1. Self-Referential Systems, the Embodied Mind, and Public Theology
Abstract
In this essay, I explore the theory of social systems developed by one of Germany’s most influential sociologists, Niklas Luhmann. His work creatively integrates the concept of autopoiesis, originally developed by the Santiago School of Biology in Chile through the work of Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. Luhmann’s theory offers a unique synthesis of systems theory with philosophical notions of meaning and intentionality, drawing on Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and cybernetic epistemology. In a heuristic dialogue with Luhmann’s systems theory, I take a step further by redefining the relationship between the lifeworld and biological life, conceptualizing a structural theory of social systems with reference to the public theology of science in this regard.
Introduction
The term autopoiesis is derived from the Greek autos (self) and poiesis (making or creation, as in “poetry”). It describes a system’s capacity—seen in living organisms—to produce and maintain itself through self-organizing operations, while remaining open to energy and matter from the environment at the cellular level.
Varela’s work integrates biological cognition with Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception and embodiment, highlighting the autopoietic capacity to “bring forth a world,” which extends Husserl’s concept of the lifeworld. Niklas Luhmann, in turn, conceptualizes social systems as self-referential operations that distinguish themselves from their environment, while remaining structurally coupled to it.
However, Varela emphasizes the embodied and enactive nature of cognition in the bringing forth of a world through structural interaction and evolutionary drift. This perspective reflects the autopoietic understanding of evolution developed by the Santiago School, which focuses on the structural drift of living organisms and the conservation of adaptation. It also highlights the role of symbiosis in interactions with both the environment and other cellular systems. From this viewpoint, other systems are already incorporated into the self-referential system as forms of symbiosis—such as mitochondria, chloroplasts, and even the nucleus.[1]
According to Maturana and Varela, the past refers to historical interactions that have already occurred, while the future pertains to interactions yet to take place. This temporal doublet of reference is essential for enabling communication across past, present, and future within the autopoietic articulation of evolution, offering an alternative framework to the classical model of natural selection.[2]
For Varela, the mind is not a disembodied processor but is enacted through lived bodily experience—a view grounded in Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the body as the primary site of knowing and being-in-the-world.
In contrast, Luhmann conceives of social systems as functionally differentiated, self-reproducing networks of communication, placing greater emphasis on the distinction between systems and cybernetic decision-making. However, he downplays the role of intersubjective communication within the system, as he is not concerned with redefining the human being as an autopoietic entity.
In my approach to a structural theory of autopoiesis, I aim to clarify the conceptual differences between Luhmann and Varela. This task becomes essential for constructing a public theology of science that redefines a structural theory of living systems, while complementing the structural inquiry into the interaction between science and religion.
Structural Theory of Living Systems and Forms of LIfe
Phenomenological accounts, such as those offered by Merleau-Ponty, emphasize the intercorporeal and intersubjective dimensions of communication and social life. Social structures emerge not solely from abstract systemic operations but from embodied interactions, where individual subjectivities are interwoven with shared practices and institutional forms. This suggests a theory of social structure that synthesizes the self-referential logic of autopoiesis with intercorporeality, highlighting the embodied and relational constitution of the self within a social system through the lifeworld and its overarching structures. [3]
Such a structural-theoretical articulation also invites a reconsideration of key debates within sociology and critical theory. For example, Jürgen Habermas famously critiques Luhmann’s systems-theoretical approach—particularly its distinction between system and lifeworld—arguing instead for a theory of communicative action grounded in mutual understanding. He contends that Luhmann’s system theory is based on the mistaken assumption that functionalist analysis should be central to the rationalization process through social and technological devices.[4]
Jean-François Lyotard, from a different perspective, critiques systems theory as inherently technocratic and entangled with power structures.[5]
Nevertheless, both Habermas and Lyotard draw on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s theory of language games, even as they diverge significantly in its application. Wittgenstein’s theory of language games and forms of life emphasizes the significance of a set of rules that should be followed in the communicative process of public language. His theory highlights how words are used to engender meaning and validity within a shared network, thereby dethroning the centrality of individual human rationality that has prevailed in the Western intellectual tradition. It paves the way for a postmodern condition of knowledge, embedded with power relations.
Unlike Habermas and Lyotard, however, I reinterpret Wittgenstein’s theory of language games and forms of life through the concept of lifeworld, emphasizing embodiment and shared practices of communication grounded in the lifeworld that underpins any specific form of life within the systemic construction of reality and its social discourse.
In this view, intersubjectivity is not merely semiotic but is rooted in bodily interaction and embodied communication. Social structures—or social forms—emerge from these communal, embodied engagements.
A structural theory of living systems aims to integrate Wittgenstein’s insights into the use of public language and communication, along with its governing rules, into a self-referential paradigm. It also addresses the significance of translation, bilingualism, and co-constitution in relation to the public theology of science.
