From Organisms to World Society

Steps toward a Conceptual History of

Systems Theory, 1880–1980
JULIAN BAUER
Department of History and Sociology, University of Konstanz

ABSTRACT
This article proposes to analyze the idea of organism and other closely related
ideas (function, differentiation, etc.) using a combination of semantic fields
analysis from conceptual history and the notion of boundary objects from
the sociology of scientific knowledge. By tackling a wide range of source ma-
terial, the article charts the nomadic existence of organism and opens up new
vistas for an integrated history of the natural and human sciences. First, the
boundaries are less clear-cut between disciplines like biology and sociology
than previously believed. Second, a long and transdisciplinary tradition of
talking about organismic and societal systems in highly functionalist terms
comes into view. Third, the approach shows that conceptions of a world so-
ciety in Niklas Luhmann’s variant are not semantic innovations of the late
twentieth century. Rather, their history can be traced back to organicist so-
ciology and its forgotten pioneers, especially Albert Schäffle or Guillaume de
Greef, during the last decades of the nineteenth century.

KEYWORDS
constructivism, conventionalism, functionalism, globalization, organism,
systems theory, world society

The Search for Society: New Perspectives on

the History of the Natural and Human Sciences

A recent entry on world society in the Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie

(Historical Dictionary of Philosophy) authoritatively states that social theory

This article includes condensed and abridged portions of my forthcoming book in German
tentatively titled Zellen, Wellen, Systeme: Eine heterodoxe Genealogie systemischen Denkens,
1880–1980 (Cells, waves, systems: a heterodox genealogy of systems thinking, 1880–1980).
It is based on a translation by David A. Brenner (Houston, Texas) and was supported by
funds made available by the “Cultural Foundations of Social Integration” Center of Excel-
lence at the University of Konstanz, established in the framework of the German Federal
and State Initiative for Excellence.

Contributions to the History of Concepts Volume 9, Issue 2, Winter 2014: 51–72

doi:10.3167/choc.2014.090204 ISSN 1807-9326 (Print), ISSN 1874-656X (Online)
Julian Bauer

only started to develop this concept in the early 1970s with books and trea-
tises by John W. Burton (1915–2010) in England, Peter Heintz (1920–1983) in
Switzerland, Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998) in Germany, and John W. Meyer
(1935–) in the United States.1 This article suggests a more complex and longer
story that begins in the middle of the nineteenth century and leads to his-
torical source material from a broad array of disciplines (especially biology,
physiology, sociology, and philosophy) that has not been scrutinized much—if
at all—until today. By centering on the use of the concept of organism and
neighboring notions like function, differentiation, or system, it illustrates that
these concepts have formed a soft and vigorous semantic field since the middle
of the nineteenth century. They are all put to work across many phenomena
and disciplinary contexts, hence constituting boundary objects par excellence.
This article shows that most of the basic ideas behind sociological systems the-
ory with world society as its ultimate frame of reference can actually be traced
back to evolutionary and organismic thinking well before the beginning of the
twentieth century. For the remainder of this article I will mainly focus on a ge-
nealogy of Luhmann’s work. He illustrates the long tradition of world systemic
reasoning most clearly and was probably the one with the most voracious ap-
petite in reading the works of early sociologists like Guillaume de Greef, an
important character in this story. The results nevertheless apply equally well to
Burton, Heintz, and Meyer too, because their theories share many basic prem-
ises with Luhmann’s and each other, for example, evolutionary, developmental,
and systems thinking plus a strong belief in emergent global structures.
Luhmann, whose writings roughly span the decades from 1960 until his
death in 1998, became a proponent of systems theory after studying with
Talcott Parsons (1902–1979) in Harvard at the beginning of the 1960s. He
subsequently started to develop his own systemic approach as a professor of
sociology at the newly founded University of Bielefeld in 1968. Without delv-
ing into all the details of Luhmann’s theoretical vision, which would transcend
the space of this article, let me simply add that he first presented his ideas on
world society in an article published in German in 1971. Another text, World
1. See Rudolf Stichweh, “Weltgesellschaft” [World society], Historisches Wörterbuch der
Philosophie [Historical dictionary of philosophy], vol. 12, W–Z, Joachim Ritter, Karlfried
Gründer, and Gottfried Gabriel, eds. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
2004), cols. 486–490; David J. Dunn, From Power Politics to Conflict Resolution: The Work
of John W. Burton (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 86–101; Jens Greve and
Bettina Heintz, “Die ‘Entdeckung’ der Weltgesellschaft” [The “discovery” of world soci-
ety], in Weltgesellschaft: Theoretische Zugänge und empirische Problemlagen [World soci-
ety: theoretical approaches and empirical problems], Bettina Heintz, Richard Münch, and
Hartmann Tyrell, eds. (Stuttgart: Lucius & Lucius, 2005), 89–119; Gili S. Drori and Georg
Krücken, “World Society: A Theory and a Research Program in Context,” in World Society:
The Writings of John W. Meyer, Georg Krücken and Gili S. Drori, eds. (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2009), 6–26.

52 contributions to the history of concepts

 From Organisms to World Society

Society as a Social System, elaborated his arguments in English in 1982. “Mod-

ern society is,” according to Luhmann, “a world society in a double sense. It
provides one world for one system; and it integrates all world horizons as hori-
zons of one communicative system.”2 This article argues that similar insights
were already being made in the nineteenth century by early social theorists
like Albert Schäffle in Germany or Guillaume de Greef in Belgium, who like-
wise focused on communicative media and used the concepts of organism and
system widely and interchangeably to think through the fate of modern society.
Methodologically speaking, my approach is informed by historical se-
mantics that “is not satisfied with a traditional ‘essentialist’ understanding of
meaning” but rather tries to capture “the cognitive, situative and epistemic
premises of communicative action” pointed to by Dietrich Busse’s and Wil-
libald Steinmetz’s writings.3 A congenial instrument for this type of inquiry
originates from the sociology of scientific knowledge in the guise of Susan
Leigh Star and James Griesemer’s notion of boundary objects that “inhabit
several intersecting social worlds”, “satisfy the informational requirements of
each of them … and which are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs …
yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites.”4
By understanding organism as a boundary object, this article proposes to
respond to recent demands for enhancing classic approaches of conceptual
history with tools from neighboring disciplines.5 A composite of Leigh Star

2. Niklas Luhmann, “The World Society as a Social System,” International Journal of Gen-
eral Systems 8, no. 3 (1982): 133. See also Niklas Luhmann, “Die Weltgesellschaft,” [The
world society] [1971], in Soziologische Aufklärung, vol. 2, Aufsätze zur Theorie der Gesell-
schaft [Sociological enlightenment, vol. 2, Articles on social theory] (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag
für Sozialwissenschaften, 2005), 63–88.
3. Dietrich Busse, Historische Semantik: Analyse eines Programms [Historical semantics:
Analysis of a program] (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1987), 12, 13. All translations are the author’s
unless otherwise noted. More recently see also Dietrich Busse, “Architekturen des Wissens:
Zum Verhältnis von Semantik und Epistemologie” [Architectures of knowledge: On the
relation of semantics and epistemology], in Begriffsgeschichte im Umbruch? [An upheaval
of conceptual history?], Ernst Müller, ed. (Hamburg: Meiner, 2005), 43–57; Willibald
Steinmetz, Das Sagbare und das Machbare: Zum Wandel politischer Handlungsspielräume,
England 1780–1867 [Sayable and doable things: On the change of rooms for maneuver in
English politics, 1780–1867] (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1993); Willibald Steinmetz, “Vierzig
Jahre Begriffsgeschichte: The State of the Art” [Forty years of conceptual history: The state
of the art], in Sprache—Kognition—Kultur: Sprache zwischen mentaler Struktur und kultu-
reller Prägung [Language—cognition—culture: Language between mentalities and culture],
Heidrun Kämper and Ludwig M. Eichinger, eds. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008), 174–197.
4. Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer, “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and
Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zool-
ogy, 1907–39,” Social Studies of Science 19, no. 3 (1989): 393.
5. See Ernst Müller and Falko Schmieder, “Einleitung” [Introduction], in Begriffsge-
schichte der Naturwissenschaften: Zur historischen und kulturellen Dimension naturwis-

