Ervin László Quotes

We are living in a time of dissent, upheaval, revolutions and struggle, frequently aimed at mutual destruction.

A system in one perspective is a subsystem in another. But the systems view always treats systems as integrated wholes of their subsidiary components and never as the mechanistic aggregate of parts in isolable causal relations.

The worldview of the classical sciences conceptualized nature as a giant machine composed of intricate but replaceable machine-like parts. The new systems sciences look at nature as an organism endowed with irreplaceable elements and an innate but non-deterministic purpose for choice, for flow, for spontaneity.

In some regions, under especially favorable conditions, the level of organization reaches that of enormously heavy organic substances, such as protein molecules and nucleic acids. Now the basic building blocks are given for the constitution of self-replicating units of still higher organizational level: cells. These systems maintain a constant flow of substances through their structures, imposing on it a steady-state with specific parameters. The inputs and outputs may achieve coordination with analogous units in the surrounding medium, and we are on our way toward multicellular phenomena. The resulting structures — organisms — are likewise steady-state patterns imposed steady-state patterns imposed on a continuous flow... The organic systems themselves, define the supra-organic (ecological or social) community. Ultimately the strands of communication straddle the space-time region within which the primary systems have come together, and those of its layers which provide conditions favorable to such structuration become organized as systems in their own right. We reach the level of the global (ecological, and on earth also sociocultural) system.

Cultures are, in the final analysis, value-guided systems.

The systems view is the emerging contemporary view of organized complexity, one step beyond the Newtonian view of organized simplicity, and two steps beyond the classical world views of divinely ordered or imaginatively envisaged complexity.

Systems at each level of integration function as wholes with respect to their parts and parts with respect to higher level wholes.

Now "cybernetics" is the term coined by Wiener to denote "steersmanship" or the science of control. Although current engineering usage restricts it to the study of flows in closed systems, it can be taken in a wider context, as the study of processes interrelating systems with inputs and outputs, and their structural-dynamic structure. It is in this wider sense that "cybernetics" will be used here, to wit, as system-cybernetics, understanding by "system" an ordered whole in relation to its relevant environment (hence one actually or potentially open).

The classical worldview was atomistic and individualistic; it viewed objects as separate from their environments and people as separate from each other and from their surroundings. The systems view perceives connections and communications between people, and between people and nature, and emphasizes community and integrity in both the natural and the human world.

In systems such as contemporary society, evolution is always a promise and devolution is always a threat. No system comes with a guarantee of ongoing evolution. The challenge is real. To ignore it is to play dice with all we have. To accept it is not to play God—it is to become an instrument of whatever divine purpose infuses the universe.

With each technological ‘revolution’, more energies began to be accessed, stored, and used than had been in the preceding epoch…On the whole, technological change is irreversible: whatever the nature of a technological revolution, it is always from the hoe to the plough, and not the other way around…Improvement generally means greater efficiency in the use of energy, materials, or information. It means greater speed, less investment of time and money, and operation on a larger scale.

General systems theory is the scientific exploration of "wholes" and "wholeness" which, not so long ago, were considered metaphysical notions transcending the boundaries of science. Hierarchic structure, stability, teleology, differentiation, approach to and maintenance of steady states, goal-directedness — these are a few of such general system properties.

We may not be the center of the universe and the telos of evolution, but we are concrete embodiments of cosmic processes in their particular terrestrial variation. And, albeit accidentally, we did happen to evolve a most remarkable property: self -reflection. In virtue of this we may be among the very few species of natural systems in the universe which are able not only to sense the world and respond to it, but to know their own sensations and come to reasoned conclusions about the nature of the universe. To be a man is thus to have the almost unique opportunity of getting to know oneself and the world in which one lives. It is surely shortsighted to disregard this opportunity and confine oneself solely to the business of living. A failure to exploit our capability for rational knowledge is, moreover, contrary to the business of living.

Early scientific thinking was holistic, but speculative -- the modern scientific temper reacted by being empirical, but atomistic. Neither is free from error, the former because it replaces factual inquiry with faith and insight, and the latter because it sacrifices coherence at the altar of facticity. We witness today another shift in ways of thinking: the shift toward rigorous but holistic theories. This means thinking in terms of facts and events in the context of wholes, forming integrated sets with their own properties and relationships,

One can find meaning in poetry as well as in science in the contemplations of a flower as well as in the grasp of an equation. We can be filled with wonder as we stand under the majestic dome of the night sky and see the myriad lights that twinkle and shine in its seemingly infinite depths. We can also be filled wit awe as we behold the meaning of the formulae that define the propagation of light in space, the formation of galaxies, the synthesis of chemical elements, and the relation of energy, mass and velocity in the physical universe. The mystical perception of oneness and the religious intuition of a Divine intelligence are as much a construction of meaning as the postulation of the universal law of gravitation.