No More Learning

The question whether such observers "exist" and who they are must be left to sociology.
3. SeeChapter1,sectionIX.
4. See Humberto R. Maturana, who limits his analyses to living systems:
Erkennen: Die Organisation und Verkorperung von Wirklichkeit: Ausgewdhlte Ar- beiten zur biologischen Epistemologie (Braunschweig, 1982), pp. 34, i49f.
5. Negations are thus no longer primary operations as in classical logic. We shall return to this point when discussing modern art--an art that negates art. See Chapter 4, section II, and Chapter 7, section V, below.
6. As does Novalis in his Fichte-Studien: "Wie wird das absolute Ich ein em- pirisches Ich? " (quoted from Novalis: Werke, Tagebiicher undBriefe Friedrich von Hardenbergs, ed. Hans-Joachim Mahl and Richard Samuel, vol. 2 [Darmstadt, 1978], p. 31)-
7. See the corresponding propositions in George Spencer Brown, Laws of Form (1969; rpt. New York, 1979), p. 105.
8. As insiders will notice, we are thinking of Paul de Man.
9. See Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago, 1982), p. 66.
10. A selection of the above-mentioned literature includes: Heinz von Foer-
ster, Observing Systems (Seaside, Calif, 1981); Humberto R. Maturana, Erkennen; Maturana, "The Biological Foundation of Self Consciousness and the Physical Domain of Existence," in Niklas Luhmann et al. , Beobachter: Konvergenz der Erkenntnistheorien? (Munich, 1990), pp. 47-117; Dean MacCannell and Juliet F. MacCannell, The Time of the Sign: A Semiotic Interpretation ofModern Culture (Bloomington, Ind. , 1982); Spencer Brown, Laws ofForm, Gotthard Gunther, Beitrage zur Grundlegung einer operationsfahigen Dialektik, 3 vols. (Hamburg, 1976-1980); Rino Genovese, Carla Benedetti, and Paolo Garbolino, Modi diAt-
tribuzione: Filosofia e teoria dei sistemi (Naples, 1989); George W. Stocking Jr. ,
ed. , Observers Observed: Essays on Ethnographic Field Work (Madison, Wis. , 1983); Ranulph Glanville, Objekte (Berlin 1988); Niklas Luhmann, Die Wissenschaft der
334
Notes to Pages 59-64
Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1990), esp. pp. 68ff. ; and the entire literature on artificial intelligence. For an overview, see also Francisco Varela, Kognitionswissenschafi-- Kognitionstechnik: Eine Skizze aktueller Perspektiven (Frankfurt, 1990).
11. In the sense of Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, eds. , Ma- terialities of Communication, trans. William Whobrey (Stanford, Calif. , 1994). 12. See also the strange active/passive ambiguity of "impression" in Raymond
Roussel, and on this Julia Kristeva, Semeiotike: Recherches pour un setnanalyse (Paris, 1969), pp. 2i6ff. (and also pp. i8iff).
13. For a different account, see Glanville, Objekte.
14. See also Louis H. Kauffman, "Self-Reference and Recursive Forms," Jour- nal ofSocial and Biological Structures 10 (1987): 53-72.
15. See the distinction between natural and artificial restrictions in Lars Lof- gren, "Some Foundational Views on General Systems and the Hempel Paradox," InternationalJournal of General Systems 4 (1978): 243-53 (244). This distinction must be accepted as a distinction, since there is no further observer who could say whether something is "in truth" natural or artificial, necessary or contingent.
16. See Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Social Construc- tion ofScientific Facts (Beverly Hills, Calif. , 1979); Karin Knorr-Cetina, DieFabri- kation von Erkenntnis: Zur Anthropologic der Naturwissenschafien (Frankfurt, 1984).
17. On the history of specialization that led to the production of "papers" and
on the corresponding irrelevance of the presence of other observers in science,
see Charles Bazerman, Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre andActivity ofthe Experimental Article in Science (Madison, Wis. , 1988). On the cycle of exaggera- tion and criticism and the increasing "sensitivity to mistakes" in the wake of these developments, see Michael Mulkay and G. Nigel Gilbert, "Accounting for Error: How Scientists Construct Their Social World When They Account for Correct and Incorrect Belief," Sociology 16 (1982): 165-83.
18. See Rudolf Stichweh, "Die Autopoiesis der Wissenschaft," in Dirk Baecker et al. , eds. , Theorie als Passion (Frankfurt, 1987), pp. 447-81 (459ff. ).
