General Systems Theory
to look at the systems idea not as an ephemeral fashion or recent technique, but in the context of the history of ideas. (For an introduction and a survey of the field see [15] with an extensive bibliography and Suggestions for Further Reading in the various topics of general systems theory. In a certain sense it can be said that the notion of system is as old as European philosophy. If we try to define the central motif in the birth of philosophical scientific thinking with the Ionian pre Socratics of the sixth century B.C. one way to spell it out would be as follows. Man in early culture, and even primitives of today, experience themselves as being "thrown" into a hostile world, governed by chaotic and incomprehensible demonic forces which, at best, may be propitiated or influenced by way of magical practices. Philosophy and its descendant, science, was born when the early Greeks learned to consider or find, in the experienced world, an order or kosmos which was intelligible and, hence, controllable by thought and rational action. One formulation of this cosmic order was the Aristotelian world view with its holistic and telelogical notions. Aristotle's statement, "The whole is more than the sum of its parts," is a definition of the basic system problem which is still valid. Aristotelian teleology was eliminated in the later development of Western science, but the problems contained in it, such as the order and goal directedness of living systems, were negated and by passed rather than solved. Hence, the basic system is still not obsolete. A more detailed investigation would enumerate a long array of thinkers who, in one way or another, contributed notions to what nowadays we call systems theory. If we speak of hierarchic order, we use a term introduced