Contingency Alert Editorial Note on Necessary and Impossible Media

摘要

The concept of contingency is essential to cybernetics and systems research. "Anything is contingent that is neither necessary nor impossible" (Luhmann, 1998, p. 45), and nothing is more natural for us second-order observers than our preoccupation with forms that neither must nor cannot be observed the way we are observing them. Contingency is the leading medium for our observational agility. If we shift our focus from forms to media or to form-media relationships, however, even the most modest attempts to observe anything (contingent) are complicated by the observation that observations of most forms are contingent on the presumption of necessary and impossible media. Unlike form, which has the ability to oscillate, a medium is nothing but the mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive complement of its form. Form is perfect continence (Spencer Brown, 1979, p. 1). All fascination and confusion caused by whatever medium, therefore, implies that we observe media in the plural and hence media as forms-and probably as forms that are structurally coupled with other forms. Obviously, however, the observation of form-form or form-media couplings does not allow for the same observational flexibility as the observation of forms. There are laws of media, and there are media effects. Observations of life forms imply the observation of water as a necessary medium of life; and observations of life forms within the medium of amber are as inaccurate as are non-intermediated observations of organizations within the medium of values (Roth, 2017); at least, as long as these observations are to remain within the medium of science.