Luhmann’s theory of social systems proposes a radical shift from human-centred sociology towards an account of society as an autopoietic order composed not of individuals, intentions, or actions, but of communications. Against traditions that treat the subject as the foundation of social life, Luhmann argues that modern society can only be understood through the difference between system and environment: systems emerge by reducing complexity, selecting from an overwhelming field of possibilities, and reproducing their own operations recursively. This does not mean that people disappear, but that psychic systems and social systems operate differently; consciousness thinks, whereas society communicates. The crucial implication is that communication is not the transfer of inner meanings from one mind to another, but a synthesis of information, utterance, and understanding that generates further communication. In this sense, society is autopoietic, because it produces the elements from which it is made. Luhmann’s concept of double contingency clarifies the problem: when two actors encounter one another, each depends on the other’s unpredictable response, so social order cannot be grounded in certainty, consensus, or shared essence. Instead, order arises from recursive selections that stabilise expectations while remaining contingent. A useful case is modern functional differentiation: law, politics, science, economy, and art each observe the world through their own codes and cannot be reduced to one supreme viewpoint. Science seeks truth, law distinguishes legal from illegal, and politics processes power, yet none can fully control the others. Luhmann therefore replaces moral or humanist explanations of society with a theory of complexity, showing that modernity is not unified by a common subject but sustained by multiple self-referential systems. His conclusion is demanding but decisive: society has no external observer, no final centre, and no privileged language of total description; it can only observe itself through the partial operations of the systems that constitute it.