19. See Dirk Baecker, Information und Risiko in der Marktwirtschaft (Frank- furt, 1988), esp. pp. i98ff.
20. Simpler societies organize their economies along constant prices that are independent of scarcity or abundance, or supply and demand, because for a first- order observer this kind of information is too difficult and too risky to obtain. See Elisabeth Cashdan, "Information Costs and Customary Prices," in Cashdan, ed. , Risk and Uncertainty in Tribal and Peasant Societies (Boulder, 1990), pp. 259-78.
21. See Machiavelli, Discorsi II, Chap. 24 and Principe, Chap. 20, quoted from Opere, 7th ed. (Milan, 1976), pp. 288 and no, respectively.
22. Hegel, Phanomenologie des Geistes (1807), quoted from the edition by Jo- hannes Hoffmeister, 4th ed. (Leipzig, 1937), pp. i4iff.
23. This, of course, is not Hegel's terminology.
Notes to Pages 6$-68
335
24. See Niklas Luhmann, "Gesellschaftliche Komplexitat und offentliche Mei-
nung," in Luhmann, Soziologische Aufkldrung, vol. 5 (Opladen, 1990), pp. 170-82;
Luhmann, "Die Beobachtung der Beobachter im politischen System: Zur Theo-
rie der offentlichen Meinung," in Jiirgen Willke, ed. , Offentliche Meinung: Theo-
rien, Methoden, Befunde. Beitrage zu Ehren von Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (Frei- _
burg, 1992), pp. 77 86.
25. See the two essays "Sozialsystem Familie" and "Gliick und Ungliick der
Kommunikation in Familien: Zur Genese von Pathologien," in Niklas Luh-
mann, Soziologische Aufkldrung, vol. 5, pp. i96ff. , 2i8ff. On communication rou- tines, see also Alois Hahn, "Konsensusfiktionen in Kleingruppen: Dargestellt am Beispiel von jungen Ehen," in Friedhelm Neidhardt, ed. , Gruppensoziologie: Per- spektiven und Materialien. Kolner Zeitschriftfur Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, special issue 15 (Opladen, 1983), pp. 210-33.
26. In Spencer Brown, Laws ofForm, we read: "Call the space cloven by any distinction, together with the entire content of the space, the form of the dis- tinction. " It is crucial that the concept of form embrace the entire realm ("the en- tire content of the space") occupied by a distinction. Form refers not just to one side, to a shape as such, or merely to an object or a system. Rather, the indication of a system makes the distinction between system and environment possible.
27. For a pertinent critique of this notion, see Martin Heidegger, "Der Ur- sprung des Kunstwerks," in Heidegger, Holzwege (Frankfurt, 1950), pp. 7-68.
28. See also Niklas Luhmann, "Kontingenz als Eigenwert der modernen Gesellschaft," in Luhmann, Beobachtungen der Moderne (Opladen, 1992), pp. 93-128; trans, as "Contingency as Modern Society's Defining Attribute," in Luh- mann, Observations on Modernity, trans. William Whobrey (Stanford, Calif. , 1998), pp. 44-62.
29. On the parallel problem of pedagogical intent, see Niklas Luhmann and Eberhard Schnorr, eds. , Zwischen Absicht und Person: Fragen an die Padagogik (Frankfurt, 1972).
30. In the tradition, novus initially means simply deviation (see Johannes Sporl, "Das Alte und das Neue im Mittelalter: Studien zum Problem des mitte- lalterlichen Fortschrittsbewufitseins," Historisches Jahrbuch 50 [1930]: 297-341; 498-524; Walter Freund, Modernus und andere Zeitbegriffe des Mittelalters [Co- logne, 1957]). Indeed, novelty without factual discontinuity is unrecognizable. The shift of emphasis toward a temporal dimension does not occur until the be- ginning of modernity. At first, the emphasis on novelty is apparently motivated
by an adherence to the principle of imitation--as codified in Aristotle's Poetics-- which, at the same time, sought to deflect the suspicion of slavish imitation. In Sir Philip Sydney, The Defense ofPoetry (1595; Lincoln, Nebr. , 1970), p. 9, we read, e. g. , "Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection lifted up with the vigor of his own invention, does grow in effect into another nature in
336 Notes to Pages 69-ji
making things either better than nature brings forth or, quite anew, forms such as never were in nature, as the heroes, the demigods, cyclops, chimeras, furies, and such like. " The issue here is evidendy still novelty of deviation rather than historical novelty.
