Ludwig von Bertalanffy in his book "General Systems Theory," states the following: The 19th and first half of the 20th century conceived of the world as chaos. Chaos was the oft- quoted blind play of atoms which, in mechanistic and positivistic philosophy, appeared to represent ultimate reality, with life as an accidental product of physical processes, and mind as an epiphenomenon ... It was chaos when, in the current theory of evolution, the living world appeared a product of chance, the outcome of random mutations and survival in the mill of natural selection. In the same sense, human personality, in the theories of behaviorism as well as of psychoanalysis, was considered a chance product of nature and nurture, of a mixture of genes and an accidental sequence of events from early childhood to maturity (p. 187). Now we are looking for another basic outlook on the world -- the world as organization. Such a conception -- if it can be substantiated -- would indeed change the basic categories upon which scientific thought rests, and profoundly influence practical attitudes (p. 188).
1. What is Bertalanffy getting at with these statements?
2. Why is this stream of thought critical to his development of General Systems Theory? And is this train of thought critical to engineering management? Why or why not?