The Ontological and Epistemological Influence of Talcott Parsons’s Analytical Realism on Niklas Luhmann’s Operative Constructivism

Abstract

Context: From an operative constructivist perspective, Luhmann unfolds the guidelines of his theory of cognition. Focusing on how the scientific system reflects, he observes the conditions under which the selective and recursive network of communications, specialized in determining the veracity or falsehood of knowledge, develops in modern society. Problem: This perspective stimulates several debates that link ontological and epistemological considerations. In order to contribute to these, this article advances the specification of operative constructivism, analyzing the influence exerted on it by an old discussion partner: the analytical realism of Parsons. Method: This is a theoretical-conceptual work that first addresses the ontological and epistemological approaches underlying the thinking of Parsons and Luhmann, and then contrasts their respective ways of conceptualizing systems, complexity and cybernetics. Results: Parsons’s work is underlined as a precursor of the introduction into sociology of the theories of systems, complexity and cybernetics, a suggestion that finds in Luhmann a follower, who deepens the incorporation of these contributions, but on the basis of conceptualizations of a later generation. At the same time, when the emphasis is placed on the analytical moment of analytical realism, in addition to highlighting another of Parsons’s anticipation of operative constructivism, he is appraised as an antecedent of constructivist perspectives on knowledge. Implications: By virtue of its comparison with analytical realism, the characterization of operative constructivism attends to the main debates it has generated: at the ontological level, it explores the scope of the principle of de-ontologization; epistemologically, it deals with the realism/constructivism tension. In specifying this position, its ambivalences with regard to the radical constructivism of Maturana and von Glasersfeld are also pointed out.