Abstract
In the older conception of social evolution, the view prevailed that social development is the inevitable process of change associated with the concept of civilizational growth, social progress, humanity's increase, and so on. In one modern strand of evolutionary theory such a position is queried and abandoned.
Niklas Luhmann understands social evolution as a process of socio-cultural differentiation. Increasing complexity awakens orientational uncertainty, against which pre-modern societies sought support from the past and tradition using history as their magistra vitae (teacher of life).
In modern society, however, the range of possible futures cannot adequately be derived from history, and history has lost its model character. Inwardly orientated systemic history has become insufficient, and attention has shifted to the future, to social planning, which - according to Luhmann - represents an effort to"de-futurize" the future.
The increasing unlikelihood of anticipating this future arises from the constantly accelerating complexity of a planless world.
