Purchase this article
USD $22.00
From Organisms to World Society
Steps toward a Conceptual History of Systems Theory, 1880–1980
in Contributions to the History of Concepts
Author:
Julian Bauer
Julian Bauer
University of Konstanz julian.bauer@eua.be
Search for other papers by Julian Bauer in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Search for other papers by Julian Bauer in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
USD $0.01
All currencies in US Dollar
This article proposes to analyze the idea of organism and other closely related ideas (function, differentiation, etc.) using a combination of semantic fields analysis from conceptual history and the notion of boundary objects from the sociology of scientific knowledge. By tackling a wide range of source material, the article charts the nomadic existence of organism and opens up new vistas for an integrated history of the natural and human sciences. First, the boundaries are less clear-cut between disciplines like biology and sociology than previously believed. Second, a long and transdisciplinary tradition of talking about organismic and societal systems in highly functionalist terms comes into view. Third, the approach shows that conceptions of a world society in Niklas Luhmann's variant are not semantic innovations of the late twentieth century. Rather, their history can be traced back to organicist sociology and its forgotten pioneers, especially Albert Schäffle or Guillaume de Greef, during the last decades of the nineteenth century.