Ludwig von Bertalanffy - Collected Quotes

“Since the fundamental character of the living thing is its organization, the customary investigation of the single parts and processes cannot provide a complete explanation of the vital phenomena. This investigation gives us no information about the coordination of parts and processes. Thus, the chief task of biology must be to discover the laws of biological systems (at all levels of organization). We believe that the attempts to find a foundation for theoretical biology point at a fundamental change in the world picture. This view, considered as a method of investigation, we shall call ‘organismic biology’ and, as an attempt at an explanation, ‘the system theory of the organism’” (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, “Kritische Theorie der Formbildung”, 1928)

"Every organism represents a system, by which term we mean a complex of elements in mutual interaction. From this obvious statement the limitations of the analytical and summative conceptions must follow. First, it is impossible to resolve the phenomena of life completely into elementary units; for each individual part and each individual event depends not only on conditions within itself, but also to a greater or lesser extent on the conditions within the whole, or within superordinate units of which it is a part. Hence the behavior of an isolated part is, in general, different from its behavior within the context of the whole… Secondly, the actual whole shows properties that are absent from its isolated parts." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "Problems of Life", 1952)

"The evolution of science is not a movement in an intellectual vacuum; rather it is both an expression and a driving force of the historical process." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "Problems of Life: An Evaluation of Modern Biological Thought", 1952)

"Higher, directed forms of energy (e.g., mechanical, electric, chemical) are dissipated, that is, progressively converted into the lowest form of energy, i.e., undirected heat movement of molecules; chemical systems tend toward equilibria with maximum entropy; machines wear out owing to friction; in communication channels, information can only be lost by conversion of messages into noise but not vice versa, and so forth." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "Robots, Men and Minds", 1967)

"It is necessary to study not only parts and processes in isolation, but also to solve the decisive problems found in organization and order unifying them, resulting from dynamic interaction of parts, and making the behavoir of the parts different when studied in isolation or within the whole." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications", 1968)

"Now we are looking for another basic outlook on the world - the world as organization. Such a conception - if it can be substantiated - would indeed change the basic categories upon which scientific thought rests, and profoundly influence practical attitudes. This trend is marked by the emergence of a bundle of new disciplines such as cybernetics, information theory, general system theory, theories of games, of decisions, of queuing and others; in practical applications, systems analysis, systems engineering, operations research, etc. They are different in basic assumptions, mathematical techniques and aims, and they are often unsatisfactory and sometimes contradictory. They agree, however, in being concerned, in one way or another, with ‘systems’, ‘wholes’ or ‘organizations’; and in their totality, they herald a new approach." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "General System Theory", 1968)

"Progress is only possible by passing from a state of undifferentiated wholeness to differentiation of parts." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "General System Theory", 1968)

"System' is the concept that refers both to a complex of interdependencies between parts, components, and processes, that involves discernible regularities of relationships, and to a similar type of interdependency between such a complex and its surrounding environment." (Talcott Parsons, "Systems Analysis: Social Systems", 1968)

"The properties and modes of action of higher levels are not explicable by the summation of the properties and modes of action of their components taken in isolation. If, however, we know the ensemble of the components and the relations existing between them, then the higher levels are derivable from the components." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications", 1968)

"The system problem is essentially the problem of the limitation of analytical procedures in science. This used to be expressed by half-metaphysical statements, such as emergent evolution or ‘the whole is more than the sum of its parts,’ but has a clear operational meaning." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "General System Theory", 1968)

"Thus, there exist models, principles, and laws that apply to generalized systems or their subclasses, irrespective of their particular kind, the nature of their component elements, and the relations or "forces" between them. It seems legitimate to ask for a theory, not of systems of a more or less special kind, but of universal principles applying to systems in general. In this way we postulate a new discipline called General System Theory. Its subject matter is the formulation and derivation of those principles which are valid for ‘systems’ in general." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, „General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications", 1968)

"Today our main problem is that of organized complexity. Concepts like those of organization, wholeness, directiveness, teleology, control, self-regulation, differentiation and the like are alien to conventional physics. However, they pop up everywhere in the biological, behavioural and social sciences, and are, in fact, indispensable for dealing with living organisms or social groups. Thus, a basic problem posed to modern science is a general theory of organization." (Ludwig von Bertalanff, "General System Theory" , 1968)

"We completely agree that description by differential equations is not only a clumsy but, in principle, inadequate way to deal with many problems of organization." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, „General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications", 1968)

"While we can conceive of a sum [or aggregate] as being composed gradually, a system as a total of parts with its [multiplicative] interrelations has to be conceived of as being composed instantly." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "General System Theory", 1968)

"You cannot sum up the behavior of the whole from the isolated parts, and you have to take into account the relations between the various subordinate systems which are super-ordinated to them in order to understand the behavior of the parts." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "General System Theory", 1968)

"The characteristic of the organism is first that it is more than the sum of its parts and second that the single processes are ordered for the maintenance of the whole." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy)

"What in the whole denotes a causal equilibrium process, appears for the part as a teleological event." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy)