He sought solutions to philosophical problems based on biology data.
(1901-1972) Austrian-Canadian philosopher. He is one of the pioneers of the theoretical biology movement. He sought solutions to philosophical problems based on biological data. He was born in Austria. He died in Canada. He studied biology at the universities of Innsbruck and Vienna. He was a lecturer at the University of Vienna until 1948. He immigrated to Canada for political reasons in 1949, teaching theoretical biology at the University of Alberta in Ottawa.
Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy (19 September 1901 – 12 June 1972) was an Austrian biologist known as one of the founders of general systems theory (GST). This is an interdisciplinary practice that describes systems with interacting components, applicable to biology, cybernetics and other fields. Bertalanffy proposed that the classical laws of thermodynamics might be applied to closed systems, but not necessarily to "open systems" such as living things. His mathematical model of an organism's growth over time, published in 1934, is still in use today.
Interested in different branches of biology, he worked on animal development, tissue psychology, experimental embryology, and cancer research. He pioneered a movement under the name of "General System Theory" that aims to gather different branches of science in a structure.
According to him, neither classical mechanism nor vitalism is sufficient for organic sense comprehension. Vitalism is a sterile approach as it requires a concept such as "life leap".
The mechanism is based on three misconceptions:
"Analytic and collecting" thinking: According to this, the aim of biology research is to analyze organisms into their basic units. This idea explains organic qualities by the combination of these units.
“Mechanismo-theoretical” thinking: This interprets the order of life as a pre-assembled sheath or physical mechanisms.
“Response-theoretic” thinking: Interprets organisms as automatic constructs that only react when a stimulus is present.
Instead, Bertalanffy proposes the "organismic" model and explains that a valid theory can only be built on it. This model interprets organisms as "wholes" or system structures that have system-specific characteristics and obey systematic rules. In this respect, organic structures are complex combinations of successive processes.
Bertalanffy believed that some general principles were found in all systems. He argued that these principles can only be studied through the "General System Theory", whose function is the organization of science under a single roof. He tried to prove this theory, which covers many branches of science. With these works, a positive environment was created for the future of theoretical biology.