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Julian Bauer

and Griesemer’s procedure and the investigation of semantic fields that had
been discussed in France as early as 1963 by Louis Girard and was further
refined by Rolf Reichardt in Germany since the 1980s promises to reap consi-
derable benefits for a transdisciplinary history of concepts. It opens new vistas
on a long tradition of talking about organism, function, system, evolution, dif-
ferentiation, and (world) society, as I will demonstrate in the remainder of the
text.6 The dynamic meaning and the multiple uses of the concept of organism
plainly cannot be plumbed without paying attention to adjacent concepts like
function, differentiation, system, or (world) society, which began to compose
their semantic fields in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. To put it
differently, since the 1850s making sense of organisms mostly meant simulta-
neously making sense of system, function, differentiation, and (world) society.
The sturdiness and epistemic productivity of this loosely coupled seman-
tic field can additionally be illuminated from the perspective of historical
epistemology. Hans-Jörg Rheinberger emphasized in a recent article that only
wide-meshed, indefinite clusters of epistemic objects—made up of interlock-
senschaftlicher Konzepte [Conceptual history of natural science: On historical and cultural
dimensions of scientific concepts], Ernst Müller and Falko Schmieder, eds. (Berlin: De
Gruyter, 2008), xi; Ernst Müller, “Introduction: Interdisciplinary Concepts and their Po-
litical Significance,” Contributions to the History of Concepts 6, no. 2 (2011): 44–47; Jan-
Werner Müller, “On Conceptual History,” in Rethinking Modern European Intellectual His-
tory, Darrin M. McMahon and Samuel Moyn, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press,
2014), 76f., 88f.
6. See Louis Girard, “Histoire et Lexicographie” [History and lexicography], Annales:
Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 18, no. 6 (1963): 1128–1132; Rolf Reichardt, “Einleitung”
[Introduction], in Handbuch politisch-sozialer Grundbegriffe in Frankreich, 1680–1820, Heft
1/2 [Handbook of political and social keywords in France, 1680–1820, Issues 1/2], Rolf
Reichardt and Eberhard Schmitt, eds. (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1985), 60–85; Rolf Reichardt,
“Historische Semantik zwischen lexicométrie und New Cultural History: Einführende Be-
merkungen zur Standortbestimmung” [Historical semantics between lexicometrics and
new cultural history: Introductory remarks], in Aufklärung und Historische Semantik: In-
terdisziplinäre Beiträge zur westeuropäischen Kulturgeschichte [Enlightenment and histori-
cal semantics: Interdisciplinary contributions to western European cultural history], Rolf
Reichardt, ed. (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1998), 22–26; for similar forays into an integ-
rated history of the natural and human sciences, see Dankmar Ambros, “Über Wesen und
Formen organischer Gesellschaftsauffassung” [On the character and shape of organismic
social theory], Soziale Welt 14, no. 1 (1963): 14–32; Cynthia E. Russett, The Concept of Equi-
librium in American Social Thought (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966); Laurent
Mucchielli, La découverte du social: naissance de la sociologie en France (1870–1914) [The
discovery of social life: The birth of sociology in France, 1870–1914] (Paris: La Découverte,
1998); Claude Blanckaert, La nature de la société: Organicisme et sciences sociales au XIXe
siècle [The nature of society: Organicism and social sciences in the nineteenth century]
(Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004); Daniela S. Barberis, “In Search of an Object: Organicist Sociol-
ogy and the Reality of Society in Fin-De-Siècle France,” History of the Human Sciences 16,
no. 3 (2003): 51–72.

54 contributions to the history of concepts

 From Organisms to World Society

ing sequences of words, deeds, and things—work as “tools of research” and

constitute “hybrid textures” that eventually result in the production of new
insights.7 The semantic field of organismic thinking therefore needs somewhat
fuzzy boundaries to retain its dynamism and epistemic power within science
beyond the rigid barriers of monodisciplinary thought. This delicate mixture
of plasticity and robustness, to use Leigh Star and Griesemer’s vocabulary,
allows organism to participate in those very processes that Isabelle Stengers
identified for “nomadic concepts” in science. Stengers specifically highlighted
“operations of propagation” and “operations of passage” that keep ideas from
losing their epistemic and pluridisciplinary potential.8
The dynamic and antiessentialist focus on organism and its related se-
mantic fields furthermore helps in going beyond individualist or presentist
analyses of the history of science that typically run the risk of overestimating
either individual contributions or present-day concerns.9 Some of the existing
metaphorological approaches are tarnished by substantialist presumptions—
possibly culminating in Sabine Maasen’s thesis that “the exchange of concepts
and models does not abolish disciplinary boundaries, but stabilizes them.”10
Leigh Star and Griesemer’s scheme of boundary objects, however, is much
better equipped to uncover the long tradition of organismic thinking across

7. See Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, “Begriffsgeschichte epistemischer Objekte” [Conceptual

history of epistemic things], Begriffsgeschichte der Naturwissenschaften: Zur historischen
und kulturellen Dimension naturwissenschaftlicher Konzepte [Conceptual history of natural
science: On historical and cultural dimensions of scientific concepts], Ernst Müller and
Falko Schmieder, eds. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008), 4, 5; Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Experiment,
Differenz, Schrift: Zur Geschichte epistemischer Dinge [Experiment, difference, scripture: On
the history of epistemic things] (Marburg: Basilisken-Presse, 1992); Hans-Jörg Rheinberger,
Toward a History of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing Proteins in the Test Tube (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1997).
8. See Isabelle Stengers, “Introduction: La propagation des concepts” [Introduction: The
propagation of concepts], in D’une science à l’autre: Des concepts nomades [From one scien-
tific field to another: On nomadic concepts], Isabelle Stengers, ed. (Paris: Editions du Seuil,
1987), 17ff., 24; Françoise Gaill, “Organisme” [Organism], in Stengers, D’une science à l’au-
tre, 244–265; Rheinberger, “Begriffsgeschichte,” 8.
9. See, inter alia, Paul Weindling, Darwinism and Social Darwinism in Imperial Germany:
The Contribution of the Cell Biologist Oscar Hertwig (1849–1922) (Stuttgart: Fischer, 1991);
Roger L. Geiger, “The Development of French Sociology, 1871–1905” (PhD diss., Univer-
sity of Michigan, 1972); Peter Weingart, “Biology as Social Theory: The Bifurcation of So-
cial Biology and Sociology in Germany, circa 1900,” in Modernist Impulses in the Human
Sciences, 1870–1930, Dorothy Ross, ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994),
255–271, 358–359.
10. Sabine Maasen, “Who Is Afraid of Metaphors,” in Biology as Society, Society as Bio-
logy: Metaphors, Sabine Maasen, Everett Mendelsohn, and Peter Weingart, eds. (Dordrecht:
Kluwer, 1995), 26. See also Richard Harvey Brown, A Poetic for Sociology: Toward a Logic of
Discovery for the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 77–172.

