Niklas Luhmann.

The article presents information of Niklas Luhmann, Professor Emeritus at the University of Bielefeld, Germany and his contribution towards the field of sociology. Luhmann died at the age of 70, due to Cancer. Luhmann was trained as a lawyer but came to sociology relatively late. As compared to Europe, Luhmann's recognisation lagged behind his status in the U.S. No one has developed a more ambitious and general theory of society than Luhmann. At the core is a theory of social systems, understood as recursive networks of communication and observation. Social systems include interactions, organizations, and society itself. Interactions are based on co-presence; organizations on membership; and society includes all communication. Outside of society, there is no communication. Communication latches on to previous communication, not to the world "as it is." At the same time, communication is an empirical event that happens in the world, so that there is no view from nowhere. Action gives way to communication as sociology's central category. Events come and go; they can never be repeated. Therefore, a central problem is communicative coupling, or how communication is possible at all, given that minds are closed to other minds and have no way of directly experiencing what others experience.