Old Trends and New Trends in General Systems Research

Abstract

It is a great honor for me to have been invited to present this year’s Ludwig von Bertalanffy Memorial Lecture. I was privileged to have known Ludwig von Bertalanffy personally in the last few years of his life, when he came to the State University of New York at Buffalo in the late 1960s. Although his appointment was in the Faculty of Social Sciences, his offices were located in the Center for Theoretical Biology, of which I was then Assistant Director. I cannot imagine a more fitting arrangement; von Bertalanffy’s roots were solidly anchored in the theory of biological systems, of which he initiated some of the deepest pioneering studies; from these roots grew unique insights into the character of social and behavioral systems, as well as the creation of a General Systems Theory which bound all these activities together into an integrated intellectual edifice of unique amplitude and power.