Niklas Luhmann: Quotes about knowledge

Niklas Luhmann was German sociologist, administration expert, and social systems theorist. Explore interesting quotes on knowledge.

Niklas Luhmann: 24 quotes 3 likes

“Does knowledge rest on construction in the sense that it only functions because the knowing system is operatively closed, therefore: because it can maintain no operative contact with the outside world; and because it therefore remains dependent, for everything that it constructs, on its own distinction between self-reference and allo-reference?”

Niklas Luhmann

Luhmann (1991) “Wie lassen sich latente Strukturen beobachten?,” in Paul Watzlawick, Peter Krieg (eds.), Das Auge des Betrachters: Beiträge zum Konstruktivismus. Festschrift für Heinz von Foerster, Piper, München-Zürich, p. 71; cited in: Heinz von Foerster (1993) " For Niklas Luhmann: “How Recursive is Communication?” http://e1020.pbworks.com/f/fulltext-2.pdf". Translated by Richard Howe.

World , Knowledge , Sense , Dependency

“Whatever we know about society, or indeed about the world in which we live, we know through the mass media. This is true not only of our knowledge of society but also of our knowledge of nature.”

Niklas Luhmann

Source: The reality of the Mass Media (2000), p. 1.

World , Nature , Knowledge

“The effect if not the function of the mass media seems to lie, therefore, in the reproduction of non- transparency through transparency, in the reproduction of non-transparency of effects through transparency of knowledge.”

Niklas Luhmann

Source: The reality of the Mass Media (2000), p. 103.

Lie , Knowledge