Systems Sciencesand The Problem of reductionism

摘要

During the first decades the systems sciences were strongly connected with the work of Ludwig von Bertalanffy. By identifying and critically examining hte main features of von bertalanffy's work, it is possible to gain a general view of the problems he grappled with, fo key developments in his thought about systems, and also of certain unresolved tensions that emerged in it. One immediately striking line in von bertalanffy is his resolute struggle against mechanistic reductionism in scientific thoutht. VOn bertalanffy prsistently opposed a purely technical conception ofthe world. initially, the opposed its influence in the field of the natural sciences, especially in biology. Later, however, he also opposed its influence in the human and social sciences. To this end he introduced a new view of the organism: the organism is not a closed system with a static mechanical structure, he argued, but an open system in flowing or dynamic equilibrium. A second line in von bertalanffy's work concerns the quest for a unified science incorpating all the sciences. As a first step towards integration, he introduced the open-system model just referred to into the natural sciences. But von Bertalanffy believed this model can also serve as a basis for integrating all the sciences into a general system theory. here, in a critical assessment, attetion is focused on the systems ontology underlying his thinking. Finally, von bertalanffy's systems view is revisited in the light of Herman Dooyeweerd's conception of modalities, an approach which has iven rise to multi-modal systems thinking, one of the contemporary trends in systems thinking.