A Systems View Of Man

Ludwig von Bertalanffy

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367018474
• eBook ISBN: 9780429724237
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Psychologie clinique

What does it mean to be human? What distinguishes man from other animals? "Man's creation of the universe of symbols, †replies Ludwig von Bertalanffy. "Man lives in a world not of things, but of symbols.†Dr. von Bertalanffy explores the historical development of symbolic language, examines the nature of human values, and shows how a current breakdown of symbolic universes contributes to the feeling of meaninglessness so prevalent in modern society. He notes that a major portion of mankind's aggressive acts are not biologically induced but arise within symbolic frameworks.

1
Man’s Universe of Symbols

Everything in this world is nonsense; the whole of life is a plethora of ludicrous absurdities, one more fanciful than another. The crown is nothing, the ring is nothing, too. Each would mean nothing but nonsense and empty foolishness except to the eyes which behold the symbolism behind them. Yet they, because of their meaning, dominate the world. Only one form of metal there is, which is meaning in itself—the sword.

—Temple Thurston, 1909

What is unique in human behavior? The answer is unequivocal. The monopoly which man holds, which profoundly distinguishes him from other beings, is his ability to create a universe of symbols in thought and language. Except in the immediate satisfaction of biological needs, man lives in a world not of things but of symbols. A coin is a symbol for a certain amount of work done, or for the availability of a certain amount of food or other commodities; a document is a symbol of res gestae (things done); a book is a fantastic pile of accumulated symbols; and so forth ad infinitum.

To distinguish symbolism, and language in particular, from subhuman forms of behavior, the following definition might be proposed: Symbols are signs that are freely created, represent some content, and are transmitted by tradition. By “freely created” I mean that there is no biologically enforced connection between the sign and the thing connoted. In the case of conditioned reactions, the connection between the signal and the thing signaled is imposed from outside. It may be a natural connection, as when a child or the kitten has previously been burned. Or the connection may be arbitrary and imposed by the experimenter, as in the case of the Pavlovian dog that learned to secrete saliva when a bell was rung. In contradistinction, there is no biological connection between the word father, pater, pere, otec (or whatever the word may be in any language) and the person so designated. This does not imply that the choice of symbols is completely arbitrary; it is probably determined by psychological principles that are not well understood.

Furthermore, a symbol connotes or represents a certain content. This criterion distinguishes a symbol from language used in expressing a feeling. For example, a bird’s song expresses and communicates to its mate a certain physiological and, we may be sure, psychological state, but it does not connote a thing. The barking of a dog warns of some danger, but it does not indictate whether the source is an intruding burglar or the neighbor’s cat. Finally, symbolism and language are defined as being transmitted by learning and tradition. For example, the language of the bees, admirably described by von Frisch, is indeed representative. By means of intricate dances, the workers communicate to their colleagues the direction and distance of the place where food may be found. But this language is innate and instinctive. We can teach a dog all sorts of tricks, but we have never heard that a particularly clever dog has taught its puppies to do them.

Man’s ability to use symbols was clearly made possible by the evolution of his forebrain (see Appendix). But, as to the origins of symbolism and human language, I have a strong suspicion that they might be found in imitation and verbal magic. An uttered sound may give some onomatopoetic image of an animal or person.¹ Consequently the sound will be identified with the original just as a puppet made from clay is identified with the enemy. Then, uttering the sound will govern the thing designated. For primitive man, an image, be it material or acoustical, is the same as the original and gives him control and dominance over it. This is the essence of sympathetic magic. The enemy can be killed if a needle is thrust into the clay image. In this way language may be born of magic, a process certainly infinitesimally slow in the beginnings, but man has had many hundred thousands of years at his disposal to come from an anthropoid to Pithecanthropus, Sinanthropus, and Homo sapiens.

