General System Theory -by Ludwig von Bertallanfy

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It seems to be the most serious shortcoming of classic occidental philosophy, from Plato to Descartes and Kant, to consider man primarily as a spectator, as ens cogitans, while, for biological reasons, he has essentially to be a performer, an ens agens in the world he is thrown in.

...It is a prepostorous anthropomorphism to assume that the human forms of experience are the only possible ones, valid for any rational being. On the other hand, the conception of the forms of experience as adaptive apparatus, proved in millions of years of struggle for existence, guarantees that there is a sufficient correspondence between "appearance" and "reality". Any stimulus is experienced not as it is but as the organism reacts to it, and thus the world-picture is determined by psychophysical organization. Howere, where a paramecium reacts with its phobotactic reaction, the human observer, though his world outlook is quite different, also actually finds an obstacle when he uses his microscope. Similiarly, it is well possible to indicate which traces of experience correspond to reality, and which, comparable to the colored fringes in the field of a microscope which is not achromatically corrected, do not. So Pilate's question, "What is Truth?," is to be answered thus: Already the fact that animals and human beings are still in existence, proves that their forms of experience correspond, to some degree, with reality.

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....Coming now to the world of science, Uexküll's conception of the physical universe as but one of the innumerable biological ambients, is incorrect or at least incomplete. Here a most remarkable trend comes in which may be called the progressivede-anthropomorphization of science(von Bertalanffy,1937,1953). It appears in three major lines.

It is an essential characteristic of science that it progressively de-anthrpomorphizes, that is, progressively eliminates those traits which are due to specific human experience. Physics necessarily starts with the sensory experience of the eye, the ear, the thermal sense,etc., and thus builds up fields like optics, acoustics, theory of heat, which correspond to the realms of sesory experience . Soon, however, these fields fuse into such that do not have any more relation to the "visualizable" or "intuitable": Optics and electricity fuse into electromagnetic theory, mechanics and theory of heat into statistical thermodynamics, etc.

This evolution is connected with the invention of artificial sense organs and the replacement of the human observer by the recording instrument. Physics, though starting with everyday experience, soon transgresses it by expanding the universe of experience through artificial sense organs. Thus, for example, instead of seeing only visible light with a wavelength between 380 and 760 millimicra, the whole range of electromagnetic radiation, from shortest cosmic rays up to radio waves of some kilometers wave length, is dislosed.

Thus it is one function of science to expand the observable. It is to emphasized that , in contrast to a mechanistic view, we do not enter another metaphysical realm with this expansion. Rather the things surrounding us in everyday experience, the cells seen in a microscope, the large molecules observed by the electron microscope, and the elementary particles "seen," in a still more indirect way, by their traces in a Wilson chamber, are not of a different degree of reality. It is a mechanistic superstition to believe that atoms and molecules (speaking with Alice and Wonderland of Physics) are "realer" than apples, stones and tables. The ultimate particles of physics are not a metaphysical reality behind observation; they are an expenasion of what we observe with our natural senses, by way of introducing suitable artificial organs.

In any way, however, this leads to an elimination of the limitationsof experience as imposed by the specifically human psychophysical organization, and , in this sense, to be the de-anthropomorphization of the world picture.

A second aspect of this development is what is called the convergence of research(cf. Bavink, 1949). The constants of physics have often been considered as only conventional means for the most economic description of nature. The progress of research, however, shows a different picture. First, natural constants such as the mechanical equivalent of heat or the charge of electrons vary widely in the observation of individual observers. Then, with the refinement of techniques, a "true" value is approached asymptotically so that consecutive determinations alter the established value only in progressively smaller digits of decimals. Not only this: Physical constants such as Loschmidt's number and its like are established not by one method but perhaps by 20 methods which are completely independent of each other. In this way, they cannot be conceived as being simply conventions for describing phenomena economically; they represent certain aspects of reality, independent of biological, theoretical or cultural basis. It is indeed one of the most important occupations of natural science thus to verify its findings in mutually independent ways.

