Ferdinand de Saussure book Course in General Linguistics
Source: Cours de linguistique générale (1916), p. 101
La langue est un systéme dont toutes les parties peuvent et doivent être considérés dans leur solidarité synchronique.
Source: Cours de linguistique générale (1916), p. 87 (1916, p. 124; Part 1, Ch. 3, sec. 3.)
Ferdinand de Saussure book Course in General Linguistics
Source: Cours de linguistique générale (1916), p. 101
Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist
Source: 1930s, Principles of topological psychology, 1936, p. 218, as cited in: Granville Stanley Hall, Edward Bradford Titchener, Karl M. Dallenbach (1937) The American journal of psychology. Vol. 50, p. 374.
Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist
1960s, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963)
Context: Synergy is the only word in our language that means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the separately observed behaviors of any of the system's separate parts or any subassembly of the system's parts. There is nothing in the chemistry of a toenail that predicts the existence of a human being.
Jane Addams (1860–1935) pioneer settlement social worker
Source: Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910), Ch. 6
Arthur D. Hall (1925–2006) American electrical engineer
Source: A methodology for systems engineering, 1962, p. 61 cited in: Clute, Whitehead & Reid (1967) Progressive architecture. Vol.48, Nr. 7-9. p. 106
Alfred Korzybski (1879–1950) Polish scientist and philosopher
Source: Science and Sanity (1933), p. 20.
Context: The only link between the verbal and objective world is exclusively structural, necessitating the conclusion that the only content of all "knowledge" is structural. Now structure can be considered as a complex of relations, and ultimately as multi-dimensional order. From this point of view, all language can be considered as names for unspeakable entities on the objective level, be it things or feelings, or as names of relations. In fact... we find that an object represents an abstraction of a low order produced by our nervous system as the result of a sub-microscopic events acting as stimuli upon the nervous system.
Mike Jackson (1951) systems scientist
Source: Systems Thinking: Creative Holism for Managers (2003), p. 4
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
1950s, The Impact of Science on Society (1952)