Niklas LuhmannnThinkers

Agency is as good as useless as a conceptual apparatus on account of the fact that there are too many people doing different things or so many different reasons.

Agency is not the cause, but the effect, of failures at prediction. If something happens that was not predicted, one explanation is that the system in question my have agency, free will, creativity, and such.

Agency is represented in things the smaller and the less durable they are.

Agency is the capacity to surprise its observer.

Agency is to be found in systems rather than in individuals. It is the system's capacity to surprise its observer or to fail in prediction. Agency is not a cause, but an effect.

Agency is what is left when structure has done all it can do.

Communication is an autonomous sphere and something humans or agents are not really capable of doing. After saying something, what happens next is the behavior of communication. It is a network, and one can't really force a network to react or respond.

Communication is conducted on the level of the social system. While there would be no communication without minds, communication does not 'follow' from minds and cannot be 'reduced to it, as if minds 'entailed' communication.

Communication is not something that follows from minds, it passes through them.

Communication can only communicate with communication. Only communication can communicate. Humans cannot communicate... not even their brains can communicate... not even their conscious minds can communicate. Only communication can communicate.

Culture is a vehicle for asserting distinctions. It does not produce stable distinctions.

Culture is everything that serves to resolve the paradoxes an observer encounters.

Culture always implies the existence of other cultures. It presumes distinctions in its originary moment, but does not sustain distinctions effectively afterwards.

Danger is an uncontrollable, external force, one that emerges from outside of a system, network or social contexts (as opposed to risk, which is a threat produced within a system).

Danger is as external force originating external to the system. Risk is produced within the system.

Danger is the primordial brine out of which 'risk' develops.