31. See Charles Sterling, StillLife PaintingfromAntiquity to the Twentieth Cen- tury, 2d ed. (New York, 1981).
32. On the history of the concept, see Wolfgang Binder, "'Genufi' in Dichtung
und Philosophic des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts," rpt. in Binder, Aufichliisse: Studien zur deutschen Literatur (Zurich, 1976), pp. 7-33; and G. Biller and R. Meyer, "GenuK," Historisches Worterbuch der Philosophic, vol. 3 (Stuttgart, 1974), columns 316-22. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the concept maintained a dis-
tinct relationship with possession ("jouissance, jouir, c'est connoitre, ^prouver, sen-
tir les avantages de posseder," we read in the Encyclopidie ou Dictionnaire raisonne des Sciences, des Arts et des Metiers, vol. 8 [Neufchastel, 1765], p. 889). At the same time, however, the relationship to the present is emphasized, and above all the heightening of experience through reflexivity that makes possible the enjoyment
of pain as well as self-enjoyment. There is raw pleasure and refined pleasure, sen-
suous pleasure and moral or spiritual pleasure. On the scale of social values, the concept is subject to variation. What is interpreted in the text as second-order ob- servation was accomplished in those days via a distance from oneself and from the world. See, e. g. , anonymous (Marquis de Caraccioli), Lajouissance de soi-meme (rpt. Utrecht-Amsterdam, 1759). (The inference from the incommunicability of
the self to the necessity of self-enjoyment is remarkable [ibid. , p. 3]. )
p . There is no lack of attempts to go beyond the juxtaposition of perspec-
tives. Arthur C. Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art (Cambridge, Mass. , 1981), invites us to consider that "the spectator stands to
artist as reader to writer in a kind of spontaneous collaboration. In terms of the
logic of artistic identification, simply to identify one element imposes a whole set
of other identifications which stand or fall with it. The whole thing moves at once" (p. 119; author's emphasis). This formulation only requires a better theoretical contextualization of its words and concepts.
34. I deliberately do not say: intention.
35. One can find a similar view in Arthur C. Danto, although he works with the dangerous concept of interpretation: "The Appreciation and Interpretation
of Works of Art," in Danto, The Philosophical Disenfranchisement ofArt (New York, 1986), pp. 23-46. Interpretation, in the sense of the distinction between artworks and other objects, is constitutive for the creation of the work of art. It "transfigures" an ordinary object into a work of art, and the only protection against the arbitrariness of an interpretation resides in its correspondence to the artist's interpretation: "the correct interpretation of object-as-artwork is the one which coincides most closely with the artists own interpretation" (p. 44).
Notes to Pages 72-76
337
36. This can be formally described by means of the concept of information. We shall return to this below.
37. This was different in the Middle Ages, because of a passive notion of knowledge that did not construct differences or harmony but simply presup- posed and received them.
38. "Is it not," asks Paul de Man, "rather that this unity--which is in fact a semi-circularity--resides not in the poetic text as such, but in the act of inter- preting this text? " {Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary
Criticism, 2d. ed. [Minneapolis, 1983], p. 29).
39. This is by no means a novel insight. One can find it in Hogarth, in con-
junction with his principle of the flowing ("serpent-like") line. See William Ho- garth, The Analysis ofBeauty, written with a view offixingthefluctuating Ideas of
Taste (London, 1753; Oxford, 1955), p.
28: "But in the common way of taking the view of any opake object, that part of its surface which fronts the eye, is apt to occupy the mind alone, and the opposite, nay even every other part of it, what- ever, is left unthought of it at that time: and the least motion we make to recon- noitre any other side of the object, confounds ourfirstidea, for want of the con- nection of the two ideas, which the complete knowledge of the whole would naturally have given us, if we had considered it in the other way before. " One could add that the total impression can be experienced and described as "har- monious" only byway of an unanalyzed (and unanalyzable) abstraction. As Ho- garth puts it on p. 82, "this vague answer took in rise from doctrines not be- longing to form, or idle schemes built on them. "
40. See Gerhard Roth and Helmut Schwegler (who use the terminology of properties and interaction) in "Self-Organization, Emergent Properties, and the Unity of the World," in Wolfgang Krohn et al. , eds. , Self-Organization: Portrait ofa Scientific Revolution (Dordrecht, 1990), pp. 35-50.
41. "Arte non dee esser mostrata nell'arte," one reads in Giovanni Paolo Lo- mazzo, Idea del Tempio della Pittura (Milan, 1590), p. 146.
42. On the topic of Enlightenment as the beginning of the development of
forms for "modern communication" by means of a substitute paradigm, see Peter
Fuchs, Moderne Kommunikation: Zur Theorie des operativen Displacements (Frank- furt, 1993), pp. i04ff.
