Kinds of Observers and Types of Distinctions

Abstract

Who or what is an observer? An observer is anyone or anything to whom or which something matters and makes a difference. Observers need not be persons, though one can attribute observations to them, as in authorship and reputation (Luhmann 1997: 69). But an immune system is an observer as well, for example, since it distinguishes between harmless and harmful invaders of an organism. This distinction is the only one that matters to an immune system. It makes no other distinctions, and so cannot register anything that falls outside of the difference harmful/harmless. When it can draw this distinction no more, the immune system collapses and the organism dies. Organizations are observers as well; they continually gather observations about themselves and aggregate them into standard indices of performance. Organizations observe themselves and the other organizations in their niche, comparing themselves to each other, and ranking themselves into a stratified order.

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