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GENERAL
SYSTEMS THEORY
Systems
theory was proposed in the 1940's by the biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy
(General Systems Theory, 1968), and furthered by Ross Ashby (Introduction
to Cybernetics, 1956). von Bertalanffy was both reacting against
reductionism and attempting to revive the unity of science. He emphasized
that real systems are open to, and interact with, their environments,
and that they can acquire qualitatively new properties through emergence,
resulting in continual evolution. Rather than reducing an entity
(e.g. the human body) to the properties of its parts or elements
(e.g. organs or cells), systems theory focuses on the arrangement
of and relations between the parts which connect them into a whole
(cf. holism). This particular organization determines a system,
which is independent of the concrete substance of the elements (e.g.
particles, cells, transistors, people, etc). Thus, the same concepts
and principles of organization underlie the different disciplines
(physics, biology, technology, sociology, etc.), providing a basis
for their unification. Systems concepts include: system-environment
boundary, input, output, process, state, hierarchy, goal-directedness,
and information.
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/SYSTHEOR.html
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