The Relevance of General Systems Theory: The International Library of Systems Theory & Philosophy

by Ervin Laszlo (Editor)

213 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Ervin Laszlo is a systems philosopher, integral theorist, and classical pianist. Twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, he has authored more than 70 books, which have been translated into nineteen languages, and has published in excess of four hundred articles and research papers, including six volumes of piano recordings.

Dr. Laszlo is generally recognized as the founder of systems philosophy and general evolution theory, and serves as the founder-director of the General Evolution Research Group and as past president of the International Society for the Systems Sciences. He is also the recipient of the highest degree in philosophy and human sciences from the Sorbonne, the University of Paris, as well as of the coveted Artist Diploma of the Franz Liszt Academy of Budapest. Additional prizes and awards include four honorary doctorates.

His appointments have included research grants at Yale and Princeton Universities, professorships for philosophy, systems sciences, and future sciences at the Universities of Houston, Portland State, and Indiana, as well as Northwestern University and the State University of New York. His career also included guest professorships at various universities in Europe and the Far East. In addition, he worked as program director for the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). In 1999 he was was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Canadian International Institute of Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics.

For many years he has served as president of the Club of Budapest, which he founded. He is an advisor to the UNESCO Director General, ambassador of the International Delphic Council, member of both the International Academy of Science, World Academy of Arts and Science, and the International Academy of Philosophy.

Reviews

[Dane Rodriguez · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very strange book. On one hand, it seems to preempt the entire complex systems movement and a considerable amount of the language and examples used within by several years, decades in some cases. Bertalanffy’s work on open systems alone should make him very closely linked and studied, and some of the discussions here of transitions between chaos and order were way ahead of their time. Yet none of these authors or “general systems theory” seem to have any connection with other nonlinear systems/complex systems people that very much took off.

On the other hand, the way Bertalanffy is written about and how he is placed at the mantle of this movement is very cult-like. With Ervin Laszlo being his main disciple and he having done seemingly nothing for the ideas described here or in general systems theory, instead going completely off the deep-end into full blown crank territory, I’m seeing why this book reads so strangely and general systems theory is basically dead.

I think these ideas are good and that they were stolen or otherwise absorbed into modern complex systems science. I think these general systems guys were trying to take an even more interdisciplinary approach than the “complex systems” orbit of people and attempting a serious unity of philosophy with their science. Unfortunately, unlike the Santa Fe institute, they didn’t come with their own high level of scientific and mathematical rigor and pedigree, which allowed the whole enterprise to stutter and die in a pudding of bullshit once Bertalanffy kicked the bucket and Laszlo started talking about things like “quantum consciousness.”

In conclusion, there are some really good ideas here. I’d say this book is worthwhile to anyone with an interest in the areas of Complex systems, the more legitimate and modern version of general systems theory. I might take a deeper look at Bertalanffy’s other work.