Ludwig von Bertalanffy, an Austrian biologist living in Canada and the USA, first put forward a number of ideas in 1937, which he later combined into one concept. He called it "General Systems Theory." What is it? This is a scientific concept for studying various objects considered as a system.
The main idea of the proposed theory was that the laws governing system objects are uniform, the same for different systems. In fairness, it must be said that the main ideas of L. Bertalanfi were laid down by various scientists, including Alexander Alexandrovich Bogdanov, a Russian philosopher, writer, politician, doctor, in his fundamental work “Tectology”, written by him in 1912. A.A. Bogdanov actively participated in the revolution, however, in many ways he did not agree with V.I. Lenin. He did not accept the October Revolution , but, nevertheless, continued to cooperate with the Bolsheviks, organizing the first Institute of Blood Transfusion in Russia at that time and setting up a medical experiment. He died in 1928. Few people know today that at the beginning of the twentieth century the Russian physiologist V.M. Bekhterev, regardless of A.A. Bogdanova, described more than 20 universal laws in the field of psychological and social processes.
The general theory of systems studies various types, the structure of systems, the processes of their functioning and development, the organization of components of structural and hierarchical levels, and much more. L. Bertalanffy also investigated the so-called open systems that exchange free energy, matter and information with the environment.
The general theory of systems is currently exploring such system-wide laws and principles, such as the hypothesis of semiotic continuity, the principle of feedback, organizational continuity, compatibility, mutually complementary relationships, the law of necessary diversity, hierarchical compensations, the principle of monocentrism, the law of minimum, the law of least relative resistance , the principle of external complementation, the recursive structure theorem, the law of discrepancy, and others.
The current state of systems science owes much to L. Bertalanffy. The general theory of systems is in many respects similar in objectives or research methods to cybernetics - the science of the general laws of the process of managing and transmitting information in different systems (mechanical, biological or social); information theory - a section of mathematics that defines the concept of information, its laws and properties; a game theory that analyzes, with the help of mathematics, the competition of two or more opposing forces in order to obtain the greatest gain and least loss; decision theory that analyzes rational choices among various alternatives; factor analysis using the procedure for isolating factors in phenomena with many variables.
Today, a general theory of systems receives a powerful impetus for its development in synergetics. I. Prigogine and G. Haken investigate nonequilibrium systems, dissipative structures, and entropy in open systems. In addition, such applied scientific disciplines as system engineering — the science of system planning, design, evaluation and construction of systems of the “man-machine” type — have stood out from L. Bertalanffy’s theory; engineering psychology; Kurt Levin's theory of field behavior ; operations research - the science of managing the components of economic systems (people, cars, materials, finance and more); SMD methodology, which was developed by G.P. Shchedrovitsky, his employees and students; V. Merlin’s theory of integral personality, the basis of which was largely the general theory of Bertalanffy’s systems considered above.