General Systems Theory

Abstract

The term ‘general systems’ refers to a movement among a wide variety of scholars to overcome the barriers of communication which divide the established disciplines, by developing theoretical concepts and systems which are common to the different disciplines. Biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy originated the movement with his concept of ‘open systems’. The Society for General Systems Research, originally called the Society for the Advancement of General Systems, was founded at a meeting at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Berkeley, California, in December 1954. The economist Kenneth E. Boulding was the first president. The Society issues the General Systems Yearbook, partly of reprinted, partly of original articles, of which the first editor was Anatol Rapoport, a mathematician and game theorist. The yearbooks are still published, and a number of journals now contribute to the field.

This chapter was originally published in The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, 1st edition, 1987. Edited by John Eatwell, Murray Milgate and Peter Newman