365
a simple opposition between alternatives of where the truth might dwell, but as
functional positions within the same social system. No historiographical operation,
not even one intended for the ‘history of science’, could be achieved if it is detached
from a theory of society (Luhmann 1990), because documentation is always a contextualized documentation, produced by a society, not by single actors, in a given
age. The problem is often that the description of the society, and therefore also the
historiography that the same produces, focuses on categories that come from the
classic European tradition, generated and outfitted by the eighteenth-century
Enlightenment. Being made in an era of reduced complexity, these categories do not
respond to the needs and urgencies of a social system as ours, which is enormously
specialized and differentiated.
This research approach starts from a theory of differentiation which considers
the documentation as a communication of a given social system, rather than of an
individual.
1
This starting point assumes that society is created by information and
not by individuals, which is why the goal is to observe communication. More
deeply, the research project intends to perform an observation of this communication, in essence, a second-order observation. From this, it should be possible to
locate latencies that contemporaries were unable to observe.
A careful selection of documentation may help to describe the social system with
which the individual, Angelo Secchi, interacted. That society was evolving from a
society based on a hierarchical differentiation towards a society where the primary
differentiation became functional. In this kind of social system, several subsystems
interact – science, law, art and religion – and they refer to the society only through
their function in relation to it.
The individual, in principle, is included in all these subsystems, but one’s interaction (and communication) depends on the specific features of each one of them.
This process is called ‘structural combination’. For instance, what works in the
religion system may not work in the science system (nor that of science in the religious or moral systems), because the binary choice from which its demarcation
(operational closure) is carried out is different. In the religion system, it is transcendence/immanence, while, as has already been said, in the science system, it is
true/false.
Secchi’s documentation is particularly interesting because it was produced at a
time when, within the general shift from a hierarchical social system to a functional
one, the traits of the science and religion systems were also taking form. Since the
structure of the system was changing, the communication structure (i.e. the ‘semantics’) also changed. These changes may be observed within Secchi’s documentation
and so this also is the goal of the project presented below.
1 The difference between the individual and the person is that the former is intended as a psychic
system and as such can’t be observed; the person is instead the social role of an individual that can
be observed through its communications and interactions with the social system.
21 GATE (Gregorian Archives Texts Editing): An Online Resource of Angelo Secchi…
a simple opposition between alternatives of where the truth might dwell, but as
functional positions within the same social system. No historiographical operation,
not even one intended for the ‘history of science’, could be achieved if it is detached
from a theory of society (Luhmann 1990), because documentation is always a contextualized documentation, produced by a society, not by single actors, in a given
age. The problem is often that the description of the society, and therefore also the
historiography that the same produces, focuses on categories that come from the
classic European tradition, generated and outfitted by the eighteenth-century
Enlightenment. Being made in an era of reduced complexity, these categories do not
respond to the needs and urgencies of a social system as ours, which is enormously
specialized and differentiated.
This research approach starts from a theory of differentiation which considers
the documentation as a communication of a given social system, rather than of an
individual.
1
This starting point assumes that society is created by information and
not by individuals, which is why the goal is to observe communication. More
deeply, the research project intends to perform an observation of this communication, in essence, a second-order observation. From this, it should be possible to
locate latencies that contemporaries were unable to observe.
A careful selection of documentation may help to describe the social system with
which the individual, Angelo Secchi, interacted. That society was evolving from a
society based on a hierarchical differentiation towards a society where the primary
differentiation became functional. In this kind of social system, several subsystems
interact – science, law, art and religion – and they refer to the society only through
their function in relation to it.
The individual, in principle, is included in all these subsystems, but one’s interaction (and communication) depends on the specific features of each one of them.
This process is called ‘structural combination’. For instance, what works in the
religion system may not work in the science system (nor that of science in the religious or moral systems), because the binary choice from which its demarcation
(operational closure) is carried out is different. In the religion system, it is transcendence/immanence, while, as has already been said, in the science system, it is
true/false.
Secchi’s documentation is particularly interesting because it was produced at a
time when, within the general shift from a hierarchical social system to a functional
one, the traits of the science and religion systems were also taking form. Since the
structure of the system was changing, the communication structure (i.e. the ‘semantics’) also changed. These changes may be observed within Secchi’s documentation
and so this also is the goal of the project presented below.
1 The difference between the individual and the person is that the former is intended as a psychic
system and as such can’t be observed; the person is instead the social role of an individual that can
be observed through its communications and interactions with the social system.
21 GATE (Gregorian Archives Texts Editing): An Online Resource of Angelo Secchi…