La teoria de sistemas

   LUDWING VON BERTALANFFY (1901- 1972)

  
  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"The whole is more that the sum of its parts" is simply that constitutive characteristics are not explanable from the characteristics of the isolated parts. " 
L. v. Bertalanffy

 

 

 "It is necessary to continue trying to ascend the mountain of ultimate unity, no matter whether each time it ends in another failure because it can be claimed that there is a triumph in the trying.
This is one of the features of the human species."
L. v. Bertalanffy

 

 

Ludwig von Bertalanffy was born in a little village near Vienna on September 19, 1901. In 1918 he started his studies with history of art and philosophy, firstly at the University of Innsbruck and then at the University  of Vienna where he became a pupil of the philosophers Robert Reininger and Moritz Schlick, one of the founders of the Viennese Circle. He finished his PhD with a thesis on the German physicist and philosopher Gustav Theodor Fechner in 1926, and published his first book on theoretical biology two years later (Modern Theories of Development). He was one of the most important theoretical biologists of the first half of this century; researched on comparative physiology, on biophysics, on cancer, on psychology, on philosophy of science. Developed a kinetic theory of stationary open systems and the General System Theory, was one of the founding fathers and vice-president of the Society for General System Theory, and one of the first who applied the system methodology to psychology and the social sciences.  He published over 200 articles on theoretical biology and General System Theory in journals, among others in Roux' Archiv für Entwicklungsmechanik, Nature, Science, American Naturalist, Quarterly Review of Biology, Philosophy of Science, in books and encyclopedies, wrote over 10 monographies, edited the Handbuch der Biologie , and was translated into English, French, Spanish, Swedish, Japanese, Dutch. 

Su obra: La teoría de sistemas It was the right time in the 1920s but it still required a large amount of courage and even a lot more of creativity for building the "Theoretische Biologie" which became later the "organismic biology" or "the system theory of the organism": a significant contribution towards the scientific development of biology, based on the need of discovering and understanding the laws that govern the biological organization. It was the very first step towards the General System Theory that Bertalanffy conceived as a culmination of his general systems insights into biological, behavioral, social and epistemological domains, while fighting specifically against the reductionist approaches and the mechanist interpretations that dehumanize human beings through robotomorphism, zoomorphism, scientism and other narrow-minded and shortsighted assumptions that have been used extensively by people without realizing that it is impossible and improper to simplify the complexity inherent to whatever human concern. Anyhow the organismic biology still has a long way to go because the biology establishment continue assigning grants and other rewards oriented toward the mechanistic approach, while many biological experimentalists cannot even conceive of approaching biological questions in other way than the reductionist one, as they are under the fascinating influence of the technological tools that obstruct them to see life biologically. Cybernetics and Systems Science (also: "(General) Systems Theory" or "Systems Research") constitute a somewhat fuzzily defined academic domain, that touches virtually all traditional disciplines, from mathematics, technology and biology to philosophy and the social sciences. It is more specifically related to the recently developing "sciences of complexity", including AI, neural networks, dynamical systems, chaos, and complex adaptive systems.  Systems theory or systems science argues that however complex or diverse the world that we experience, we will always find different types of organization in it, and such organization can be described by concepts and principles which are independent from the specific domain at which we are looking. Hence, if we would uncover those general laws, we would be able to analyse and solve problems in any domain, pertaining to any type of system. The systems approach distinguishes itself from the more traditional analytic approach by emphasizing the interactions and connecteness of the different components of a system. Although the systems approach in principle considers all types of systems, it in practices focuses on the more complex, adaptive, self-regulating systems which we might call "cybernetic".
  • Mas sobre su obra
http://www.bertalanffy.org/  (Página sobre el centenario de su nacimiento, obras, reflexiones, )
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/CSTHINK.html (Lista de otros teóricos -incluyendo von Bertalanffy- con links e información sobre la teoría de sistemas).
http://www.psy.pdx.edu/PsiCafe/KeyTheorists/vonBertalanffy.htm (Aplicación a casos prácticos de algunos de sus conceptos)
http://www.sustainablefutures.net/  (Página sobre futuros sostenibles una  aplicación del concepto de sistemas complejos)
http://www.sustainablefutures.net/resilience/systems/ (Breve explicación de la teoría de sistemas)

 

 
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