To enrich the dialogue between science and religion, I propose a bilingual model grounded in a semantic reexamination of the relationship between Wittgenstein and Thomas Kuhn. This model seeks to move beyond the “two-language” paradigm often found in discussions of science and religion—such as Ian Barbour’s typology, particularly his category of “independence,” which he associates with Wittgenstein.[6]
Instead, a model of bilingualism embraces problematization, emergence, and relationality. Wittgenstein’s concepts of language games and forms of life can be fruitfully connected with the structural theory of system communication, creating space for dynamic and emergent networks of social and theological relationships.
This innovative synthesis provides a foundation for constructing a public theology of science—one that does not treat science and religion as isolated or competing discourses, but as interacting, co-constituting languages within a shared public sphere and our lifeworld. Such a model resists both rigid separation and simplistic integration, offering instead a reflexive, embodied framework for understanding the interplay between divine action, natural order, and social meaning.
Lifeworld and Biological Life
Francisco Varela and his colleagues explicate Husserl’s theory of the lifeworld, as presented in his final work, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Husserl focused on the experience of consciousness in terms of the “lived world,” which is the everyday social world where theory is always directed toward practical ends. All reflection and theoretical activity, including science, presuppose the lifeworld as the background for meaning, validity, and truth claims. Husserl aimed to expand the notion of science to include a new science of the lifeworld, conceptualizing it as a set of sedimented, background preunderstandings.
This lifeworld position came into crisis with the dominance of the “Galilean style” in science, which obscured the role of the lifeworld under the weight of the objectivist conception of science. However, Varela and his colleagues tend to hastily conclude that the Husserlian project has failed, drawing on Heidegger’s existential analysis of Dasein in a Gnostic form and Merleau-Ponty’s theories of perception and embodiment.[7]
In fact, Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception is deeply indebted to Husserl’s phenomenology of the body, as elaborated in his Ideas II. I complement Husserl’s reflection on the relationship between lifeworld and biology, a relationship that Heidegger’s undifferentiated concept of Being and Merleau-Ponty’s focus on embodiment largely sidestepped.
Husserl’s concept of the lifeworld intersects with ecological thinking, revealing a web of life embedded in a shared ecological theatre. In his later work, particularly in The Crisis of European Sciences, Edmund Husserl turned toward biology and the question of life, seeking a foundation for a more meaningful science—one that acknowledges the embodied and lived dimensions of existence. For Husserl, the body is the locus of experience and intentionality, and this embodied intentionality introduces an ethical dimension, particularly in relation to empathy and intersubjectivity. Phenomenological life encompasses both the self-affection of living beings and the natural scientific study of biological life.[8]
I use the concept of the lifeworld in Husserl’s transcendental-immanent sense: it is the ontological ground of meaning, knowledge, and social interaction, prior to scientific abstraction. It possesses a universal-relative character, capable of grounding meaning across different societies, cultures, and languages.
However, when applied to biology or ecology, I shift toward what might be called a biological or ecological form of life. This shift moves the lifeworld from being merely an ontological background to serving as the deep structure of relational systems—encompassing living organisms and their environments through social structures.
Lifeworld, System, and Language Games
A structural theory of the lifeworld allows us to avoid using the term “system” solely in the sense of impersonal, institutional forces (e.g., the state, market, or media), which Jürgen Habermas critiques for colonizing the lifeworld. Instead, I use “lifeworld” to refer to the deep structure underlying the self-referential circles of interaction, operational closure, and structural coupling, particularly at the cellular or organismic level.
In Luhmann’s social systems theory, the basic units of an autopoietic social system are communications, which recursively reproduce themselves. While Luhmann draws heavily from biological autopoiesis, he largely omits the term lifeworld, reducing its transcendental-immanent character or general-relative structure in favor of analyzing differentiated functional systems.
However, if self-referential systems in autopoiesis “bring forth” their world—analogous to Wittgenstein’s form of life—then each such system can be seen as its own form of life (e.g., a legal form of life or an economic form of life), embedded in distinct lifeworlds and realized through embodied human interaction and epigenetic reference to social ecological factors.
Communication, then, is not a disembodied exchange of information but a socially embodied practice, shaped by rules, norms, and cultural narratives. Each communicative system brings forth its own form of life, which bears family resemblance to others, requiring contextual, creative translation for meaningful interaction across systems. Here, public theology and semantic theory converge: language games, like chess, are governed by rules, but these rules are not self-legitimating—they are enacted through social consensus, a set of rules, and practices.
The lifeworld is not reducible to any single language game, whether scientific or social; it is the source of linguistic meaning and cultural narrative—the deeper matrix in which all forms of life are rooted. At the intersection of language games and lifeworlds, rules vary, but each world maintains a general structure of order, meaning, and validity—not absolute, but relationally grounded.
