General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications

Rating:
Summary: The system behind the system, are you aware of?
Review: A very important body of knowledge for anyone.

Have you ever said "the current system is wrong" but never known a definitive answer?

This book lays a base for understanding the system behind the system.

Rating:
Summary: The system behind the system, are you aware of?
Review: A very important body of knowledge for anyone.

Have you ever said "the current system is wrong" but never known a definitive answer?

This book lays a base for understanding the system behind the system.

Rating:
Summary: The best intent to transcend the mechanistic worldview
Review: GST is certainly the best intent we have to transcend the mechanistic worldview from the point of view of the new science. And there is just one way to transcend that framework and it just by positing a new sphere to manage complexity: the sphere of life.Teilhard, Bergson, Bertanffy were "biologists" but also philosophers, great philosophers and this is probably why today the Science of Complexity is looking at Life, and why the new thinkers are more and more aware that if we want to understand organizations, human organizations, we must first understand life. So we find a clear turn in books about complexity and administration trying to learn from the lesson of life...this is the only way to enter the age of adaptation as Thomas Petzinger calls it. Our time owes to GST a great deal, and as so, GST stands as a monument to that whole movement toward the global nature of our civilization of the same kind of The Phenomenon of Man and Creative Evolution.

Rating:
Summary: A new way of looking at how things work together
Review: Perhaps the best way to start this review is with Bertalanffy's own words: "Compared to the analytical procedure of classical science with resolution into component elements and one-way or linear causality as basic category, the investigation of organized wholes of many variables requires new catagories of interaction, transaction, organization, teleology..."

"These considerations lead to the postulate of a new scientific discipline which we call general system theory. It's subject matter is formulation of principles that are valid for "systems" in general, whatever the nature of the component elements and the relations or "forces" between them...

"General system theory, therefore, is a general science of wholeness"...

Wholeness is not new, the Chinese and Greeks had their own versions, but what Bertalanffy did is make it an authentic science.

Rating:
Summary: Of historical interest
Review: Somewhat outdated, rehashed and self aggrandizing. More historical than cutting edge. You can do better!!

Rating:
Summary: It is a must read , because we can learn from the past.
Review: This book is for people interested in interdisciplinary research from a theoretical point of view. It is like a time machine to allow a look through the eyes of Bertalanffy to the 1960's and the prevailing scientific views at that time. Above all, this is due to the 'special' style the book is writen. With 'special' I mean, that Bertalanffy does not write completely factual and impersonal but more emotional.
All in all, this book does not provide you with solutions to problems but gives you the ability after reading to ask questions you could not ask before because you did not know the problem at all. For me, it was really interesting to contrast the ideas discussed in the book with our current state of knowlegde over 50 years later (the book covers the work of Bertalanffy from 1930's - 1960's). I recommend this book to everyone interested in foundations of basic research in physics, chemistry, biology and pschology, it should be a must read.



Rating:
Summary: A book for the development of system ideas.
Review: This book is quite old now and shows some of its age. At the time the idea of system theory was new and invigorating although it still appears that the theory was not radically new by any means even then.

Bertalanffy discusses the idea of a system mainly through dynamical systems in his early chapters but also discusses important issues such as open systems, teleology and the organism considered as a system. By no means does this remove the dogma of the reductionists but the whole idea can be incorporated within it by some adjustments and expansions of the original concept. In that sense it is still possible for a biologist to consider animals and plants as complex machines. Nothing in this book really forces anyone to onsider an alternative.

On the other hand his later chapters from chapter 8 onwards discuss truly fascinating questions in psychology and the study of language especially noting the work of Whorf. It is these last chapters which make the book interesting. In its day it would have been something that evoked interest and fascination but now its the as yet unexplord aspects of the study of man which remain as they have always been an enigma and a source of endless wonder.

A book for the development of system ideas.