Whatever the origin of symbolism, its consequences are enormous. First of all phylogenetic evolution, based on hereditary changes, becomes supplanted by history, based on the tradition of symbols. Normally in the biological sphere, progress is possible only at a rate determined by the slow pace of evolution. For example, ant societies have remained unchanged for the past 50 million years. In contrast, human history has a time-scale for change on the order of generations. In fact it may even be thought that the scale of cultural time is logarithmic, rather than arithmetic, with changes taking place at an ever-increasing pace.

A second consequence is that corporeal trial and error, as found in subhuman nature, becomes replaced by reasoning—that is, trial and error in terms of conceptual symbols. An animal placed in a maze, faced with a complicated lock, or confronted with some other problem, runs around until it finds the way out. It tries until the solution of the problem is discovered by chance. Man, in a corresponding situation, sits down and thinks. That is, he experiments, not with the things themselves, but with the symbolic images of the things. He scans different possibilities, accepts the apparently successful solution and discounts those that seem ineffective, without laboring to try them materially.

A third and even more profound consequence of symbolism is that it makes true purposiveness possible. This true, or Aristotelian, purposiveness is unique to human behavior and is based on the fact that the future goal is anticipated in thought and determines actual behavior. Of course, “purposiveness” in a metaphorical sense, that is, regulation of function in the way of establishment and maintenance of organismic order, is a general characteristic of life. It is based on such principles as equifinality of the steady state, homeostatic feedback, learning by trial and error and by conditioned reflex, evolutionary selection, and so forth. But even in the most amazing phenomena of regulation and instinct we have no justification for the assumption that these actions are carried through with foresight of the goal.

The Magic of the Algorithm

So long as symbols stand alone they are unproductive and do not convey more information than what is contained in the individual symbols. Thus, in the flag-language used by seafarers each flag symbolizes a certain fact or command. An array of flags is just the sum of the individual meanings. This is profoundly altered if symbols are combined and related according to established rules of a “game.” Then, the system of symbols becomes productive and fertile. With a suitable choice of terms and of rules presupposed, a “grammar,” we can handle the symbols, the “vocabulary,” as if they were the things they represent. If the symbols, as well as their grammar, are well chosen, the result of the mental operation of symbols will correspond to that of the real course of events. The consequences of the images will be the images of the consequences, to use Heinrich Hertz’s expression. In this way a true magic is possible with systems of symbols. We can predict facts and relationships still unknown, can control still unrealized combinations and natural forces and so on.

A system of symbols related according to preestablished rules may be called an algorithm. The simplest example of an algorithm is the mathematical system of decimal notation, popularized by a man named al-Khowarizmi. In Roman numbers, even a trivial multiplication, such as LXXVI × XCIII, is quite a formidable operation. However, the simple trick of regarding the last digit of a number, in Arabic notation, as meaning units, the second as meaning tens, and so on, and of writing the corresponding figures in columns, makes the operation child’s play. Thus, an algorithm is essentially a “thinking” machine, a means of performing operations on symbols that give results difficult or impossible to attain otherwise. Calculating and thinking machines, mechanical or electronic, are the materialization of algorithms. The symbolic system of language, and particularly of the artificial languages called mathematics and science, develops into a colossal thinking machine. An operational command (an hypothesis) is fed in, the machine starts to run, and eventually, by virtue of preestablished rules relating the symbols, a solution drops out, a product which was unforeseeable to the individual mind with its limited capacity. This is the general character of scientific reasoning, be it a simple arithmetic operation or the solution of a differential equation, the prediction of still undiscovered planets and chemical elements, or the construction of some masterpiece of modern technology.

The symbolic universe becomes, so to speak, more clever than man, its creator. It wins an autonomous life of its own, as it were. The development of the Roman law, the British Empire, the atomic theory from Democritus to Heisenberg, or of music from Palestrina to Wagner, is certainly borne by a number of human individuals. But it shows an inherent logic that widely transcends the personalities of its creators.