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Julian Bauer

disciplines that ultimately leads to Niklas Luhmann’s observation of a “de-

ontologization of society” in the 1960s. His remarks actually start to flourish in
biology and early social theory in the second half of the nineteenth century, as
the following quote made in 1898 by the historian of philosophy Ludwig Stein
aptly illustrates:

Since the final victory of Lamarck, Goethe and Darwin against the dogma
of the immutability of all species there has been a piecemeal break with the
ideas of uniformity, substantiality, and the idea of variability, that is, an evo-
lutionary perspective, takes over in all scientific disciplines. One might claim
that historically speaking antiquity was animated by substantialist notions,
the Middle Ages by attributionist theories, the seventeenth century by static
concepts, while our own age is being guided by relational ideas.11

Organicist reasoning uses techniques of abstraction and axioms from evolu-

tionary thought which subsequently made differentiational assumptions of
systems theory conceivable.12 The idea of a world society, developed perhaps
most prolifically by Luhmann and continued by his disciples, needs to be his-
toricized in light of this tradition.13 Organism is a nomadic boundary object
that has traveled far and wide across centuries, continents, and disciplines.
While the following section provides a rough outline of organismic thinking

11. Ludwig Stein, Wesen und Aufgabe der Sociologie: Eine Kritik der organischen Methode
in der Sociologie [The character and task of sociology: A critique of the organic method
in sociology] (Berlin: Reimer, 1898), 19. See the analyses below as well as Jakob von Uex-
küll, “Der Organismus als Staat und der Staat als Organismus” [The organism as state and
the state as organism], in Weltanschauung und Lebensgestaltung [Worldview and the art of
living], Alexander von Gleichen-Rußwurm, ed. (Darmstadt: Reichl, 1919), 88; Niklas Luh-
mann, “Funktionale Methode und Systemtheorie” [Functional method and systems theory]
[1964], in Soziologische Aufklärung, vol. 1, Aufsätze zur Theorie sozialer Systeme [Sociologi-
cal enlightenment, vol. 1, Articles on the theory of social systems] (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag
für Sozialwissenschaften, 2005), 39–67; Niklas Luhmann, “Das Erkenntnisprogramm des
Konstruktivismus und die unbekannt bleibende Realität” [The epistemology of construc-
tivism and unknown reality] [1990], in Soziologische Aufklärung, vol. 5, Konstruktivistische
Perspektiven [Sociological enlightenment, vol. 5, Constructivist perspectives] (Wiesbaden:
VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2005), 35. Luhmann talks about a “De-ontologization of
Reality” (original emphasis).
12. See, with slightly differing accentuations, Hartmann Tyrell, “Anfragen an die Theorie
der gesellschaftlichen Differenzierung” [Questioning the theory of social differentiation],
Zeitschrift für Soziologie 7, no. 2 (1978): 175–193; Hartmann Tyrell, “Zur Diversität der
Differenzierungstheorie: Soziologiehistorische Anmerkungen” [The diversity of theories of
differentiation: Remarks from the history of sociology], Soziale Systeme: Zeitschrift für so-
ziologische Theorie 4, no. 1 (1998): 119–149.
13. See Luhmann, “Die Weltgesellschaft”; Rudolf Stichweh, Die Weltgesellschaft: Soziolo-
gische Analysen [The world society: Sociological analyses] (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
2000).

56 contributions to the history of concepts

 From Organisms to World Society

in biology since the 1850s, the third and fourth sections of this article focus
on early organicist sociology and its key role in bringing about functionalism
and differentiational theories of world society. The fifth and final section then
takes a close, exploratory look at the continuation of these arguments in the
early twentieth century by briefly concentrating on a diversity of authors with
variable disciplinary backgrounds, for example, Oscar Hertwig (1849–1922),
Franz Eulenburg (1867–1943), and Lawrence J. Henderson (1878–1942).
Organism hence partakes in key characteristics of nomadic and traveling
concepts by sharing its “strong orientation toward interdisciplinarity and per-
manent mobility”.14

The Unity of the World: Biological Knowledge on Natural Forms

of Society in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

Both Albert Schäffle and Guillaume de Greef were true learned (and radical)
men of the nineteenth century: Schäffle (1831–1903) first studied theology,
was expelled due to his involvement in the uprisings in Baden in 1849, worked
as the editor of the national liberal newspaper Schwäbischer Merkur in Stutt-
gart, and became a professor of political economy at Tübingen in 1860 and
later in Vienna (1868). He was a member of the Württemberg Landtag in the
1860s as well and in 1871 was appointed to the cabinet of the Austrian prime
minister Karl, Graf von Hohenwart. After the cabinet fell, Schäffle relocated to
Stuttgart and devoted most of his time to writing books. He wrote the first edi-
tion of Bau und Leben des sozialen Körpers (Construction and Life of the So-
cial Body) from 1875 to 1878 and worked as the main editor of the renowned
macroeconomic journal Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft from
1892 until 1901.
While Schäffle and Greef (1842–1924) both voiced sympathies for socia-
list ideas, Greef was probably a bit more vocal about his syndicalist tendencies.
He studied law and received a doctorate from Université Libre de Bruxelles
(Free University of Brussels, or ULB) in 1886. Greef edited the Proudhonian
14. I think that there are substantial intersections between my rendition of boundary
objects and the semiotic theory of traveling concepts. Due to a lack of space I cannot delve
further in detail, but the reader is well-advised to consult the introduction to this theme
issue by Jan Surman, Katalin Stráner, and Peter Haslinger: “Nomadic Concepts: Biological
Concepts and Their Careers Beyond Biology”; for theoretically pronounced disquisitions
on the subject, see Mieke Bal, Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide (To-
ronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002); Jani Marjanen, “Undermining Methodological
Nationalism: Histoire croisée of Concepts as Transnational History,” in Transnational Polit-
ical Spaces: Agents, Structures, Encounters, Mathias Albert et al., eds. (Frankfurt am Main:
Campus, 2009), 239–263, esp. 252–260; Birgit Neumann and Ansgar Nünning, eds., Travel-
ling Concepts for the Study of Culture (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012).

winter 2014 57
Julian Bauer

journal La Liberté from 1867 to 1882 while working as a lawyer. He became

a professor of sociology and codirector of the Institut des Sciences Sociales
(Department of Social Sciences) of the ULB in 1890 due to the success of his
book Introduction à la sociologie (Introduction to Sociology) in 1886–1889. In
1894 he resigned from the ULB after his failed attempt to recruit the French
geographer and anarchist Elisée Reclus to the university. Subsequently, Greef
cofounded and worked as president of the Université Nouvelle (New Univer-
sity, or UN), finally enabling Reclus to lecture in Brussels. He continued his
research and taught classes at the UN until its closure in 1918. Greef pub-
lished his second major, multivolume book, La structure générale des sociétés
(General Structure of Society), in 1907–1908. The works of Greef and Schäffle
received favorable reviews during their lifetimes, penned by none other than
Emile Durkheim (1858–1917), institution builder of French sociology.15 Nei-
ther author has been scrutinized much since then, despite representing the
best of organismic thinking in nineteenth-century social theory.16
Authors like Schäffle or Greef most certainly stand on the shoulders of
countless giants.17 The following overview is limited to a few positions that
provide central keywords in the immediate context of their social theories.
Keywords like development, function, or differentation mostly stem from ana-
lyses of biological organisms in the second half of the nineteenth century,
are used quite profusely—equivalent to the operation of boundary objects in
general—and have been ascribed a formative significance for sociology since

15. See Emile Durkheim, “Review of Albert Schaeffle, Bau und Leben des Sozialen Kör-
pers: Erster Band” [1885], in On Institutional Analysis, trans. Mark Traugott (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1978), 93–114; Emile Durkheim, “Guillaume de Greef: Intro-
duction à la Sociologie,” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger 11, no. 22 (1886):
658–663.
16. For overviews of both authors, see Frank Andert, “Die Nerven der Gesellschaft: Al-
bert Schäffle als Praktiker und Theoretiker der öffentlichen Kommunikation” [The nerves
of society: Albert Schäffle as a practitioner and theoretician of communication] (MA thesis,
Universität Leipzig, 1999); Jürgen Backhaus, ed., Albert Schäffle (1831–1903): The Legacy
of an Underestimated Economist (Hanau: Haag and Herchen, 2010); Manuel Wendelin,
Medialisierung der Öffentlichkeit: Kontinuität und Wandel einer normativen Kategorie der
Moderne [Mediating the general public: Continuity and change of a normative category of
modernity] (Cologne: Halem, 2011), 89–140; Dorothy W. Douglas, Guillaume de Greef: The
Social Theory of an Early Syndicalist (New York: Columbia University, 1925); Pierre de Bie,
Naissance et premiers développements de la sociologie en Belgique [The emergence and early
developments of sociology in Belgium] (Louvain-la-Neuve: CIACO, 1988), 32–38, 50–55,
63–90; Jean-François Crombois, L’univers de la sociologie en Belgique de 1900 à 1940 [The
world of sociology in Belgium from 1900 to 1940] (Brussels: Editions de l’Université de
Bruxelles, 1994), 23–33, 53f.
17. See Robert K. Merton, On the Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean Postscript (1965; repr.,
San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985).