In Philosophical Investigations [9] (PI), Wittgenstein clarifies that language is grounded in the use of words within different language games and forms of life, imbued with ethical significance for the meaning of life. In Wittgenstein’s concept of language games, speaking a language is part of an activity, or form of life, following certain rules between two dialogue partners (PI 1.23), working through and conversing about the ethical aspects of life in concert with others.
Language is self-referential within a specific form of life, operationally closed within its own system of rules, creating its own meaning. Language ‘goes on holiday’ (PI 1.38), depending on the complexity of the network in interaction. I interpret a form of life as a socialized version of the lifeworld, constructed by language games, a set of rules, and linguistic relationships that intersect with other references within the life form. This necessitates creative translation when exploring the life setting and linguistic usage within the complex network of similarities, overlaps, and intersections for translation.
This perspective defines the concept of a system as a systemic form of life, rather than making a strict distinction between a self-referential system and other references. It also strengthens the aspect of bilingual translation and the co-constitution between science and religion.
According to Kuhn, research problems and techniques within a single normal-scientific tradition are not incommensurable or independent. As Kuhn argues, “they may relate by resemblance and by modeling to one or another part of the scientific corpus which the community in question already recognizes as among its established achievements.”[10]
The participants in a communication breakdown recognize each other as members of different language communities and, as a result, become translators.
Paradigm Shift, Systems Theory, and Public Theology
Thomas Kuhn’s theory of the paradigm shift explains how scientific revolutions occur when an existing research program can no longer account for accumulating anomalies. Rather than progressing in a linear fashion, science undergoes episodic transformations, where one dominant paradigm is replaced by another. This shift involves more than the introduction of new data or methods—it represents an epistemic rupture in the structure of scientific thought, reshaping the entire constellation of beliefs, values, and practices shared by the scientific community.[11]
From a structural-theoretical perspective, paradigm shifts can be understood as systemic transformations that reconfigure the internal logic and communicative operations of the scientific system itself. The breakdown of one epistemic model and the emergence of another reflect the self-referential dynamics of the system as it responds to environmental stimuli and internal contradictions. This framing extends Kuhn’s insights beyond the domain of science, suggesting that paradigm shifts also occur within social, cultural, and theological systems in response to structural pressures and emergent complexities.
In the context of epistemic rupture and a public theology of science, such breaks open the possibility for creative syntheses, providing fertile ground for reimagining both the sociology of science and the nature of scientific knowledge itself. Tracing the genealogy of paradigms reveals that scientific inquiry is neither autonomous nor value-neutral; rather, it is embedded in social and cultural milieus, shaped by historical contingencies, institutional forces, and power relations. Competing scientific research programs are thus deeply intertwined with material realities, political governance, and the legitimization of scientific meta-discourses.
A self-referential living system interacts with other systems through structural coupling and environmental perturbation, maintaining systemic continuity through adaptation and self-regulation. However, these interactions can also lead to rupture—resulting in either systemic decline and collapse or the emergence of a new order at a higher level of complexity.
Organic Evolution: Co-Determination and Life Intentionality
For an autopoietic concept of organic evolution, Richard Lewontin, a prominent evolutionary biologist at Harvard, plays a crucial role: “The organism and the environment are not actually separately determined. The environment is not a structure imposed on living beings from the outside but is in fact a creation of those beings. The environment is not an autonomous process but a reflection of the biology of the species. Just as there is no organism without an environment, so there is no environment without an organism.”[12]
This dialectical biology and its epistemology support a structural theory of living systems, where living beings and their environments are co-determined through mutual specification. Environmental regularities are no longer external features that are simply internalized into the realm of the living system. Nor does this structural epistemology uphold cognitive representationism without embodiment, while also avoiding adaptationism based solely on natural selection.
Indeed, cognition is not about representation; it is embodied action, and the world we cognize is enacted through our history of structural coupling. Environmental regularities result from a conjoint history—a congruence that unfolds from the long history of co-determination. The organism, within the self-referential system, is both the subject and the object of evolution, with mutually unfolded and enfolded structures with the environment and other references[13] through structural coupling, irritation, co-constitution, and rupture.
A conjoint theory of co-constitution becomes essential in shaping a public theology of science—or scientific knowledge—emerging as a critical endeavor that interrogates both scientific communities and social systems. It engages with a broad spectrum of issues arising from the influence of scientific epistemes and technologies on socio-cultural life, particularly their roles in reinforcing hierarchy, inequality, and stratification. Theological inquiry, therefore, is not peripheral but central to examining how scientific paradigms are embedded within political and economic frameworks, as explored in the sociology of science.[14]
A public theology of science investigates the specific conditions under which scientific discourse acquires authority, privilege, and prestige. It critically examines how scientific research programs operate within systems of power, and how their internal norms, values, and legitimating structures reflect broader societal dynamics. By analyzing the structure and function of scientific knowledge through this lens, public theology offers both a necessary critique and an alternative vision for reimagining the relationship between knowledge, society, and the sacred.
