The Dialectical Tragedy of the Concept of Wholeness: Ludwig Von Bertalanffy’S Biography Revisited
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The Dialectical Tragedy of the Concept of Wholeness: Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s Biography Revisited Exploring Unity through Diversity: Volume 1 i The Dialectical Tragedy of the Concept of Wholeness: Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s Biography Revisited Volume 1: Exploring Unity through Diversity Written by David Pouvreau Translated from the French by Elisabeth Schober Library of Congress Control Number: 2009923355 ISBN13: 978-0-9817032-8-2 © 2009 ISCE Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be re- produced, stored on a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfi lming, recording or otherwise, without written per- mission from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America ii About the Book Series: Exploring Unity through Diversity nity through Diversity is acknowledged to be the leitmotif of Ludwig von Bertalanffy's think- Uing. It is also the leitmotif of this series; that is, providing space for different perspectives while sharing a common goal in order to promote: • Systems sciences, cybernetics and sciences of com- plexity as the most promising approaches towards global challenges humanity is facing in the new mil- lennium; • Transdisciplinarity and consilience throughout all scientifi c disciplines; • The discussion and comparison of different schools of systems thinking; • Attempts to unify systems thinking and to elaborate a metatheoretical framework; • Systems history; • Critical refl ections of the development of systems thinking and the systems movement; • Revisiting the goals of General System Theory as set by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Anatol Rapoport, Ken- neth Boulding and others; • Social-scientifi c, that is, socio-economic, political, cultural and historical applications of systems think- ing, including ecological and science-and-technology studies applications; • Systems philosophy, and; • Monographs or volumes of collected contributions in systems thinking as well as reprints of seminal works. iii About this volume he recent discovery of an archive full of personal documents of the philosopher and biologist Lud- Twig von Bertalanffy, founder of the General Sys- tem Theory, paved the way for a reconsideration of im- portant elements concerning his life and thought. This updated biography of a thinker, who is equally often cit- ed as misjudged, takes into consideration all of his pub- lications, his correspondence, as well as the secondary sources devoted to him, and attempts to reveal his rich- ness and complexity to a general reader. This biography thus aims at initiating and promoting a study that is both critical and appreciative of his oeuvre. It equally seeks to navigate between two all too common pitfalls found in connection with von Bertalanffy: hagiographic tempta- tion and reductive judgements, which are often ideologi- cally motivated. Wolfgang Hofkirchner February, 2009 iv Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (Vienna) Book Series Exploring Unity through Diversity Series Editor Wolfgang Hofkirchner (Austria) Editorial Board Gabriele Bammer (Australia) Yaneer Bar-Yam (US) Gerhard Chroust (Austria) John Collier (South Africa) Yagmur Denizhan (Turkey) Irina Dobronravova (Ukraine) Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski (Germany) Ramsés Fuenmayor (Venezuela) Amanda Gregory (UK) Ernesto Grün (Argentina) Jifa Gu (China) Debora Hammond (US) Enrique G. Herrscher (Argentina) Francis Heylighen (Belgium) Cliff Hooker (Australia) Magdalena Kalaidjieva (Bulgaria) Helena Knyazeva (Russia) George Lasker (Canada) Allenna Leonard (Canada) Gary Metcalf (US) Gerald Midgley (New Zealand) Gianfranco Minati (Italy) Edgar Morin (France) Matjaz Mulej (Slovenia) Yoshiteru Nakamori (Japan) Andreas Pickel (Canada) Michel St. Germain (Canada) Markus Schwaninger (Switzerland) Len Troncale (US) Martha Vahl (UK) Gertrudis van de Vijver (Belgium) Jennifer Wilby (UK) Rainer E. Zimmermann (Germany) v vi The Dialectical Tragedy of the Concept of Wholeness: Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s Biography Revisited Written by David Pouvreau Translated from the French by Elisabeth Schober Exploring Unity through Diversity: Volume 1 vii viii CONTENTS Preface ......................................................................... 1 Introduction and Acknowledgements ..............5 CHAPTER 1 Bertalanffy’s Social Origins, Childhood and Adolescence ........................................... 