58 contributions to the history of concepts

 From Organisms to World Society

its inception.18 The natural scientific research on organisms experienced a

great deal of stimuli, for example, from the work of the German pathologist
Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902). Eva Johach, in her study Krebszelle und Zellen-
staat (Cancer Cell and Cell State), has shown how Virchow’s theory was “in
symmetrical fashion both a biomedical and a political theory” and was capable
of helping “biology and sociology achieve their mutual consolidation.”19 The
reciprocal interpenetration of biological and sociopolitical idioms can also be
identified in zoologist and left-wing politician Carl Vogt’s (1817–1895) 1851
Untersuchungen über Thierstaaten (Studies on Animal States). Vogt’s work rep-
resents an early instance in a long line of examples for the ideological fungi-
bility of the concept of organism.20 This view was still shared by Vogt’s fellow
zoologist and philosopher of nature Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) in the late
1860s.21 Moreover, Haeckel was one of the first to elaborate a double-barreled
gaze at synchrony and diachrony. His notion of a division of labor was not
only related to functional contexts of the epoch, but was also understood as a
process of differentiation.22 Similar to Virchow, Haeckel constructs relations
between the animal and human worlds as a continuum.23 In the work of the

18. There is not much doubt about this. Even contemporary sociologists speak of a
“‘special relationship’ with biology” (Tyrell, “Zur Diversität der Differenzierungstheorie,”
124). Early sociology is probably not as heavily indebted to Cuvier’s anatomy as Domi-
nique Guillo implies in a range of publications, however. See Dominique Guillo, Sciences so-
ciales et sciences de la vie [Social sciences and life sciences] (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 2000); Dominique Guillo, Les figures de l’organisation: Sciences de la vie et sciences
sociales au XIXe siècle [The forms of organization: Life sciences and social sciences in the
nineteenth century] (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2003).
19. Eva Johach, Krebszelle und Zellenstaat: Zur medizinischen und politischen Metaphorik
in Rudolf Virchows Zellularpathologie [Cancer cell and cell state: The medical and political
imagery of Rudolf Virchow’s cytopathology] (Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach, 2008), 103, 12.
20. Carl Vogt, Untersuchungen über Thierstaaten [Studies of animal colonies] (Frankfurt
am Main: Literarische Anstalt, 1851), 27, 36, 190. See also Rudolf Leuckart (1822–1898,
zoologist and one of the founders of modern parasitology), Ueber den Polymorphismus der
Individuen oder die Erscheinungen der Arbeitstheilung in der Natur: Ein Beitrag zur Lehre
vom Generationswechsel [On the polymorphism of individuals or the division of labor in
nature: A contribution to the doctrine of generational change] (Gießen: Ricker, 1851).
21. Ernst Haeckel, Ueber Arbeitstheilung in Natur- und Menschenleben: Vortrag, gehalten
im Saale des Berliner Handwerker-Vereins am 17. Dezember 1868 [On the division of labor
in nature and society: A talk given at the Berlin Association of Craftsmen on 17 December
1868] (Berlin: Lüderitz, 1869), 23f. See, with quite authoritarian undertones, Ernst Haeckel,
Zellseelen und Seelenzellen: Vortrag gehalten am 22. März 1878 in der “Concordia” zu Wien
[Cellular souls and cells of the soul: A talk given at the “Concordia” in Vienna on 22 March
1878] (Leipzig: Kröner, 1909), 20, 42–45, 49.
22. Haeckel, Ueber Arbeitstheilung, 3, 4, 13, 36.
23. Ibid., 5, 34, 8, 27, 32f.; Haeckel, Zellseelen und Seelenzellen, 30; on Haeckel’s monism
in general, see Bernhard Kleeberg, Theophysis: Ernst Haeckels Philosophie des Naturganzen

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Julian Bauer

French philosopher and naturalist Alfred Espinas (1844–1922), community

life becomes a natural fact shared both by animals and humans. This results
in a classification of the disciplines that begins with biology, as the science
of the general conditions of life, and ends with sociology, as the experimen-
tal research of social group structures. Life and social sciences can be distin-
guished from one another on the basis of their objects; however, they use
identical foundational concepts and analytic methods.24 At the same time, Es-
pinas (like Haeckel) supplies these contexts with a historical index, arguing
rigorously according to evolutionary theory.25 A background of common as-
sumptions about middle to late nineteenth-century research exists regarding
natural organisms and organicist social theory, whose impact it is difficult to
underestimate. It includes, for example, gradual transitions between humans
and animals, functional processes in individual and collective life, close inter-
actions between environment and society, and a perspective of intertwining
synchronic and diachronic processes.

The Statics of Social Life: On the Origins of Functionalism

in Organismic Sociology

Guillaume de Greef summarizes the cardinal premises of the organicist in-

terpretation of social phenomena with regard to time in the following way:
“Social statics was therefore a mechanical statics. … [I]t made an abstraction
of time. The phenomenon was considered as fixed without regard to variations
that the system’s forces can undergo, as in the dynamic point of view.”26 He
makes use of a distinction well-established since Comte between a static and
a dynamic examination of society.27 Social organizations require a detempor-
alized, purely synchronic perspective if their special character is to be grasped
theoretically. From this vantage point, processes of structural transformation
can be comprehended only after one has studied the momentary equilibrium
of the social system. The almost ubiquitous difference between a static and a
dynamic approach toward analyzing social institutions is interpreted by Greef
[Theophysics: Ernst Haeckel’s holist philosophy of nature] (Cologne: Böhlau, 2005); Rob-
ert J. Richards, The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary
Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).
24. Alfred Espinas, Des sociétés animales [On animal societies] [1877] (Paris: Librairie
Germer Baillière et Cie., 1878), 83.
25. Ibid., 9; see also ibid., 67f.
26. Guillaume de Greef, La structure générale des sociétés, vol. 1, La loi de limitation [The
general structure of societies, vol. 1, The law of limitation] (Brussels: Larcier, 1908), 15.
27. Ibid., 5. See also Douglas, Guillaume de Greef; and on Comte’s terminology of static
and dynamic social analysis, see Mary Pickering, Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography,
vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 615–621.

60 contributions to the history of concepts

 From Organisms to World Society

and Schäffle in highly original ways that had been overlooked until now. With
an in-depth consideration of their work it can be shown, first, that the ap-
peal of Emile Durkheim or Marcel Mauss (1872–1950) to a physiology and
morphology of social life does not represent an epistemological revolution.28
Greef ’s and Schäffle’s work, second, crucially accounts for an extensive tra-
dition within social theories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that
intersects synchrony and diachrony with one another.
A starting point in this line of tradition is the oeuvre of Albert Schäffle, to
whom the young Durkheim repeatedly pays tribute.29 Schäffle deserves special
consideration for having based his first monographs on a remarkable concept
of systems solely by starting off with the basic distinction between man and
the external world, an idea that almost one hundred years later can be found
in Luhmann’s fundamental discrimination of system and environment.30 Ad-
ditionally, in his main sociological work, he understands—and thoroughly de-
ontologizes—social life as a phenomenon of communication. The core of this
research program can be found in his treatise Ueber die volkswirthschaftliche
Natur der Güter der Darstellung und der Mittheilung (1873) (On the Economic
Nature of the Goods of Representation and Communication). In support of his

