On Niklas Luhmann's Concept of Social Emergence

The article discusses Niklas Luhmann's concept of communication as an emergent phenomenon. The first goal of this paper is to show that despite recent objections it is possible to reconstruct Luhmann as a social emergentist theorist. Secondly, the intention is to shed some light on general problems and presuppositions of an emergentist social theory. For this purpose I first sketch the opposing camps of reductionism and emergentism within sociology, and I demonstrate to what extent Luhmann's theory is actually emergentist. This is followed by a characterization of the way in which emergent communication is seen as an autonomous social phenomenon and how it allegedly is related to an individual basis. Subsequently, I introduce some conditions of adequacy from the philosophy of science thus criticizing Luhmann's concept of emergence and clarifying the preconditions for a plausible emergentist theory within sociology. Finally, I consider a (more) promising concept of social emergence.