42 quotes
# Game theory, analyzing in a novel mathematical framework, rational competition between two or more antagonists for maximum gain and minimum loss.
General System Theory (1968)
Biological communities are systems of interacting components and thus display characteristic properties of systems, such as mutual interdependence, self-regulation, adaptation to disturbances, approach to states of equilibrium, etc.
Debora Hammond (2005)
You cannot sum up the behavior of the whole from the isolated parts, and you have to take into account the relations between the various subordinate systems which are super-ordinated to them in order to understand the behavior of the parts.
General System Theory (1968)
The system problem is essentially the problem of the limitation of analytical procedures in science. This used to be expressed by half-metaphysical statements, such as emergent evolution or ‘the whole is more than the sum of its parts,’ but has a clear operational meaning.
General System Theory (1968)
Systems thinking plays a dominant role in a wide range of fields from industrial enterprise and armaments to esoteric topics of pure science. Innumerable publications, conferences, symposia and courses are devoted to it. Professions and jobs have appeared in recent years which, unknown a short while ago, go under names such as systems design, systems analysis, systems engineering and others.
General System Theory (1968)
Animal growth can be considered as a result of a counteraction of synthesis and destruction, of the anabolism and catabolism of the building materials of the body. There will be growth so long as building up prevails over breaking down.
Von Bertalanffy (1949)
# Factor analysis, i.e., isolation by way of mathematical analysis, of factors in multivariable phenomena in psychology and other fields
General System Theory (1968)
There are quite a number of novel developments intended to meet the needs of a general theory of systems. We may enumerate them in brief survey
General System Theory (1968)
# Information theory, introducing the concept of information as a quantity measurable by an expression isomorphic to negative entropy in physics, and developing the principles of its transmission.
General System Theory (1968)
Science in the past (and partly in the present), was dominated by one-sided empiricism. Only a collection of data and experiments were considered as being ‘scientific’ in biology (and psychology); forgetting that a mere accumulation of data, although steadily piling up, does not make a science.
General System Theory (1968)
Also the principle of stress, so often invoked in psychology, psychiatry, and psychosomatics, needs some reevaluation. As everything in the world, stress too is an ambivalent thing. Stress is not only a danger to life to be controlled and neutralized by adaptive mechanisms; it also creates higher life.
General System Theory (1968)
The general notion in communication theory is that of information. In many cases, the flow of information corresponds to a flow of energy, e.g. if light waves emitted by some objects reach the eye or a photoelectric cell, elicit some reaction of the organism or some machinery, and thus convey information.
General System Theory (1968)
A system can be defined as a set of elements standing in interrelations. Interrelation means that elements, p, stand in relations, R, so that the behavior of an element p in R is different from its behavior in another relation, R’. If the behaviors in R and R’ are not different, there is no interaction, and the elements behave independently with respect to the relations R and R’.
General System Theory (1968)
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.
Robots, Men and Minds (1967)
[General System Theory]... is a logico-mathematical field, the subject matter of which is the formulation and derivation of those principles which hold for systems in general.
Teleologie ist … ein Ausfluss der Systemgesetzlichkeit und damit ein legitimer Gegenstand naturwissenschaftlicher Forschung
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 behavior of the parts different when studied in isolation or within the whole.
General System Theory (1968)
Therefore, general systems theory should be, methodologically, an important means of controlling and instigating the transfer of principles from one field to another, and it will no longer be necessary to duplicate or triplicate the discovery of the same principles in different fields isolated from the other.
General System Theory (1968)
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.
General System Theory (1968)
# General system theory in the narrower sense (G.S.T.), trying to derive from a general definition of “system” as complex of interacting components, concepts characteristic of organized wholes such as interaction, sum, mechanization, centralization, competition, finality, etc., and to apply them to concrete phenomena.
General System Theory (1968)