The Use of Technological Concepts and Analogies in Sociological Thought: A Cybernetic Genealogy

Since its foundations, cybernetics and systemics have been interested in recognizing forms and patterns present in biological, technological, social and psychic entities. Both approaches offer a diversity of ontological conceptions; some treat these four entities as systems closed in their operations to each other (as in Niklas Luhmann’s proposal), others merge them together (e.g. the biomechanical and the psychosocial individual, as Bernard Scott does). Since the beginning, sociological thought has been occupied with the task of defining its object of knowledge. Far from being clarified, «the social» remains a black box. Depending on each theoretical point of departure, this black box is diversely articulated. However, technological metaphors and analogies have been continuously used in the design of sociological observing systems (to observe the social). Some paradigmatic examples —among many others— are: Émile Durkheim’s distinction between «mechanic» and «organic» solidarity, Karl Marx’s conception of class struggle as «motor» of history, Michel Foucault’s suggestion that humans develop different «technologies of the self» and his investigations of «dispositifs» that produce subjectification, Gilles Deleuze’s understanding of humans as desiring «machines», Giorgio Agamben’s genealogy of anthropological «machines» and Luhmann’s conception of trust as a «mechanism» for the reduction of social complexity. As it can be clearly appreciated in Luhmann’s work, the use of technological concepts is often accompanied by transpositions of theoretical biology (e.g. system/Umwelt, autopoiesis, symbiotic mechanisms, morality as the immune system of society). I will discuss the genealogy of the use of «system», «machine», «dispositif», and «mechanism» as sociological concepts through some extracts of sociological thought. As cybernetics has shown, the design of systems (and systems for observing other systems) influences the construction of realities. Because of this entanglement, a cybernetic genealogy —which can show how the social is not merely contemplated but also re–constructed by the intervention of the observer— is needed.