SOCIO-TERRAN OBSERVATIONS: TOWARDS A SYSTEMS THEORY OF ENVIRONMENTAL RISK COMMUNICATION

Abstract

This essay proposes the concept of ‘socio-terran observation’ — grounded in General Social Systems Theory (GSST) and second-order cybernetics — to articulate society, humanity, and nature as co-evolutionary, operationally closed systems. Starting from the concept of observation — the distinction/indication that grounds knowing, according to Spencer-Brown, von Foerster, and the biology of cognition of Maturana and Varela — the text distinguishes between ‘terran’ observations (human, first-order) and ‘socio-terran’ observations (social, second-order, reflexive). It proceeds with a Luhmannian evolutionary reading: in segmentary societies, socio-terran observations are linked to territory and accumulated experience — transmitted through oral and ritualized traditions — with relatively low environmental resonance; in stratified societies, they are distributed across classes — with the upper classes observing nature primarily as a resource for power and wealth, and the lower classes dealing directly with agricultural and technical labor — thereby increasing risks through tighter technological couplings, such as irrigation systems and large-scale plantations; and in modern, functionally differentiated society, these observations multiply across systems and organizations, intensifying socio-environmental resonance and risks while complicating decision-making consensus. The final section explores the concept’s analytical implications — namely, the asymmetry between human and social observations of nature, the naturalization/artificialization of the landscape, decision-making fragmentation among functional systems (economy, politics, science), and the roles of ecological communication and artificial intelligence — concluding with an entropic reflection on finitude and observational dignity in the face of environmental collapse.