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Recent developments in general system theory

Manfred Drack [1] * and Gregor Schwarz [2]

[1] Department of Theoretical Biology, University of Vienna, Althanstrasse 14, 1090 Wien, Austria Systems Biology and Bioinformatics Group, University of Rostock, Uhnenstrafle 69, 18057 Rostock, Germany

[2] Club of Vienna, Rilkeplatz 2, 1040 Wien, Austria

* Correspondence to: Manfred Drack, Department of Theoretical Biology, University of Vienna, Althanstratsse 14, 1090 Wien, Austria. E-mail: manfred.drack@univie.ac.at

DOI: 10.1002/sres.1013

INTRODUCTION

General system theory (GST) was introduced in 1949 by Ludwig von Bertalanffy in a German language journal (Bertalanffy, 1949), although he had already presented the field's outlines in 1937 at a talk at the University of Chicago (Bertalanffy, 1969, p. 90). In 1945 the first paper on the topic should have appeared but remained unpublished (Bertalanffy, 1945). The galley proof version, however, is available at the archive of the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (BCSSS) (Bertalanffy Papers). The reception of Bertalanffy's system thinking reached a peak in the two decades before his death in 1972. Together with Kenneth E. Boulding, Ralph W. Gerard, James G. Miller and Anatol Rapoport he founded the Society for General Systems Research (SGSR) as an affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (for details see Hammond, 2003). The society's name was changed in 1988 to the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS), which dropped General and replaced Research with Science. The list of members, as shown in the society's yearbooks –the first volume was Bertalanffy and Rapoport (1956) – reflects an ever increasing number of society members. A period of increasing interest in the 'theory' –Pouvreau and Drack (2007) argue that general systemology would be a more appropriate name – was followed by a period of declining interest. Nevertheless, GST and its founders are still referenced to a certain degree today. This referencing raises the question of whether current interests are in line with those of earlier days. Here, we deal primarily with Bertalanffy's thinking about GST and further developments. Our purpose is to determine whether progress has been made with regard to his GST program.

Clearly, the full range of thought about systems cannot be covered by one article. We therefore focused on peer-reviewed articles that have appeared in the 'scientific world'. To investigate current notions of GST, its appearance in those articles serves as an instrument and indicator for discerning how GST has been developed further. First, we present a timeline on the number of relevant articles published in the last three decades. Next, we relate our more detailed investigation of articles to GST references relevant to science and philosophy out of 161 articles appearing from 1995 to 2006. Many of the articles deal with applications of GST in areas such as engineering and management, which we do not discuss. Rather, the present paper concentrates on contributions in the areas of science and philosophy in terms of critiques, further developments, potential restrictions of GST and the associated world view. A guiding question for the investigation was whether Bertalanffy's GST program was developed further. As to the founder's intention regarding the program, we investigated the recent authors' contributions, critiques and awareness of the underlying thoughts. We point out further developments that are in line with the original attempts. Contradictions compared to the original program are also pointed out. Finally, we attempted to determine whether GST had come any closer to the goal of a unified research program.




Date: 2015-01-11; view: 791


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