28. See Albert Schäffle, Bau und Leben des socialen Körpers [1875–1878] (Tübingen:
Laupp, 1896), vols. 1 and 2. These concepts and topics are an integral part of Durkheim’s
work: see Emile Durkheim, “Course in Sociology: Opening Lecture” [1888], trans. Mark
Traugott, in On Institutional Analysis, 43–70, 64ff.; Emile Durkheim, “Note on Social Mor-
phology” [1897–1898], trans. Mark Traugott, in On Institutional Analysis, 88–90; Emile
Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, Primitive Classification [1901–1902], trans. Rodney Need-
ham (London: Cohen & West, 1969); Marcel Mauss, Seasonal Variations of the Eskimo: A
Study in Social Morphology [1904–1905], trans. James J. Fox (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1979).
29. See Durkheim, “Review of Albert Schaeffle,” 96–99; Durkheim, “Course in Sociology,”
59; for a detailed analysis of Durkheim’s interpretation of Schäffle, see Wolf Feuerhahn,
“Zwischen Individualismus und Sozialismus: Durkheims Soziologie und ihr deutsches
Pantheon” [In between individualism and socialism: Durkheim’s sociology and its German
pantheon], in Europäische Wissenschaftskulturen und politische Ordnungen in der Moderne
(1890–1970) [European cultures of science and political regimes during modernity (1890–
1970)], Gangolf Hübinger, ed. (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2014), 79–98.
30. Albert Schäffle, Das gesellschaftliche System der menschlichen Wirthschaft: Ein Lehr-
und Handbuch der Nationalökonomie für höhere Unterrichtsanstalten und Gebildete jeden
Standes [The social system of human economics: A text- and handbook of macroeconomics
for higher education and intellectuals of all classes] [1860] (Tübingen: Laupp, 1867), 2, 22;
Niklas Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen formaler Organisation [Functions and effects of
formal organization] (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1964), 23–29; Niklas Luhmann, Social
Systems [1984], trans. John Bednarz Jr. with Dirk Baecker (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univer-
sity Press, 1995), 176–209, 537–546. There is not much scholarly literature on Schäffle. See,
in a biographical vein, Andert, “Die Nerven der Gesellschaft”; more recently, see Backhaus,
Albert Schäffle; Wendelin, Medialisierung der Öffentlichkeit, 89–140.

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Julian Bauer

views, Schäffle draws on two theses. On the one hand, “there is no type or direc-
tion of thoughts, value-attributions, and purposes in which one-sided commu-
nication or reciprocal circulation would not be required.” On the other hand,
however, it is “only through the medium of external representational goods that
thoughts, value-attributions and plans can be communicated.”31 His approach
is based on the nature of humanity to communicate and interact, as well as to
display in written form its concomitant accomplishments of social order. The
construction of social structures is considered to have succeeded only during
the beginning stages by means of direct interaction.32 Modern society owes its
specific stability and efficiency to the “always more general use and enjoyment
of symbolic material goods.” The reproduction of modern social structures is
based on standardized reproduction of symbolic communications media.33
An elaboration of these assumptions can be found in Schäffle’s Bau und Leben
des socialen Körpers (1875–1878 and 1896). Similar to Greef, Schäffle relies on
contemporary philosophers of nature and psychophysicists to understand both
individual and social lives as an interdependent systemic context.34 He con-
ceptualized the functional systems of society as open, transparent, and heter-
archical. Both the internal unity of organizations and their relations with the
environment are ensured by sophisticated techniques of symbolic communica-
tion.35 Moreover, Schäffle’s idea of open subsystems is unequivocally expressed
in the authority of audiences.36 The dynamic productivity of using the loosely
defined semantic field of organisms for thinking through the inner workings of
modern societal mechanisms without worrying too much about extant disci-
plinary boundaries indubitably comes to the fore in Schäffle’s writings.
Like Schäffle’s work, Greef ’s work was and continues for the most part to
be ignored; Durkheim, one of Greef ’s contemporaries in the mid-1880s, sig-
naled a certain amount of tolerance. Samuel Jankelevitch (1869–1951), a Rus-
sian physician who fled to France because of anti-Semitic laws in the Russian
Empire and became a translator of numerous German, English, and Russian
books into French—most notably works by Sigmund Freud—nearly thirty
years later displayed little understanding of the Belgian’s work.37 Since then,

31. Albert Schäffle, “Ueber die volkswirthschaftliche Natur der Güter der Darstellung
und der Mittheilung,” Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft 29 (1873): 5, 6 (original
emphasis).
32. Ibid., 10, 18.
33. Ibid., 20 (original emphasis), 11.
34. Schäffle, Bau und Leben, 1:9, 12.
35. Ibid., 1:164ff.
36. See ibid., 1:193.
37. Compare Durkheim, “Guillaume de Greef,” with Samuel Jankelevitch, “G. de Greef—
Introduction à la Sociologie,” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger 37, no. 78
(1912): 308–312. See Douglas, Guillaume de Greef.

62 contributions to the history of concepts

 From Organisms to World Society

practically nothing has been written about Greef. Yet if one undertakes an un-
biased reading, one is rewarded by unexpected findings. Alongside Schäffle,
Greef proves to be an intellectual progenitor of major notions of functionalist
systems theory. Many of these themes are established in his two-volume In-
troduction à la sociologie (1886–1889). For instance, organismic terminology
allows Greef to introduce the difference between subsystems and the entire
system of society by employing the distinction between individual organs and
the entire social organism.38 He understands sociological knowledge as a form
of knowledge that is both conventionalist and bound to perspectivism.39 In the
case of Greef, one can identify basic figures of social theory that prove to be
recurring. Specifically at issue here is the notion of how sociality is latent in the
everyday performance of actions.40 Greef recognizes the extent to which social
order is based on agreements that are assumed, updated, and consolidated in
the activities of everyday life. He also dismisses externalist, metaphysical justi-
fications for society in favor of immanent, autopoietic principles: “All that we
can say is that society is the mother of its own manifestations, even despotic
ones; there is no absolute and metaphysical being called State … outside of so-
ciety.”41 Durkheim shares this point of view and emphasizes in one of his first
lectures in 1888 that “collective life could not brusquely be established by some
clever artifice; … it did not result from an external and mechanical impulsion
but is slowly elaborated in the very heart of society.”42 Ultimately, Greef estab-
lishes the principle of an unstable equilibrium and avoids creating schematic,
timeless social mechanics.43 The foundations of Greef ’s sociology contain the
trend toward deontologizing social life encountered in Schäffle, while also car-
rying it into the early twentieth century. At that time, sociology was becoming
a highly formal and complex relational theory that made the observation of
social life increasingly abstract and almost ineffable. Greef thus demonstrates

38. Guillaume de Greef, Introduction à la sociologie, première partie: Éléments [Introduc-

tion to sociology, vol. 1, Elements] (Brussels: Mayolez, 1886), 70f.; for explicitly using the
concept of systems, see Guillaume de Greef, Introduction à la sociologie, deuxième partie:
Fonctions et organes [Introduction to sociology, vol. 2, Functions and organs] (Brussels:
Mayolez, 1889), 33.
39. See Guillaume de Greef, Introduction, première partie, 89.
40. Ibid., 145. For similar ideas, see Durkheim, “Course in Sociology,” 69f.; Schäffle, Bau
und Leben, 1:174.
41. Greef, Introduction, première partie, 153. See also Greef, La structure générale, 1:274.
42. Durkheim, “Course in Sociology,” 48. See also Jean-Claude Filloux, “Durkheim
et l’organicisme: L’influence de Spencer et d’Espinas dans l’élaboration du fonctionna-
lisme Durkheimien” [Durkheim and organicism: The influence of Spencer and Espinas
on Durkheim’s functionalism], Revue européenne des sciences sociales 17, no. 47 (1979):
135–148.
43. Greef, Introduction, première partie, 157. See also Greef, Introduction, deuxième par-
tie, 13; Greef, La structure générale, 1:70.