43. See Michel Serres, Genese (Paris, 1982); Serres, Le cinq sens (Paris, 1985). On the new sociological institutionalism in France, see Peter Wagner, "Die Sozi- ologie der Genese sozialer Institutionen--Theoretische Perspektiven der 'neuen Sozialwissenschaften' in Frankreich," Zeitschriftfur Soziologie 22 (1993): 464-76.
44. See Jean-Luc Nancy, Corpus (Paris, 1992).
45. For a brief presentation, see Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction: Theory and Critique after Structuralism (Ithaca, N. Y. , 1982), pp. 3iff.
46. See William YorkTindall, The Literary Symbol (Qloorrimgion, Ind. , 1955).
338 Notes to Pages 76-82
47. See Roman Ingarden, Das literarische Kunstwerk (1931; 4th ed. Tubingen, 1972), pp. 26iff. See also pp. 27off. on "fulfilled qualities," "schematized per- spectives," "readiness of potential existence," and pp. 3J3ff. on necessary con- cretizations. Ingarden's analyses closely follow Husserl's investigations into the referential structure of all meaningful determinations. The referential structure of "blanks" has occasionally been overemphasized, but his decisive analyses of the inevitable difference between phenomena in reality and works of art has not received the attention it deserves. One could, of course, choose totally different "beginnings. " See, e. g. , William Empson, Seven Types ofAmbiguity (1930; 2d ed. Edinburgh, 1947).
48. Ibid. ,p. 269.
49. Umberto Eco, Opera aperta (1962; 6th ed. Milan, 1988).
50. Gotthard Giinther, "Cognition and Volition: A Contribution to a Cyber-
netic Theory of Subjectivity," in Giinther, Beitrage zu Grundkgung einer opera- tionsfahigen Dialektik (Hamburg, 1979), vol. 2, pp. 203-40.
51. In anticipation of what follows, let us note that this distinction between distinctions does not yet concern the problem of coding. On the basis of these differences, coding must make sure that actions and experiences follow the same code, i. e. , consider themselves part of the same system.
f2. On a concept of communication based on this distinction, see Niklas Luhmann, Soziale Systeme: GrundriJ? einer aUgemeinen Theorie (Frankfurt, 1984), pp. i9iff; trans, as Social Systems, trans. John Bednarz, with Dirk Baecker (Stan- ford, Calif, 1995), pp. i37f? ""*
53. In the sense explained in Chapter 1, section IX, above.
54. Any other version of the theory would have to claim that the system con- sisted of marble and bodies, thoughts and communications, paper and printer's ink. And what makes such a system into a system would have to be sought in these mysterious "ands. "
55. The fact that precious materials--such as gold and jewels in the Middle Ages--have lost their artistic role affirms this trend.
56. See Yehuda Elkana, "Die Entstehung des Denkens zweiter Ordnung im klassischen Griechenland," in Elkana, Anthropologic der Erkenntnis: Die Entwick- lung des Wissens als episches Theater einer listigen Vernunft (Frankfurt, 1986), pp. 344-75. See also G. E. R. Lloyd, Magic, Reason and Experience: Studies in the Ori- gin and Development of Greek Science (Cambridge, 1979). Lloyd presents a wealth of pertinent material but fails to focus on the--for us--decisive issue.
57. See, programatically, Jonathan Richardson, A Discourse on the Dignity, Certainty, Pleasure and Advantage of the Science of a Connoisseur (1719), quoted from TheWorks,(London,1773;rpt. Hildesheim,1969),pp. 239-346.
58. See Iain Pears, The Discovery of Painting: The Growth of Interest in the Arts in England, I68O~IJ68 (New Haven, Conn. , 1988), esp. pp. i8iff.
Notes to Pages 82-87
339
59. For a typical manifestation of the insecurities around the mid-eighteenth century, see Denis Diderot, Traite du beau, quoted from CEuvres, Pl&ade ed. (Paris, 1951), pp. 1105-42. We disregard Diderot's indecisiveness about the ques- tion of the possible benefit of an aesthetic criterion.
60. See Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Sym- bols (London, 1969), pp. 99ff.
61. In the Middle Ages and early modernity discussions of the "mirror" dis- covered--albeit in different constellations--the possibility of seeing the invisi- ble in the double move of making seeing invisible and of making visible a seeing that cannot see itself. The concern, however, was not ours, i. e. , to see what oth- ers are unable to see.
62. See Niklas Luhmann, "Wie lassen sich latente Strukturen beobachten? " in Paul Watzlawick and Peter Krieg, eds. , DasAuge des Betrachters--Beitrage zum Konstruktivismus: Festschriftfur Heinz von Foerster (Munich, 1991), pp. 61-74.
