The Differentia Specifica of Interhuman Communications: Luhmann and the Sociological Reflection of Information Theory

Abstract

Unlike the coding of biological evolution in terms of DNA, cultural evolution is driven by the further development of codes in the communication. These codes structure how we give meaning to the information. Complementary to the information flow, they can be modeled as redundancy: the observables are provided with meaning from the perspective of hindsight and with reference to horizons of meaning. Orders of expectations can be developed which operate as feedback on the arrow of the entropy flow by providing envisaged options. Cultural evolution thus incurs on the biological evolution. The codes operate as selection mechanisms on the phenotypical variation of the observables.

Keywords: code, communication, Luhmann, cultural evolution, infra-reflexivity, language, languaging