However, perhaps the most impressive aspect of progressive de-anthropomorphization is the third. First, the so-called secondary qualities go, that is, color, sound, smell, taste disappear from the physical world picture since they are determined by so-called specific energy of the diverse and specially human senses. So, in the world picture of classical physics, only the primary qualities such as mass, impenetrability, extension, etc., are left which, psychophysically, are characterized as being the common ground of visual, tactual, acoustical experience. Then, however, these forms of intuition and categories also are eliminated as being all-too-human. Even Euclidean space and Newtonian time of classical physics, as was noted previously, are not identical with the space and time of direct experience; they lready re constructs of physics. This, of course, is true even more of the theoretical structures of modern physics.

Thus, what is specific of our human experience is progressively eliminated. What eventually remains is only a system of mathematical relations.

Some time ago it was considered a grave objection against the theory of relativity and quatum theory that it became increasingly "unvisualizable," that its contructs cannot be represented by imaginable models. In truth, however, this is a proof that the system of physics detaches itself from the bondage of our specifically human sensory experience; a pledge that the system of physics in its consummate form -leaving it undecided whether this is attained or even is attainable at all -does not belong to the human ambient(umwelt in Uexküll's sense) any more but is universally committal.

In a way, progressive de-anthropothization is like Muenchhausen pulling himself out of the quagmire on his own pigtail. It is, however, possible because of a unique property of symbolism. A symbolic system, an algorithm, such as that of mathematical physics, wins a life of its own as it were. It becomes a thinking machine, and once the proper instructions are fed in, the machine runs by itself, yielding unexpected results that surpass the initial amount of facts and given rules, and are thus unforeseeable by the limited intellect who originally has created the machine. In this sense, the mechanical chess player can outplay its maker (Ashby,1952), i.e., the results of the automatized symbolism transcend the original input of facts and intructions. This is the case in any algorythmic predication, be it a formal deduction on any level of mathematical difficulty or a physical prediction like that of still unknown chemical elements or planets(cf, von Bertalanffy,1956). Progressive de-anthropomorphization, that is, replacement of direct experience by a self-running algorithmic system, is one aspect of this state of affairs.

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...If, in the sense just indicated, the system of physics in its ideal state, which can be approached only asymptotically, is absolute, we must, however, not forget another and in some way antithetical aspect. What traits of reality we grasp in our theoretical system is arbitratry in the epistemological sense, and determined by biological, cultural, and probably linguistic factors.

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...Our main concern, probably determined by the grammer of Indo-European language, is with measurable qualities, isolable units, ad the like. Our physics neglects the so-called primary qualities; they come in only rudimentarily in the system of physics or in certain abstractions of physiologigical optics like the color cycle or triangle. Similarly, our way of thinking is conspiciously unfit for dealing witth problems of wholeness and form. Therefore, it is only with the greatest effort that holistic as contrasted to elementalistic traits can be included -although they are no less "real". The way of thinking of occidental physics leaves us on the spot if we are confronted with problems of form -hence this aspect, predominant in things biological, is but a tremendous embarrassment to physics.

...The Aristotelian logic, for millenia considered as giving the general and supreme laws of reasoning, actually covers only the extremely small field of subject-predicate relations. The all-or-none concepts of traditional logic fallshort of continuity concepts basic for mathematical analysis (cf. von Neumann,1951,p.16). Probably it is only a very small field of possible deductive reasoning which is axiomatized even by the efforts of modern logicians.

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All our knowledge, even de-anthrpomorphized, only mirrors certain aspects of reality. if what has been said is true, reality is what Nicholas of Cusa (cf. von Bertalanffy, 1928) called the coincidentia oppositorum. Discoursive thinking always represents only one aspect of ultimate reality, called God in Cusa's terminology; it can never exhaust its infinite manifoldness. Hence ultimate reality is a unity of opposites; any statement holds from a certain viewpoint only, has only relative validity, and must be supplemented by antithetic statements from opposite points of view.

Thus, the catagories of our experience and thinking appear to be determined by biological as well as cultural factors. Secondly, this human bondage is stripped by a process of progressive de-anthrpomorphization of our world picture. Thirdly, even though de-anthropomorphized, knowledge only mirrors certain aspects or facets of reality. However, fourthly, ex omnibus partibus relucet totum, again to use Cusa's expression: Each such aspect has, though only relative, truth. This, it seems, indicates the limitation as well as the dignity of human knowledge.