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Julian Bauer

the fecundity of utilizing the fuzzy semantic field of organism for an analysis
of modern society and presages many insights of functionalist systems theory
in the twentieth century.44

The Dynamics of Differentiation: The Roots of World Society

in Social Theory around 1900

In Greef ’s formulation, one can recognize the deep temporality of a sociology

configured by evolutionary theory: “Social identity … is relative. The changes
are slow, continuous and difficult to make sense of. They possess a perma-
nence among unceasing variations.”45 Changes are not regarded as event-like
intrusions of contingency but are based on “a slow summation of infinitely
small variations in infinitely long periods of time”, as Schäffle put it just before
1900.46 In particular, this brings three main topics into focus. First, theoretical
assumptions concerning differentiation and development have consequences
for understanding the early history of the social sciences. Second, the evolu-
tionary dimension implies not only examining the genesis of present social
structures but also looking toward the future and the forecasting power of
sociological knowledge. Third, on the level of objects, this line of questioning
congeals in specific ideas of progress, which have a common conceptual de-
nominator in the notion of world society, thereby forming an integral part of
the prehistory and early years of sociological systems theory.
The close amalgamation of static and dynamic social analysis runs like
a red thread through Schäffle’s writings.47 Modern social functions did not
fall from the sky as sudden achievements, but are the result of incremental
processes of growth, consolidation, and dissemination of specific commu-

44. See Guillaume de Greef, Le transformisme social: Essai sur le progrès et le regrès des
sociétés [Social transformism: Essay on the progress and regress of societies] (Paris: Alcan,
1895), 479. Greef ’s description is far more complex than Durkheim’s arboresque ideas (see
Durkheim, “Course in Sociology,” 53f.) and it bears a tremendous resemblance to Niklas
Luhmann’s arguments. See Niklas Luhmann, “Unverständliche Wissenschaft: Probleme
einer theorieeigenen Sprache” [Incomprehensible science: Problems of manufacturing the-
oretical idioms] [1979], in Soziologische Aufklärung, vol. 3, Soziales System, Gesellschaft,
Organisation [Sociological enlightenment, vol. 3, Social system, society, organization]
(Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2005), 193–201.
45. Guillaume de Greef, La structure générale des sociétés, vol. 3, Théorie des frontières et
des classes [The general structure of societies, vol. 3, Theory of borders and classes] (Brus-
sels: Larcier, 1908), 385.
46. Schäffle, Bau und Leben, 1:284. See also John W. Burrow, Evolution and Society: A
Study in Victorian Social Theory (1966; repr., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1970).
47. See, for example, Schäffle, “Ueber die volkswirthschaftliche Natur,” 6.

64 contributions to the history of concepts

 From Organisms to World Society

nications media and technological infrastructures.48 Schäffle envisions these

conditions in a multitemporal way, for example, when he discusses the in-
vention and social adaptation of the mechanical printing press.49 Neverthe-
less, he remains adamant that “[even if] the development of society can be
demonstrated inductively through history, it can also be derived deductively
from the theory of development.”50 The distinction between actual historical
events and theoretical idealizations based on evolutionary thinking no longer
makes sense to him. Supported by these convictions, Schäffle creates a five-
phase “set of stages of social development”, providing a rigorous typology of
social forms ranging from the earliest tribes to the “commonwealths of nations
and nationalities of contemporary society.” The reduction of development and
progress allows him to specify the overall direction of future social conditions
that point to a universal world society.51 He telescopes together present and
future, allowing sociology to acquire a special prognostic power.52 At the same
time, Schäffle does not dismiss his process ontology, allowing the suddenness
of eventful change to retain its validity.53 By aligning strict reduction with con-
stant revision, a model of sociological prognosis is established that endures
until the mid-twentieth century and can be particularly discerned in the work
of Karl Mannheim.54
In material terms, Schäffle completes his abstract knowledge of the future
with the idea of a single world society. In the first volume of Bau und Leben des
socialen Körpers, this hypothesis appears in the form of a generally accepted
fact: “In reality there are only a few nations that can do without [any] social
community with other nations. … Humanity is not some external juxtaposi-
tion; it is and always will be more of a general ‘together with’ and ‘for’ each
other involving all national circles and individuals.”55 By presupposing a vigor-
ous concept of progress, Schäffle links the increase in social complexity to the
necessity of supranational associations that might stabilize these evolutionary
achievements.56 Once again Schäffle blots out the discrimination between the-
ory and reality, while his promulgation of a “United States of Europe” is anal-
48. Ibid., 9, 20f.
49. Ibid., 67.
50. Albert Schäffle, “Darwinismus und Socialwissenschaft” [Darwinism and social
science] [1879], in Gesammelte Aufsätze [Collected writings], vol. 1 (Tübingen: Laupp,
1885), 4f. (original emphasis).
51. Schäffle, Bau und Leben, 1:279, 330–333.
52. Ibid., 1:25. See also ibid., 2:7.
53. Ibid., 1:559.
54. See, for example, Karl Mannheim, “Present Trends in the Building of Society,” trans.
H. Lewis, in Human Affairs, R. B. Cattell, J. Cohen, and R. M. W. Travers, eds. (London:
Macmillan, 1937), 281, 285f., 298f.
55. Schäffle, Bau und Leben, 1:529f. See also ibid., 1:304, 311, 314, 330–333, 532, 549f.
56. Ibid., 2:555. Schäffle delivers an empirical proof on pp. 557–587.

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Julian Bauer

ogous to similar statements from Durkheim.57 The nomadic semantic field of

organismic thought thus proves anew in Schäffle’s writings its epistemic power
for an explanation of modern society’s past, present, and future.
The Belgian sociologist Greef essentially argues with more sophistication
by applying the theory of differentiation. While his early writings indicate a
pronounced interest in general theory construction, the comprehensive vol-
umes of Structure générale des sociétés (1907–1908) mark him as a trailblazer
of globalization theory.58 In his early work, Greef ’s diagnosis of a global society
is characterized by a mixture of empirical data and theoretical claims with a
futurist twist.59 In the style of Durkheim, Greef identifies organic and social
phenomena as parallel.60 If one scrutinizes the results of this approach, they
are precisely congruent with Durkheim’s findings and precede them by a few
years.61 In Greef ’s Structure générale des societies, a more elaborate vision of
social theory emerges through a different thematic organization. In the final
sections of the first volume of Structure générale, Greef establishes the bound-
ary as a fundamental concept in differentiation theory. In agreement with later
systems theory, he realizes that social systems are constituted by the difference
between system and environment. He also recognizes—as do later theorists
like Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) or pioneers of cybernetics like Heinz
von Foerster (1911–2002)—that systems do not operate in a closed fashion,
but an open one.62 Greef empirically supports and works his way through the
boundary concept theoretically in the subsequent two volumes of Structure
générale.63 In accordance with the notion of open systems, he conceives of
boundaries as spaces of dynamic balancing and zones of mediation.64 Greef
first articulates the basic figure of an unstable equilibrium. Then, second, the
boundary concept is deontologized radically, and boundaries are defined as
governed by function. In that way, physical boundary markers are not only
intelligible as purely symbolic and conventional; they also multiply and change

57. Ibid., 2:587f. Schäffle talks about the “United States of Europe” on p. 648; Durkheim
speaks of similar ideas in his major book The Division of Labor in Society [1893], trans.
George Simpson (New York: Free Press, 1965), 121, 281, 405f.
58. It is hence no surprise that Niklas Luhmann refers explicitly to Greef in his program-
matic article about world society. See Luhmann, “Die Weltgesellschaft,” 75, 86n37.
59. See Greef, Introduction, première partie, 75, 126, 213.
60. The most famous example for this kind of argument is Durkheim’s rendition of or-
ganic solidarity in his Division of Labor in Society. See Durkheim, Division of Labor, 131.
61. Ibid., 329.
62. See Greef, La structure générale, 1:270, 273.
63. See Guillaume de Greef, La structure générale des sociétés, vol. 2, Théorie des frontières
et des classes [The general structure of societies, vol. 2, Theory of borders and classes] (Brus-
sels: Larcier, 1907); ibid., vol. 3.
64. Ibid., 2:11. See also ibid., 2:28, 210; ibid., 3:26, 273–281.

