Systems in CTMS by David Wellbery

Niklas Luhmann
distinctions  Consciousness/communication, form/medium, system/environment, operation/observation


the feature distinguishing psychic and social systems from all other autopoietic systems is the fact that they constitute themselves within the medium of meaning... Meaning is the referential excess that carries each presentation beyond itself to other presentations. In Luhmannian patios this is captured by the dictum, meaning the is the unity of the difference of actuality and potentiality. .... a relation, because any occurent phenomenon within the space of meaning is what it is only by virtue of its relations to other possible phenomena...

Structural coupling  occurs at the border between autonomous systems and enables them to affect one another without, as it were, entering into each other's (after all, autonomous) operations.

This way of describing things marks an important distinction between systems theory and all varieties of structuralism. In fact, given the emphasis of systems theory on such notions as "event," "contingency," and "improbability," the concept of "structural determination," so dear to the sociological tradition, falls into desuetude.