Ludwig von Bertalanffy's early system approach

Most of what Bertalanffy published in the field of ‘organismic’ biology was written in German and is thus not widely known. In order to understand the development and meaning of his ‘general system theory’, those early works are essential. In this paper, I therefore focus on key aspects of his ‘system theory of life’, both on the level of scientific concepts and philosophical considerations. As a trained philosopher, Bertalanffy was clearly aware that the notion of systems has a long history. As for the influences from science, the focus here will be on Paul Weiss. Those two roots will be used to clarify Bertalanffy's unique contributions towards a system approach in biology and beyond. The aim was to free the term system from vague or even obscure metaphysical connotations and arrive at a framework that is useful for science.