66 contributions to the history of concepts

 From Organisms to World Society

depending on the relevant systemic references.65 Third, and finally, Greef is able
to relate the internal and external differentiation of social systems to one an-
other on the basis of their openness.66 Societal and system boundaries no lon-
ger come together. In line with evolutionary theory, only the idea of a context
that is overarching and complete can promise unity on a global scale.67 Actual
political events and theoretical hypotheses on social differentiation enter into
a relationship of mutual verification. Greef ’s finding rests on a visible change
in transport and communications infrastructures producing global connec-
tions. In this age of “internationality and globality,” it is revealed that “natural
boundaries … have no other significance than to manifest points of contact
and suture between States.”68 The last volume of Greef ’s Structure générale
provides additional evidence that reflects the social absorption and awareness
of these subterranean globalization processes. International standardization
projects and organizations of the epoch are, according to him, testimony to
the gradual dissolution of societal systems enclosed within nation-states.69 The
conclusion to his inventory on the genesis of world society is comprised of for-
ward-looking considerations. In addressing the reduction of development and
progress, Greef levels out the differences between past, present, and future. He
thereby grants himself a futuristic backing, according to which “the history
of the World State will be an enlarged repetition of all particular histories.”70
Such typologizing and generalizing enable him to rehabilitate the old topos of
history as a teacher of life. He highlights this notion when speaking of a “great
lesson” of post-1812 developments, a general situation that Durkheim conveys
in a few striking words:

This evolution is proved by so many evidences from historical fact that we do

not think it necessary to go into any further detail to prove it. If we compare

65. See ibid., 2:20f., 30, 39, 55; ibid., 3:36, 384; ibid., 1:272.
66. Ibid., 2:32. See also ibid., 2:20, 39, 55.
67. See ibid., 2:21f. Even though Niklas Luhmann coyly acknowledges that his notion of
a world society can be traced back to Greef, a close reading of Luhmann’s and Greef ’s texts
reveals that the former is much more heavily indebted to the latter than one might have
guessed beforehand. See Luhmann, “Die Weltgesellschaft,” 75, 86n37. Luhmann’s articles in
English deal basically with the same material but—oddly enough—do not mention Greef
at all. See Niklas Luhmann, “The Differentiation of Society” [1977], in The Differentiation
of Society, trans. Stephen Holmes (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 246; Luh-
mann, “The World Society as a Social System,” 132f.
68. Greef, La structure générale, 2:295, 296 (original emphasis).
69. Ibid., 3:270–273.
70. Ibid., 3:128: “L’histoire de l’État mondial sera une répétition agrandie de toutes les
histoires particulières.” Moreover, there is undeniably a Haeckelian, recapitulationist ring
to the last quote from Greef as well. On Haeckel’s work, see Kleeberg, Theophysis; Richards,
The Tragic Sense.

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Julian Bauer

tribes devoid of all central authority with centralized tribes, and the latter to
the city, the city to feudal societies, feudal societies to present societies, we
follow, step by step, the principal stages of the general march of development
we have just traced.71

The Nature of Society: Holistic Semantics of Social Life

in the Twentieth Century

Durkheim’s confidence and his epistemic techniques of abstraction are not

relics of a scientistic era and its faith in progress, but were still up-to-date in
the early twentieth century. German zoologist Oscar Hertwig’s work extends
this tradition to the period of the Weimar Republic and testifies afresh to the
nomadic existence of organism as a boundary object. On an epistemological
level, the findings of Schäffle, Greef, or Durkheim were carried on—and even-
tually improved upon72—after 1900 by Franz Eulenburg and Lawrence J. Hen-
derson, who aimed at naturalizing knowledge and society.73
Oscar Hertwig’s writings on social theory read for long stretches like a re-
prise of the themes of organicist sociology. Nonetheless, the importance of his
contribution should not be underrated. First, his findings, which first emerged
before 1900, were still valued well into the 1920s. Second, his epistemological
perspective is close to positions held at the time. Consequently, his oeuvre can
be recognized as a missing link between the nineteenth and twentieth centu-
ries.74 In addition to naturalist, evolutionary convictions, this appraisal also
includes the synchronous level, that is, the construction of current social for-

71. Durkheim, Division of Labor, 222.

72. In their own ways Eulenburg and Henderson share and act according to Max Weber’s
(1864–1920) nearly simultaneous observation that there is almost a law of scientific pro-
gress: “Scientific work is chained to the course of progress. … In science, each of us knows
that what he has accomplished will be antiquated in ten, twenty, fifty years. That is the fate to
which science is subjected; it is the very meaning of scientific work. … Every scientific ‘ful-
fillment’ raises new ‘questions’; it asks to be ‘surpassed’ and outdated.” Max Weber, “Science
as a Vocation” [1919], in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. Hans H. Gerth and C.
Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 137f. (original emphasis).
73. See Franz Eulenburg, “Gesellschaft und Natur: Akademische Antrittsrede” [Society
and nature: An inaugural lecture], Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 21 (1905):
537.
74. Oscar Hertwig, Die Lehre vom Organismus und ihre Beziehung zur Sozialwissenschaft:
Universitätsfestrede mit erklärenden Zusätzen und Litteraturnachweisen [The doctrine of the
organism and its relation to social science: A commemorative speech with explanatory ad-
denda and references] (Jena: Fischer, 1899), 18f. Hertwig does not deviate from these ideas
his whole life. See Oscar Hertwig, Der Staat als Organismus: Gedanken zur Entwicklung
der Menschheit [The state as organism: Thoughts on the development of mankind] (Jena:
Fischer, 1922), 5–8, 45f., 48f., 85–96, 108–117.

68 contributions to the history of concepts

 From Organisms to World Society

mations to which Hertwig ascribes greater complexity and greater potential

for error.75
The fundamental unity of the world is likewise a central premise for the
German economic and social scientist Franz Eulenburg. Akin to sociologist
and philosopher Georg Simmel (1858–1918)—a discussion of whom would
exceed the scope of this article—Eulenburg sees pragmatic intentions as the
basis of scientific activity, since “[a]ll distinctions of science [are] clearly ar-
tificial and carried out by humanity in order to master practical tasks.”76 To
Eulenburg, science operates in a manner that is highly selective. He pursues
a program of methodologizing scientific knowledge as envisioned by leading
natural scientists. On the one hand, “‘reality’ must always be more complete,
more versatile, and more different than the random observations of a particu-
lar science”; thus, reality itself becomes an increasingly problematic idea.77 On
the other hand, any kind of science or claim to knowledge can only be justi-
fied in “a conventional assessment”; it must “never start from the foundations
… but as if it were somewhere in the air.” Here Eulenburg knows that he is
in concurrence with the “newer forms of logic of [Giuseppe] Peano, [Charles
S.] Pierce, [and Gottlob] Frege,” with “non-Euclidean geometry”, and with the
“discussion of mechanics and energetics”.78 Like the Harvard physiologist Law-
rence J. Henderson, Eulenburg dares to take the bull by the horns, progressing
toward a constructivist philosophy of science.79 Henderson characterizes laws
of nature as a “product of the human reason … not conceived by science to

75. Hertwig, Die Lehre vom Organismus, 20f., 28n20, 29n21; Oscar Hertwig, “Das Le-
ben der Zellen im Zellenstaat, verglichen mit Vorgängen im Organismus der menschlichen
Gesellschaft” [The life of cells in the cell state, compared with processes in the organism of
human society], Deutsche Revue 28 (1903): 203–210; Hertwig, Der Staat als Organismus,
47–70.
76. Eulenburg, “Gesellschaft und Natur,” 524.
77. Ibid., 527.
78. Franz Eulenburg, “Naturgesetze und Soziale Gesetze: Logische Untersuchungen, Ers-
ter Artikel” [Laws of nature and laws of society: Logical investigations, first article], Archiv
für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 31 (1910): 712. The Austrian Marxist philosopher
and sociologist Otto Neurath (1882–1945) came to similar conclusions a few years later. See
Nancy Cartwright et al., Otto Neurath: Philosophy between Science and Politics (Cambridge:
Cambrige University Press, 1996), 89, 91f.
79. Eulenburg, “Naturgesetze und Soziale Gesetze,” 742. See also ibid., 725ff., 772–778.
Eulenburg shares a lot of epistemological sentiments with authors like the Austrian phy-
sicists Ernst Mach (1838–1916), Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906), or Franz Serafin Exner
(1849–1926), who are currently being discussed in the history of physics using the umbrella
term “Vienna Indeterminism”. See Michael Stöltzner, “Vienna Indeterminism: Mach, Boltz-
mann, Exner,” Synthese 119, nos. 1–2 (1999): 85–111; Deborah R. Coen, Vienna in the Age
of Uncertainty: Science, Liberalism, and Private Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2007).

