The “meeting” with I. Ungureanu’s Book. Paradigms for the knowledge of society

In the series of meetings in which we discussed the book of Ion Ungureanu, Paradigms for the knowledge of society, the 15th meeting brought into question the law of the cybernetic hierarchy of American sociologist Talcott Parsons. In Parsons’ conception, every society is structured into four subsystems: economic, political, community and socializing. According to the cybernetic hierarchy law, “the richest parts in energy have the lowest volume of information and are factors of action conditioning, while the richest parts in information are poor in energy but have the role of action control factors”. This hierarchy between the subsystems of society is cybernetic in the sense that the relationship from the economic subsystem to the political, community and socializing (cultural) subsystems is permanently accompanied by an inverse control relationship, whereby social integration, achievement of goals and adaptation, their exchange instruments (money, power, influence) and the community, political and economic systems themselves are determined by the socializing subsystem.