Sociology has long sought to find out how acting in a situation and
observing that situation may differ and nevertheless belong to a single
kind of social operation. George Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form (1969)
provides one way to conceive of such an operation. The present book is
the first to make sociological use of his mathematical calculus of form,
which has been extensively applied to cybernetics, systems theory,
cognitive science, and mathematics.
Spencer-Brown's theory states that any action or communication is always
an operation that makes a distinction. Not only does this operation take
place, but it can be observed as indicating what it is interested in,
and as leaving unmarked what it is not. Distinctions thereby entail a
logic of inclusion and exclusion that is subject to social debate and
conflict. In social situations there is no action that does not at the
same time execute, maintain, or cross a distinction.
Thus the observer is part of the situation he or she observes. The
essays in this volume use this idea to describe different social "forms"
as consisting of action observed by further action. A "form" here is
understood to be the two sides of a distinction and its dividing line,
taken together. All social action, therefore, consists of three values:
marked side, unmarked side, and an operation separating the two. If one
watches the third value, one ends up observing the observer drawing the
distinction--an observer who, of course, may be oneself.
In this collection, more general essays study the consequences of such
an understanding of form for our conceptions of literature, paradox,
sign, play, and language. Other essays focus on the observations
necessary to construct such forms as money, the university, the state, a
career, or sickness. All the essays share an interest in problems
ensuing from the fact that though one can observe the form of a
distinction and become aware of its arbitrary, contingent, and
discriminatory nature, one nevertheless, when trying to act or
communicate, must choose a distinction. The essays show how social
situations deftly veil the arbitrariness of the distinctions that
constitute their forms.
