“The systems view of nature and man is clearly non- anthropocentric, but it is not non-humanistic for all that. It allows us to understand that man is one species of system in a complex and embracing hierarchy of nature, and at the same time it tells us that all systems have value and intrinsic worth. They are goal-oriented, self-maintaining, and self-creating expressions of nature's penchant for order and adjustment. The status of man is not lessened by admitting the amoeba as his kin, nor by recognizing that sociocultural systems are his supersystems. Seeing himself as a connecting link in a complex natural hierarchy cancels man's anthropocentrism, but seeing the hierarchy itself as an expression of self-ordering and self-creating nature bolsters his self-esteem and encourages his humanism.”

Source: Introduction to Systems Philosophy (1972), p. 118.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The systems view of nature and man is clearly non- anthropocentric, but it is not non-humanistic for all that. It allow…" by Ervin László?

Ervin László46

Hungarian musician and philosopher 1932

Related quotes

“Dominance hierarchies had underlain every system ever realized so far, but at the same time democratic values had been always a hope and a goal, expressed in every primate’s sense of self, and resentment of hierarchies that after all had to be imposed, by force.”

Kim Stanley Robinson (1952) American science fiction writer

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 11, “Viriditas” (p. 483)

“The problem is this: Nature has assembled all these species on this planet. The human species is no more important than any other species on this planet. For some reason, man accorded himself a superior place in this scheme of things. He thinks that he is created for some grander purpose than, if I could give a crude example, the mosquito that is sucking his blood. What is responsible for this is the value system that we have created. And the value system has come out of the religious thinking of man. Man has created religion because it gives him a cover. This demand to fulfill himself, to seek something out there was made imperative because of this self-consciousness in you which occurred somewhere along the line of the evolutionary process. Man separated himself from the totality of nature.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

Description: from U.G Krishnamurti
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (2010)

“Law steps in where nature fails: virtually everywhere. Laws create nature - a male nature and a female nature and natural intercourse - by telling errant, unnatural human beings what to do and what not to do to protect and express their real nature - the real man, the real female, the real hierarchy thta natture or God created putting man on top.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 8

“The object-oriented paradigm is useful when building software systems where there is a hierarchy defined as a ranking or ordering of abstractions.”

Grady Booch (1955) American software engineer

Source: Object-oriented design: With Applications, (1991), p. 54

“It's not as though we can expect that next year or a decade from now someone will find the correct systems approach and all deception will disappear. This, in my opinion, is not in the nature of systems. What is in the nature of systems is a continuing perception and deception, a continuing re-viewing of the world, of the whole system, and of its components. The essence of the systems approach, therefore, is confusion as well as enlightenment. The two are inseparable aspects of human living.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach (1968), p. 231; cited in Charles Smith (2007, p. 44)

“A true prophecy creates and systematically orients conduct toward one internal measure of value. In the face of this the "world" is viewed as material to be fashioned ethically according to the norm. Confucianism in contrast meant adjustment to the outside, to the conditions of the "world." A well-adjusted man, rationalizing his conduct only to the degree requisite for adjustment, does not constitute a systematic unity but rather a complex of useful and particular traits.”

Max Weber (1864–1920) German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist

Source: Religion of China (1915), p. 235

“This universal character of referring and expressing, which is proper to our entire created cosmos, stamps created reality as meaning, in accordance with its dependent non-self-sufficient nature. Meaning is the being of all that has been created and the nature even of our selfhood. It has a religious root and a divine origin.”

Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977) Dutch philosopher

Source: A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Volume I: The Necessary Presuppositions of Philosophy (trans. William S. Young and David H. Freeman), p. 4 ( full context http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/dooy002newc05_01/dooy002newc05_01_0004.php#4)

“Nature then, is just nature. I admit I am very impressed with it. The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can do for is to put some order in ourselves. When a man ploughs his field at the right time, it means just that.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

De Kooning's lecture Trans/formation, at Studio 35, 1950.
1950's

“In the contemporary systems view man is not a sui generis phenomenon that can be studied without regard to other things. He is a natural entity, and an inhabitant of several interrelated worlds. By origin he is a biological organism. By work and play he is a social role carrier. And by conscious personality he is a Janus-faced link integrating and coordinating the biological and the social worlds. Man is, in the final analysis, a coordinating interface system in the multilevel hierarchy of nature.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: Introduction to Systems Philosophy (1972), p. 79.

“Second, we make no distinction between man and nature: the human essence of nature and the natural essence of man become one within nature in the form of production or industry, just as they do within the life of man as a species. Industry is then no longer considered from the extrinsic point of view of utility, but rather from the point of view of its fundamental identity with nature as production of man and by man.”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

The Desiring Machine
Anti-Oedipus Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1977)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Ervin László46

Related quotes

Related topics