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Julian Bauer

have objective existence in nature.”80 His fundamental doubts result in two in-
terlinked consequences: the first blurs the distinction between fact and fiction
and because of this the second suggests to eliminate one’s nagging doubts by
taking a bold leap into the pure construction of theories.81 Henderson chooses
this path, making use of familiar instruments: extreme abstraction and reduc-
tion combined with great courage to engage in generalization, speculation,
and a correspondingly broad concept of system as a transmission belt for the-
oretical work.
In summary, by examining organism as a boundary object linked with an
analysis of adjoining semantic fields, it is possible to gain a plethora of new
insights into an integrated history of the natural and the human sciences since
the late nineteenth century. Special emphasis should be put on five points.
First, one can adhere to the notion that world society, as a concept of social the-
ory, real historical phenomenon, and evolutionary claim, has a longer history
than is widely believed.82
Second, current approaches in social science that concentrate on com-
munication and media of communication are not solely an achievement of
the post–World War II era, but instead—despite all strategic invisibilization—
carry forward traditions of organicist sociology from the late nineteenth cen-
tury.83 “The de-ontologization of reality” (Niklas Luhmann) in the history of
social theory has its moorings in the works of Greef and Schäffle.

80. Lawrence J. Henderson, The Order of Nature: An Essay (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1917), 200.
81. See Lawrence J. Henderson, “An Approximate Definition of Fact” [1932], in On the
Social System: Selected Writings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 159–180, esp.
160, 167n7; Ludwig Boltzmann, “Über die Bedeutung von Theorien” [On the meaning of
theories] [1890], in Populäre Schriften [Popular writings] (Leipzig: Barth, 1905), 80.
82. Luhmann himself points to this result in a circumspect way (see Luhmann, “Die
Weltgesellschaft,” 75, 86n37). Most of his interpreters have not noticed it and tend to start
their analyses of the history of world society in the 1970s. See, inter alia, Stichweh, Die
Weltgesellschaft, 7–30; Hartmann Tyrell, “Singular oder Plural–Einleitende Bemerkungen
zu Globalisierung und Weltgesellschaft” [Singular or plural? Introductory remarks on Glo-
balization and World Society], in Weltgesellschaft: Theoretische Zugänge und empirische Pro-
blemlagen [World society: Theoretical approaches and empirical problems], Bettina Heintz,
Richard Münch, and Hartmann Tyrell, eds. (Stuttgart: Lucius & Lucius, 2005), 6ff.; Stich-
weh, Weltgesellschaft; Greve and Heintz, “Die ‘Entdeckung’ der Weltgesellschaft”.
83. This point applies to both Luhmann’s version and Parsons’s version of systems theory.
See, for example, Talcott Parsons, The Social System (New York: Free Press, 1951); Harald
Wenzel, “Social Order as Communication: Parsons’s Theory on the Move from Moral Con-
sensus to Trust,” in After Parsons: A Theory of Social Action for the Twenty-First Century,
Renée C. Fox, Victor M. Lidz, and Harold J. Bershady, eds. (New York: Russell Sage Founda-
tion, 2005), 66–82. Horst Baier’s evaluation of Luhmann’s relationship with Arnold Gehlen
forcefully insists upon a strategic dimension of Luhmann’s work: Horst Baier, “Die Geburt
der Systeme aus dem Geist der Institutionen: Arnold Gehlen und Niklas Luhmann in der

70 contributions to the history of concepts

 From Organisms to World Society

Third, on a methodological level, a continuum is uncovered between life

and social sciences. Diachronically speaking, there is an unbroken tradition
of functionalist interpretations of humanity and nature. At the same time this
“special relationship” (Hartmann Tyrell) has been continuously nurtured by
social and natural scientists from the late nineteenth until the mid-twentieth
century.84
Fourth, Carl Murchison’s prognosis in 1935 that “the concept of system is
destined to become the nucleus of much of the social theory of the immediate
future”85 was neither audacious nor surprising from the vantage point of his-
torical semantics. He simply proposed a perspective that had numerous con-
nections to social theory’s past, while also interfacing with advanced positions
in epistemology at that time.
Fifth and finally, all theorists work with ambivalences and paradoxes.
Self-reflection and autologisms are pervasive. Whether it is Schäffle’s imma-
nent, autopoietic justification of social life, Greef ’s paradox-filled reflections
on the boundary as the fundamental concept of differentiation theory, or Hen-
derson’s self-encompassing constructivism, all these thinkers share modernist
traits, blurring the threshold between reality and theory, between the knowl-
edge of fact and fiction.86
The loosely coupled network of organismic concepts comprising terms
like cell, communication, differentiation, environment, evolution, function,
interaction, organism, society, system, and, in a way its ultimate theoretical
point of reference, global or world society exhibits an astounding resilience

Genealogie der ‘Leipziger Schule’” [Conceptualizing systems in the spirit of institutions:

Arnold Gehlen’s and Niklas Luhmann’s role in the genealogy of the “Leipzig School”], in
Zur geisteswissenschaftlichen Bedeutung Arnold Gehlens: Vorträge und Diskussionsbeiträge
des Sonderseminars 1989 der Hochschule für Verwaltungswissenschaften Speyer [The signifi-
cance of Arnold Gehlen for the humanities: Lectures and discussions of the special seminar
1989 at the German University for Administrative Sciences, Speyer], Helmut Klages and
Helmut Quaritsch, eds. (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1994), 69–74, 75–88 (“Aussprache zu
dem Referat von Horst Baier” [Debate on Horst Baier’s presentation]), esp. 84.
84. Tyrell, “Zur Diversität der Differenzierungstheorie,” 124. Dankmar Ambros was one
of the first scientists who emphasized this long tradition of sociology. See Ambros, “Über
Wesen und Formen organischer Gesellschaftsauffassung,” 31f.
85. Carl Murchison, “Pareto and Experimental Social Psychology,” Journal of Social Phi-
losophy 1, no. 1 (1935): 59 (original emphasis).
86. See N. Katherine Hayles, The Cosmic Web: Scientific Field Models and Literary Strate-
gies in the Twentieth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984); Gerhard Plumpe,
Epochen moderner Literatur: Ein systemtheoretischer Entwurf [Epochs of modern literature:
An outline according to systems theory] (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1995), 138–230;
Gillian Beer, Open Fields: Science in Cultural Encounter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996),
149–215, 295–318; Michael H. Whitworth, Einstein’s Wake: Relativity, Metaphor, and Mo-
dernist Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

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Julian Bauer

and longevity across authors, disciplines, countries, and centuries. This web
of meaning starts to take shape only by combining conceptual history with
the procedural, antiessentialist method of analyzing organisms as boundary
objects. The enduring and resilient power of this malleable, wide-meshed
tradition is very much akin to Mark Granovetter’s famous theorem of the
“strength of weak ties.” He stated “that whatever is to be diffused can reach a
larger number of people, and traverse greater social [and temporal] distance
… when passed through weak ties rather than strong.”87 Taken together with
Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s perspective on epistemic things and their necessarily
indefinite concatenation of material and conceptual components,88 this clearly
goes a long way toward explaining how a boundary object such as organism
and its accompanying semantic fields become forceful and productive over
time, socially as well as epistemically.

87. Mark Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” The American Journal of Sociology
78, no. 6 (1973): 1366. See also Mark Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network
Theory Revisited,” Sociological Theory 1 (1983): 214–220.
88. See Rheinberger, Experiment, Differenz, Schrift; Rheinberger, History of Epistemic
Things.

72 contributions to the history of concepts