63. For an overview, see Volker Meja and Nico Stehr, eds. , Der Streit um die Wissenssoziologie, 2 vols. (Frankfurt, 1982).
64. See Gisela M. A. Richter, "Perspective, Ancient, Medieval and Renais- sance," in Scritti in onore di Batholomeo Nogara (Vatican City, 1937), pp. 381-88. According to Richter, this also holds, contrary to a widely held opinion, for the- ory (Vitruvius).
65. The first comprehensive treatment is perhaps Leon Battista Alberti, Delia Pittura (1436; Florence, 1950).
66. On variety and sameness, see William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, written with a view of fixing the fluctuating Ideas of Taste (London, 1753; Oxford, 1955). PP- 34f-
67. SeeJurgis Baltrusavitis, Anamorphoses ouperspectives curieuses (Paris, 1955).
68. Ibid. , p. 6, or p. 42: "La perspective nest pas un instrument des represen- tations exactes, mais un mensonge. "
69. See esp. Giulio Troili, Paradossi per pratticare la prospettiva senza saperla (1672; Bologna, 1863), e. g. , p. 12: "li riuscira di pratticare la Prospettiva senza saperla, e scoprira con l'occhi del corpo tutta quello che si considera con gl'occhi del intelletto. "
70. See the counternovel by Henry Fielding, An Apologyfor the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews (London, 1741).
71. In Jean Paul's Die unsichtbare Loge, ? 1, "Verlobungsschach--graduierter Rekrut--Kopulier-Katze," Ernestine (who by and large is certainly virtuous and innocent) must teach tricks to a cat and turn over a chess game in order to land in the desired marriage.
72. Niels Werber, Literatur als System: Zur Ausdifferenzierung literarischer Kom- munikation (Opladen, 1992), pp. 68ff. , provides evidence for this trend.
73. See Chapter 1, n. 42, above.
Notes to Pages 88-90
340
74. On skepticism about the preference for striking, extraordinary, sudden, and scandalous subjects, see Werber, Literatur als System, pp. y$ff. A counternovel that refers to this trend by depicting an unexciting, everyday life is Ludwig Tieck's Peter Lebrecht. An appropriate form for this type of literature, along with its own criteria for quality, did not exist until the mystery novel was invented one hundred years later.
75. See Ren6 Girard, Mensonge romantique et virite romanesque (Paris, 1961).
76. See the distinction between "flat characters / round characters" in E. M. Forster, Aspects ofthe Novel (1927; rpt. London, 1941). See also Christine Brooke- Rose, "The Dissolution of Character in the Novel," in Thomas C. Heller et al. ,
eds. , Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individualism, and the Selfin West- ern Thought (Stanford, Calif. , 1968), pp. 184-96. This further development can perhaps be explained by the fact that the theme of latent motives turns into a cultural commonplace that no longer requires literary-fictive treatment. Once again, one can work with characters whose motives no longer matter.
77. The formulation is Jean Paul's, Hesperus, quoted from the edition by Nor- bert Miller, Works, vol. 1 (Munich, i960), p. 712.
78. This comes fatally close to the concept of duty in Kant's ethics.
79. For a representative monograph, see Edmund Burke, A Philosophical En- quiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1756; New York, 1958). On the contemporary context, see also Samuel H. Monk, The Sub- lime: A Study of Critical Theories in XVIIIth-Century England (192. 5; 2d ed. Ann Arbor, i960).
80. Nicolas Boileau-Despr^aux, Traiti du Sublime, preface, quoted from CEuvres (Paris, 1713), pp. 595-604 (596). See also Boileau's adamant resistance to
applying the old concept of style to this phenomenon (p. 601).
81. Boileau, "Reflexions critique sur quelques passages du Rheteur Longinus,"
in CEuvres, pp. 491-592,590 (erroneous pagination).
82. Since such constipation is no longer imminent, "das Erhabene, das ja blofi
eine Art vornehmer Purganz sein soil [lauft] Gefahr, ebenfalls aus der Mode zu kommen" (August Wilhelm Schlegel, Die Kunstlehre [Pt. 1 of the lectures on lit- erature and art], quoted from Kritische Schriften und Briefe, vol. 2 [Stuttgart, 1963], p. 58). Leopardi appears to confirm this assessment via a detour through boredom: "La noia e in qualche modo il piu sublime dei sentimenti umani" (Giacomo Leopardi, Pensieri [Leipzig, n. d. ], p. 41). It is difficult to avoid the im- pression that, along with the dangers of constipation, the laxative of the sublime once again becomes fashionable.
83. In Ludwig Tieck's novella Die Klausenburg, quoted from Schriften, vol. 12 (Frankfurt, 1986), pp.