AUTOPOIESIS AND SOCIAL-SYSTEMS .1.
In this rejoinder to Zeleny and Hufford's paper, ''The application of autopoiesis in systems analysis: Are autopoietic systems also social systems?'',1 it is argued that applying autopoiesis, a biological concept, directly and literally to social systems in general, and to the family in particular, encounters practical difficulties of interpretation and adds no conceptual clarification or explanatory value to research in those fields. Additionally, and contrary to what Zeleny and Hufford imply, social systems are not limited to cooperative units but include hierarchical command systems as well. Discussion follows Luhmann's efforts to widen the concept of autopoiesis beyond its original biological connotations, thus making it applicable to the social sciences: social and psychic systems are not living systems, but meaning-using systems, based respectively on communication and consciousness as modes of meaning-based production rather than on individuals or even actions. Two concepts (self-observation and self-reference) from second-order cybernetics are then presented and are illustrated with recent research examples. These two concepts are held to be important explanatory variables for describing the behavior of social systems.
autopoiesis family communication self-observation complexity reduction free choice self-organization self-production self-reference sociocybernetics