-trivial machines; on his shoulders rests the renunciation so

ongoing dissolution of the continuum of rationality. Ontology, in short,

Theory, Culture & Society 29(3)

to this form, even against the resistance of orthodox, ontologically

hetero-reference of the observer. According to this new version

Theory, Culture & Society 29(3)

Luhmann insists on abandoning the traditional notion of technology

Transclassical Machines and New Domains of Rationality

Biological Computer Laboratory in Urbana11 when it came to the

Theory, Culture & Society 29(3)

changed to a degree that matched the transformation from a primitive

Supported by new technological means, trans-classical machines are

Theory, Culture & Society 29(3)

trans-classical machine was explicitly awarded the rank of a mind

Conclusion: Questioning the Neocybernetic Regime of

Theory, Culture & Society 29(3)

machine (data-processing machines). However, in a significant gesture

8. Another important document for Luhmanns liquidation of tradition is the

Theory, Culture & Society 29(3)

Derrida, J. (1981) Dissemination, trans. and ed. B. Johnson. Chicago: University

Luhmann, N. (2002a) Theories of Distinction: Redescribing the Descriptions of

Erich Horl is Professor of Media Philosophy and Media Technology at

Downloaded from tcs.sagepub.com at Geograph Institute Der on March 31, 2015

Theory, Culture & Society

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