| Summary: | 碩士 === 東吳大學 === 社會學系 === 102 === This essay discusses about Niklas Luhmann's idea of modernity. The main reference is his Observations on Modernity.
Luhmann described contemporary society structurally as a functionally differentiated system. The differentiated functions systems, which are closed and autonomous, distinguish themselves from their environment. Every functions system observes with its own distinction.
If we want to describe the cosmography of contemporary society, we must unite the distinction between self-reference and hetero-reference. This unity actualizes in the operation of second-order observations. A recursive network of observations of observations results in definitive attributes, and contingency is the form of these definitive attributes. Anything is contingent that is neither necessary nor impossible. Therefore they are inevitably paradoxical.
Luhmann told us, all world experience are becoming contingent in contemporary society, because they are neither necessary nor impossible artificialities. Finally, Luhmann's social systems theory is also a“theory of modernity”with implications of contingency and paradox.
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