Abstract
Niklas Luhmann was a theoretical sociologist, who built a unified theory of society based on systems theory. He particularly drew upon the tools of second-order cybernetics, notably the theory of autopoiesis. He was extremely prolific, publishing over 50 books and several hundred articles, ranging across many areas of social theory with an exceptional combination of both breadth and depth. His research programme, as stated when he took up his professorship in 1969, was “the theory of society; term: thirty years; costs: none” (Luhmann N. Theory of society. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2012, p. xi). As he died in 1998, having published a theory of modern society the previous year, he achieved this programme almost precisely.
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Ramage, M., Shipp, K. (2020). Niklas Luhmann. In: Systems Thinkers. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-7475-2_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-7475-2_21
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