Abstract
The present article considers the economization of society a hypothesis rather than a fact. The hypothesis is tested against the results of a Google ngram viewer analysis of the most frequent function system references in the Google Books corpus for the years 1800-2000. Despite the remarkable growth figures in the English, French, and German language corpora as related to economic word frequency shares, the results suggest the rejection of the economization hypothesis. In fact, the growth trends of economic word frequencies are stopped in all of the three language areas, in none of which the economy ever reached a dominant position throughout the entire 200 years. The results give reason to assume that the idea of an economized society is an intellectual artifact rather than a fact. This fact is emphasized not to prove the marginal relevance of research in economic risks and benefits, but rather in terms of a suggestion to consider re-focusing research foci and drawing increased attention to function systems beyond the politico-economic double stars of social science. Maybe even the solution to the present economic crises is not in more, but rather in less attention to the economy.
Highlights
T he distinction between autonomous function systems is considered a core concept of modern societies
The most important definitions and criticisms of modern society are based on functional differentiation, since all discussion on capitalist or economized societies implicitly refer to an underlying distinction and ranking of function systems
Our analysis of the English, French, and German language sets of the largest available text corpus does not corroborate the perhaps most prominent state description and trend prediction related to functional differentiation
Summary
T he distinction between autonomous function systems is considered a core concept of modern societies. Functional differentiation makes the difference between truth and money, hospitals and banks, and between a political and a clerical economy. The most important definitions and criticisms of modern society are based on functional differentiation, since all discussion on capitalist or economized societies implicitly refer to an underlying distinction and ranking of function systems. This idea, is not understood without ambiguity. We assume that it is not despite, but because of their basic equivalence that function systems can be ranked at all.[1]
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