Who was...Ludwig von Beitalanffy?

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Who was... Ludwig

9
von Bertalanffy?
Weltanschauung - a worldview or a philosophy of life?

Stephen Lewis
University Coiiege,
Chester

174

hen, in his early twenties,

Ludwig von BertalanfFy told his
wife Maria that he was having
trouble deciding whether to become a
biologist or a philosopher, she replied, "I
think you'll be better off in biology,
because biologists are more in demand.
And a biologist can use what he knows to
be a philosopher, but it cannot work the
other way around." This proved to be sound
advice, for when J H Woodger's translation
of Bertalanffy's Modern Theories of
Development was published, E S Russell
acclaimed its author as being "one of a
small band of people who are paving the
way to a new conception of the organism".
Ludwig von Bertalanffy was born in
Atzgersdorf, near Vienna, on 19 September
1901. He received much of his early education at home before university studies
in the history of art and philosophy at
Innsbruck and Vienna. In Vienna, under
Moritz Schlick (1882-1936), he gained his
doctorate in 1926 for a thesis on the
German physicist-philosopher, Gustav
Theodor Fechner. As a student, he was
associated with (but also disagreed with)
many of the diktats of the Vienna Circle opposing, for example, the separation of
ethics and human values from science.
Bertalanffy was a lover of classical
music, the works of Goethe and architectural drawings. He was a philatelist and
numismatist. He disliked television and
never went to the cinema. He was an avid
reader and inveterate jotter of notes - even
in the middle of the night.
Among biologists, Bertalanffy's name is
associated with a method of cancer cytodiagnosis using fluorescence microscopy and
equations predicting growth rate based
on metabolic rate. Both were developed
while at the University of Ottawa in the
early 1950s. However, his anti-reductionist
stance and his theory of the organism
merit more attention - if only as heuristics

Bioiogist I Volume 52 Number 3, July 2005

that serve to help explore the biological

questions to which he drew attention.

General Systems Theory

Bertalanffy was the originator of General
Systems Theory (GST). The term is, perhaps, confusing: indeed, it is a mistranslation of his original German term,
Allgemeine Systemlehre, meaning a
'General Systems Teaching'. Although the
basic elements appear to have begun to
take shape in the 1920s, Bertalanffy first
formulated a version of GST in 1936.
However, he waited until a more favourable
intellectual climate emerged (in the late
1940s) before becoming more open about
his ideas.
In GST, a system is a set of dynamic elements maintaining integrity via mutual
interactions. While remaining aware that
they operate in different ways at different
levels, Bertalanffy believed there to be general system laws that applied irrespective
of the elements involved. Although diverse
disciplines encounter systems differently,
general principles apply. As a result, links
between disciplines are feasible. Given
that a biological organism constitutes such
a system, comparisons with engineering
systems are valid without resorting to the
'machine metaphor' of which Bertalanffy
was highly critical.
Rather than reducing an organism to
the properties of its component parts,
GST focuses on the relationship between
the parts that constitute the whole. As a
result, a system is other than the mere
sum of its parts: it consists not only of those
parts but also the relationship each has to
the other and whatever else emerges as a
result. It is the relationships that are fundamental to GST, not the physical nature
of the components. Thus a biological system
can be compared with one that is not biological and biological problems can be recast
as problems of organisation. The parts

Who was...Ludwig von Bertalanffy? |IOB

and the whole exist in reciprocity - serving
mutual survival - and must be studied
and understood as such.
Accordingly, Bertalanffy proposed an
approach that he called 'organismic biology*
which sought to explain organisms in systems terms. He believed that in studjdng
life in this scientific way was biology^s key
task. However, Bertalanffy was interested
in the broadest application of his ideas
and went beyond biology to consider
applications in psychology, social science
and history.
While actively seeking the maintenance
of a steady state, biological systems are
'open' in that they are continuously interchanging matter and energy with a variable environment. Although he believed it
to be useful, Bertalanffy could not adopt the
term homeostasis - feeling it to be too
mechanistic. Since German only had a
word for static equilibrium, he coined the
term Fliessgleichgewicht, 'flow equilibrium'.
This represents a divergence from cybernetics with which homeostasis is associated.
Cybernetic mechanisms are understood
as being controlled by a constraint process
of feedback, whereas in an open dynamic
system there is a free interplay of forces.
Accordingly, Bertalanffy paid particular
attention to the role of the hierarchical
organisation of a system and the particular
research programme that interested him
was that of the quantitative kinetics of
growth and metabolism.
Ludwig von Bertalanffy held numerous
positions in the Universities of Vienna,
Ottawa and Alberta, at the State University
of New York (SUNY) and at the Mount

Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. He held

visiting professorships in the Universities of
London, Montreal and Southern California
as well as at the Menninger Foundation.
In 1972, at the request of a committee of
French scientists, Buckminster Fuller prepared a paper nominating him for a Nobel
Prize. However, before it could be considered, Bertalanffy died of a heart attack in
Buffalo, New York, on 12 June. He is buried
in Montreal.
As a result of its application to non-biological areas, GST is also portrayed as a
Weltanschauung or 'worldview'. However,
there is an alternative translation of this
German word - 'philosophy of life'.
Biologists have been largely unaware of
Bertalanffy's work on the 'systems view of
life'; they have tended to adopt essentially
mechanistic notions instead. They have
concentrated on the parts at the expense
of the whole. Ludwig von Bertalanffy's work
points us in another direction - to alternative conceptions of the organism which,
as yet, remain uncharted.

Further reading
Bertalanffy L v (1952) Problems of Life: an evaluation of modern biological thought. London. Watts
and Co.
Bertalanffy L v (1969) General System Theory. New
York. George Braziller
Davidson M (1983) Uncommon Sense: the life and
thought of Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972),
father of general systems theory. Los Angeles. J P
Tarcher.

Websites
http://bertalanffy.iguw.tuwien.ac.at
http://www.isss.org/lumlvb.htm
Stephen Lewis is senior iecturer in the Department of Bioiogical
Sciences, University Coiiege, Chester, UK.
Emaii: s.iewis@chester.ac.ui<

Volume 52 Number 3, July 2005 | Biologist

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