Ludwig von Bertalanffy - Organization Quotes

9 Sourced Quotes

View all Ludwig von Bertalanffy Quotes
We are seeking for another basic outlook - the world as organization. This would profoundly change the categories of our thinking and influence our practical attitudes. We must envision the biosphere as a whole with mutually reinforcing or mutually destructive interdependencies.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy
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 Bertalanffy
It is an empirical rule that living, evolutionary, psychological, social, etc., systems tend toward increasing differentiation and organization.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy
General Systems Theory... possibly the model of the world as a great organization can help to reinforce the sense of reverence for the living which we have almost lost.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy
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
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 the behavoir of the parts different when studied in isolation or within the whole.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy
Mechanism... provides us with no grasp of the specific characteristics of organisms, of the organization of organic processes among one another, of organic 'wholeness', of the problem of the origin of organic 'teleology', or of the historical character of organisms... We must therefore try to establish a new standpoint which — as opposed to mechanism — takes account of organic wholeness, but... treats it in a manner which admits of scientific investigation.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy
Another recent development is the theory of formal organizations, that is, structures planfully instituted, such as those of an army, Bureaucracy, business enterprise, etc. This theory is framed in a philosophy which accepts the premise that the only meaningful way to study organization is to study it as a system.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy
We are confronted with problems of organized complexity... organization runs through all levels of reality and science.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy