Florian Cramer (2001), 'On Literature and Systems Theory', lecture notes, from Tate Modern, April 8.

Systems Theory, as a broader category than Cybernetics, derives from the Aristotelean idea that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Florian Cramer gives this a particular focus in a very brief history. Firstly he cites the work of the biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy and his 'General Systems Theory' to describe any phenomena in terms of its organisational structure across the sciences and humanities (2001). Whereas closed systems are subject to entropy, Bertalanffy argues that open systems compensate for this tendency. In this way, and since closed systems did not really exist according to Bertalanffy, the theory is a positive one born of a humanist impulse. However, in the 1970s, biologists Humberto Muturana and Francisco Varela contended that partially closed systems do exist and associated with this 'autopoesis' (self-generation) in that living systems could be seen to be recursive or self-referential. Niklas Luhmann, is important in extending these ideas to the broader field of humanities, applying autopoesis to social systems and concluding that these systems perpetuate or reproduce themselves through this process. 

This is an ideological shift from the earlier thinking and a description of ideology in itself. It unfortunately leaves little scope for social change derived from human agency and has been criticised for its biological determinism, along with systems theory in general. However in general, through Luhmann it is possible to think of art and literature as social systems (rather like Bourdieu would call fields). These ideas lead Cramer to suggest that the notable exception to this might be artworks that are autopoetic in themselves. There are many examples from permutational poetry to software art. He likens autopoesis to infinite loops in computer programming and comments that systems theory offers a way of examining the properties of reflexivity at both at the level of object code and meta narrative (narrative recursion, such as in the work of Borges). In this connection he cites John Barth's 'The Literature of Exhaustion', concluding that code recursion is 'an exhausted mode of modernism exactly because [it places] recursion into the object code instead of the meta narrative' (2004).