Page 198 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

175 Historical Materialism

tion, as well as the logic of development of these structures. An
elucidation of the learning abilities specific to object domains has
to precede the analysis of complexity.
This can be seen, for example, in the use of the systems-
theoretic concept of communication media. The fundamental
medium is evidently language. The fixation of speech in writing
was an evolutionarily significant step. Another was the differ-
entiation of subsystems established through special media: the
political system through law, the economic system through money,
the scientific system through truth, and so on.** Functional analy-
sis can only show here that such innovations increase the com-
plexity of society; it does not explain how the development of
communication media on the basis of language is structurally
possible; just as little does it explain why specific media are in-
troduced in a given form of social integration. I cannot so much
as indicate here how a theory of communication might derive the
various media from basic structures of speaking and acting; but I
would like at least to point out one consequence.
Only if we succeed in ordering a series of organizational
principles according to a developmental logic and in specifying
corresponding stages of social evolution, can the analysis of com-
plexity find its proper place. It would then serve to explain the
Special evolution that societies undergo in adapting to ecological
conditions and historical circumstances. If we could not supple-
ment genetic-structuralist research into general evolution with a
functionalistically oriented examination of special evolutions, the
sociocultural morphology of individual societies would neces-
sarily escape the theory of evolution.

4. At the conclusion of our reflections I would like to return
again to the normative implications which every theory of devel-
opment has; even the theory of natural evolution has to provide
a directional criterion that makes it possible to assess morpho-
logical properties and reaction capabilities. The choice of this
criterion appears to be less problematic in the case of natural
evolution only because we can fall back on the basic value of
‘survival’ (or ‘‘health’’). Organic life is so synonymous with the
reproduction of this life that we attribute the normative distinc-