Postmodernity

Jean-François Lyotard:
  Science [...] is a language game with the following rules:
  1 Only denotative (descriptive) statements are scientific.
  [...]
  4 A scientific statement only exists within a series of statements
  which are validated by argument and by proof.
  5 In light of (4), the scientific game requires a knowledge of the
  existing state of scientific knowledge.

  [T]he equation: the greater the knowledge, the greater the power
  over the system, is, for the system theorist, irrefutable.
  By contrast, Lyotard shows that systems theory is located within a
  modernist epistemology. For within the very terms of the system as
  performativity, control through knowledge lowers its performance,
  since uncertainty increases rather than decreases with knowledge
  (cf. Heisenberg).