“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.”

—  Ludwig von Bertalanffy

Source: General System Theory (1968), 1. Introduction, p. 3

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Ludwig von Bertalanffy65
austrian biologist and philosopher 1901–1972

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Source: The Web of Life (1996), p. 46.

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