An observation can be defined as both a distinction and an indication: something is distinguished, as an object or a subject, from something else and, through this distinction, it is indicated. For instance, the government can be distinguished through observation from its opposition, what is lawful can be distinguished from what is unlawful only through observations, and these observations, once made, allow for subsequent operations to make distinctions based on the distinctions government/ opposition and lawful/unlawful. Observations, then, are not vehicles but the very operations that constitute a system.

DEFINE: Defines observation as the dual act of distinction and indication — not merely a perceptual vehicle but a system-constituting operation.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 21