social system

In cybernetics, a system involving its observers. Such a system is constituted (see constitution ) by communication among observers who participate within that system by drawing distinctions and creating relations within it (see analysis, second-order cybernetics ). This contrasts sharply with the use of the same term in the structural-functional school of sociology, where it denotes a pattern of social acts in pursuit of individual and collective goals and governed by the need of the "social system" to maintain its own structure. (Krippendorff )