7 Quotes by Ludwig Von Bertalanffy

Scientists, operating in the various disciplines, are encapsulated in their private universe, and it is difficult to get word from one cocoon to the other.

We are seeking another basic outlook: the world as an organization. This would profoundly change categories of our thinking and influence our practical attitudes. We must envision the biosphere as a whole with mutually reinforcing or mutually destructive inter-dependencies.

People are not machines, but in all situations where they are given the opportunity, they will act like machines.

Considering the inconceivable complexity of processes even in a simple cell, it is little short of a miracle that the simplest possible model – namely, a linear equation between two variables – actually applies in quite a general number of cases.

The fact that a theory so vague, so insufficiently verifiable, and so far from the criteria otherwise applied in ‘hard’ science has become a dogma can only be explained on sociological grounds.

Progress is only possible by passing from a state of undifferentiated wholeness to differentiation of parts.

It is the ‘zoomorphic’ or ‘rattomorphic’ fallacy – the expressed or implicit contention that there is no essential difference between rat and man – which makes American psychology so profoundly disturbing.