Rationale for GST

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (LvB) (1901-1972) was an Austrian biologist and was one of the founders of General Systems Theory (GST) though such a theory has not yet been articulated.

“[LvB] observed that systemic processes recur isomorphically¹ across many disciplines. For instance, systems can be stabilized by means of feedback in the physical world (e.g. atmospheric pressure in weather systems), the biological world (e.g. homeostatic temperature regulation in mammals) and the social world (e.g. co-operation in family units). [LvB’s] suggestion was that these isomorphic processes reflect underlying laws applying to systems in general, which would therefore be applicable across all the disciplines.²“

(This struck me as similar to a natural transformation in Category Theory.)

What LvB did, in writing about GST³ was to “present an important secular paradigm shift because it introduces a new perspective and the means to devise tool for its implementation.⁴“

Tools

The tool that LvB mentions is the meta-level perspective. At the time when LvB was formulating the GST there were reconcilable differences between mechanism and vitalism. Mechanism is the belief that a system of causally interacting parts and processes can produce one or more effects. It’s reductionist in that by understanding chemical and physical interactions and reactions of the parts that compose a biological system the capabilities of the system can therefore be understood. Vitalisim is an idea that living organisms are differentiated from the non-living by the presence of forces, properties or powers including those which may not be physical or chemical⁵. Vitalism holds to the idea that there are unidentified supranatural forces at play to provide the capabilities of the system. LvB didn’t take the middle ground in advocating for an “organismic” perspective – the idea that it is the laws of organization that distinguish organisms from non-living matter – but he took a meta-perspective. The organismic approach kept the idea of wholeness from the vitalistic standpoint yet he adopted the criticism of the mechanistic standpoint of there being a supernaturalistic guiding force.

Scope

The target scope of the GST is the meta-level. Firstly let’s recognize that systems form hierarchies and that the higher level always shapes the lower one, whilst the higher level also depends on the lower one. “[LvB] explained that a system maintains itself because its organization results in a whole that – via its structure – exerts governing influences on its parts such that the parts act together to provide for the properties of the whole.⁶“. There are therefore two models needed to characterize a system:

1. An external perspective looking at the system as a whole, and
2. An internal perspective looking at the levels of nested sub-systems.

By recognizing, and using, the meta-level it allows us to “discover a diversity of actual and possible sub-levels within systems that are nevertheless unified from an external perspective⁷“.

Aims

The dangers, in LvB’s view, of a mechanistic approach is to ignore existence of the whole and the values the whole espouses. Whereas the mechanistic approach reduces a thing to its constituent elements, devising their physical and chemical interactions, relying on the facts as it where, LvB saw parallels with militarism of the post-war era which de-prioritized civil and social values in favor of the robotic cause-and-effect command-and-control ways of the military.

On the other hand LvB also recognized that the pendulum can swing the other way where the system, say a society or nation, is deified at the expense of its constituent elements, people, or that the machine is king whilst its human operators, often viewed as the weakest link, are to be constrained with thoughtless robotic-like procedures. By developing a GST grounded in humanism LvB sought to maintain humans’ rightful place in systems, whichever system that may be.

Fin

So there ends a review of the Introduction of this book. Looking forward to read more.

1. A one-to-one correspondence between two mathematical sets, or more generally between two disciplines ↩︎
2. Bertalanffy, L. von. (1968). General system theory: Foundations, development, applications. New York: G. Braziller, p xii ↩︎
3. General system theory : foundations, development, applications : Bertalanffy, Ludwig von, 1901-1972 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive ↩︎
4. Bertalanffy, L. von, supra note 2, at p xiii ↩︎
5. Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Vitalism. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved July 26, 2025, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism ↩︎
6. Bertalanffy, L. von, supra note 2, at p xvii ↩︎
7. Bertalanffy, L. von, supra note 2, at p xviii ↩︎