15 CHAPTER 2 His Years as a Student (1920-1926) 2.1 Studying at the University of Innsbruck (1920-1924) .....................................................................19 2.2 Studying at the University of Vienna (1924-1926) .....................................................................20 2.2.1 The Curriculum Followed at the University of Vienna ................................................................................21 2.2.2 Relations with the Vivarium in Vienna ....................22 2.2.3 The Doctoral Thesis .......................................................24 CHAPTER 3 Towards the Habilitation: The “Organismic” Theory (1926-1932) 3.1 Bertalanffy’s First Writings after his Thesis (1926-1928) .....................................................................27 3.2 The Reception of Kritische Theorie der Formbildung .....................................................................29 3.2.1 The Reception amongst Biologists .............................30 3.2.2 The Reception amongst Philosophers, Psychologists and Psychiatrists ...................................31 3.3 The Development of the “Organismic” Philosophy (1929-1932) ..............................................34 3.3.1 Elaborating the “Organismic” Philosophy ..............34 3.3.2 Biology as a Scientifi c and Cultural Crossroads and the Critique of Its Instrumentalizations ............35 3.3.3 Theoretical Biology ........................................................36 ix CHAPTER 4 The Reception of the “Organismic” Philosophy, the Habilitation and the First Years as Part-Time Lecturer in Vienna (1933-1937) 4.1 The Reception of the “Organismic” Philosophy ....39 4.1.1 The Reception in the Scientifi c World ......................39 4.1.2 The Reception amongst Philosophers.......................40 4.2 The Habilitation and a First Post as a Part-Time Lecturer .................................................................................41 4.3 Bertalanffy’s Situation and Works between 1933 and 1937 .................................................................42 4.3.1 The Theory of Organic Growth, a Concrete Expression of the Relevance and Fertility of “Organismic” Biology....................................................43 4.3.2 The Advent of Bertalanffy’s New Connection to Mathematics.................................................................44 4.3.3 An Increasingly Problematic Connection to the Neo-Positivists .................................................................46 4.3.4 The Maturation of the “Organismic” Biology ........47 4.4 An Opportunity to Go to the United States .............49 CHAPTER 5 A First Trip to the United States (1937-1938) 5.1 Seven Months in Chicago: .............................................51 The First Presentation of the General Systemology .....51 5.1.1 Some Contributions of Rashevsky’s School ...........51 5.1.2 A First Direct Contact with the “Integrative” Tradition of Chicago .......................................................52 5.1.3 The First Presentation of a General Systemology ..53 5.2 Bertalanffy’s Reaction to the Anschluss and the Rest of His Stay in the United States ...........................55 x CHAPTER 6 Bertalanffy as a Biologist of the Third Reich (1938-1945) 6.1 Bertalanffy’s Membership of the NSDAP (1938): His Reasons and His Benefi ts ...............................................59 6.1.1 A Return to Vienna in a Favorable Conjunction of Circumstances .............................................................59 6.1.2 The Membership in the NSDAP .................................60 6.1.3 The Complexity of Bertalanffy’s Relation to National Socialism ..........................................................61 6.2 The Promotion to the Title of “Associate Professor” (1938-1940) ...............................................66 6.2.1 A First Step: The Promotion to the Position of a Lecturer with Civil-Servant Status (1939) ..............67 6.2.2 Bertalanffy as an Associate Professor: Some First Moves ............................................................68 6.2.3 Bertalanffy’s Work between 1938 and 1940: An Outline of a “Theory of Open Systems” and First Impacts of the Political Context .........................69 6.3 Bertalanffy as an Academic of the Third Reich (1940-1944) .....................................................................71 6.3.1 The General Theory of Organic Growth, Beginnings of a “Dynamic Morphology” .................71 6.3.2 Bertalanffy’s Explicit National-Socialist Commitment in his Writings in 1941 ......................72 6.3.3 The Art of “Manipulation” in order to Achieve One’s Ends ........................................................................74 6.3.4 Bertalanffy’s Scientifi c Activities between 1942 and 1944 ................................................................76 6.3.5 The Impact of Bertalanffy’s Work during the War ...............................................................................78 6.3.6 A Privileged Situation ....................................................79 6.4 The Family Disaster at the End of the War ...............80 xi CHAPTER 7 His Last Years