Niklas Luhmann, one of Germany’s most influential sociologists, initiates a paradigm shift in sociological theory by developing a comprehensive theory of social systems. Drawing on insights from biology and cybernetics, Luhmann adopts the concept of autopoiesis—a term coined by Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana and his student Francisco Varela—to describe the self-referential and self-organizing nature of systems, as well as their structural and operational autonomy.
In biological terms, Maturana and Varela introduced autopoiesis to explain how living cells maintain themselves through recursive, circular processes of reproduction and boundary maintenance. In the same way, cognition and operation in living systems are inseparable. A cell is not formed by an external agent but emerges through a continuous process of self-production and operational closure, while remaining structurally coupled to and open toward its environment. This self-organization within a self-referential system is a defining feature of autopoiesis.[15]
This perspective offers an important insight into the relationship between structure and the organization of living systems. The organization of a system is a subset of the relations that define its structure. A given organization can function and be realized through many different structural configurations. However, if the structure of the system changes to the point of losing its identity, the organization of the system can no longer be realized.[16]
At this juncture, I focus on the structural aspects of living systems, articulated in terms of structural coupling, irritation (or perturbations), symbiosis, co-constitution, and rupture, while emphasizing second-order cybernetics with ethical significance, intersubjective communication, and participatory reflexive democracy within a systemic construction of reality.
In contrast, Luhmann extends this biological insight into the realm of social theory. For him, social systems—like biological organisms—are operationally closed yet cognitively open: they reproduce themselves not through biological processes but through communication. In this view, society consists of communication systems that are self-referential, meaning they generate and sustain their own structures through continuous communicative acts. This marks a significant departure from traditional sociological theories focused on action or individual agency, reframing society as a network of autopoietic subsystems, such as law, politics, economy, and religion.
Coda
In this project on the structural theory of autopoiesis and public theology of science, I have sought to explore the intersection of sociology and systems biology through the lens of public theology. This framework employs a critical, phenomenological approach that foregrounds the emergence of life as both a theological and social category. Public theology, in this context, is not limited to doctrinal or ecclesial concerns; rather, it engages deeply with scientific and sociocultural discourses—particularly those involving emergent complexity, relational ontology, and the dynamics of self-organizing systems.
This perspective calls for an innovative and critical interrogation of Luhmann’s systems theory and its significant contributions. Within this interdisciplinary space, concepts such as intentionality (from phenomenology), prolepsis (the theological anticipation of the future), and epigenetic ontology (the view that identity and being are shaped through ongoing, embodied interaction with environments) become crucial tools. These concepts enable public theology to navigate a bilingual translation between science and religion, creating a generative and critical space—what might be called a “problematic regime”—between the two.
Intentionality, prolepsis, and epigenetic ontology facilitate a meaningful interrogation of the implications of autopoiesis—not only as a biological principle but also as a metaphor and mechanism for understanding social and communicative systems. In doing so, public theology contributes to the broader discourse of network thinking, examining how meaning, agency, and structure emerge not from static categories but from the fluid, recursive interactions that define living and social systems.
This perspective opens the door to a constructive theological anthropology rooted in intercorporeality, relational agency, and the co-constitution of self and world—where life is not merely received but actively formed within dynamic, systemic, and communal contexts.
[1] Lynn Margulis, Symbiosis in Cell Evolution (San Francisco: Freeman, 1980).
[2] Humberto Maturana and Francisco Valera, The Tree of Knowledge (Boston: Shambhala, 1987), 124.
[3] M. Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior, trans. Alden L. Fisher (Boston: Beacon, 1963), xiii. 47.
[4] Jűrgen Habermas, Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985), 369–501.
[5] Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. G. Benningtom et al. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 47.
[6] Ian G. Barbour, When Science Meets Religion (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2000). 19.
[7] Valera, et al. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (Mass.: MIT Press, 1993), 18-19.
[8] E. Husserl, Die Krisis der europaischen Wissenschaft und die transzendentale Phenomenologie, Vol. VI, ed. W, Biemel (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976).
[9] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigation, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (New York: McMillian, 1968).
[10] Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970), 45-46.
[11] Ibid., 175.
[12] Cited in Valera et al. The Embodied Mind, 198.
[13] Ibid., 199-200.
[14] Bourdieu, “The specificity of the scientific field and the social conditions of the progress of reason,” Social Science Information 14 (6), 19-47.
[15] Humberto Maturana, Autopoiesis and Cognition (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1980), xvii-xviii.
[16] Ibid., xx.