However, besides these triumphs of symbolism, there are also its pitfalls. The conceptual anticipation of future events, which, on the one hand, allows for true purposiveness, is at the same time the origin of anxiety, the source of man’s fear of death, which is unknown to brutes. The invention of the symbolic world was the Fall of Man. The notions of sin and evil arise with the invention of symbolic labels attached to certain forms of behavior. Moreover, if there is a clash between the symbolic world built up as moral values and social conventions, on the one hand, with basic biological drives, on the other, then the situation of neurosis arises. Somewhat extending the narrower definition of Freud, it seems that a neurotic situation results from the conflict of a symbolic universe with biological drives, or of opposing symbolic worlds.

As a social force, the universe of symbols, which is unique in man, creates the sanguinary course of history. Thus man has to pay for the uniqueness that distinguishes him from other beings. The tree of knowledge is the tree of death. War is a human invention, not a biological phenomenon. It is not the continuation of the omnipresent biological struggle for existence. Even if nature were “red in tooth and claw,” which it is only to a limited extent, organized intraspecific warfare for the most part would be unknown in the subhuman world. Apart from the rather rational strifes of savages who go out and kill enemies in order to eat them, war is caused by illusions of grandeur, ideologies, economic factors based upon symbol-charged values, and religion. This, however, leads to the ingratiating conclusion that war is not a biological necessity and that it would be avoidable if mankind were to put its symbolic faculties to better use.

Revolt of the Masses

The unique characteristic of human behavior is the ability to make decisions at the symbolic level. This, of course, does not mean that conditioned behavior is negligible. Any human achievement, from toilet training to speech, driving a car, or learning calculus and theoretical physics, is based on conditioning. Nevertheless, the specificity of man rests on rational behavior—that is, behavior directed by symbolic anticipation of a goal. In modern man, however, this vis a fronte, to use Aristotle’s terms, consisting of goals which the individual or the society sets itself, is largely replaced by the primitive vis a tergo of conditional reaction. The basic symptom of present society seems to be the “uprising of the masses,” or put another way, the “return of the conditioned reflex.”

The modern methods of propaganda, from the advertisement of a toothpaste to that of political programs and political systems, do not appeal to rationality in man but rather force upon him certain ways of behavior by means of a continuous repetition of stimuli coupled with emotional rewards or punishments. This method is essentially the same as that applied to Pavlovian dogs when they were drilled to respond to a meaningless stimulus with reactions prescribed by the experimenter. Not that this method is new in human history. What is new, however, is that it is applied scientifically and consistently and so has an unprecedented power. The modern media of mass communication, newspapers, radio, television, and so on, are able to establish this psychological constraint almost without interruption in time and reaching all individuals in space with maximum efficiency. If a slogan, however insipid, is repeated a sufficient number of times and is emotionally coupled with the promise of a reward or the menace of punishment, it is nearly unavoidable that the human animal establishes the conditioned reaction as desired. Furthermore, to apply this method successfully, the conditioning process must be adjusted to the greatest common denominator; that is, the appeal has to be made to the lowest level of intelligence. As a result, individual discrimination and decision become replaced by universal conditioned reflexes. What emerges is mass-man. Brave New World and 1984 are but paraphrases of this theme.

It seems that behavioral science is supposed to contribute to the pressing problems of our epoch. However, American psychology, in its various forms from behaviorism to recent pseudo-“humanistic” developments, has consistently denied what is specifically human in man’s psychology and behavior. It has given no answer to “human” problems and, in effect, has contributed to the bestialization of our age of non-culture. Beside the menace of physical technology, the dangers of psychological technology are often overlooked; perhaps even more dangerous than the material existence of the bombs are the psychological forces that may lead to dropping them. As we try to put atomic energy to peaceful use, it may even be more urgent to put to intelligent use the psychological mechanisms revealed by behavioral science.

2
Human Values in a Changing World

What can we say has become commonly accepted as human values? This very question is disquietingly symptomatic; asking the question implies that values have become doubtful and are not taken for granted anymore. Hence, I propose some sentences from Nietzsche’s Will to Power as a suitable starting point for this discussion: “What I relate,” Nietzsche wrote in 1868, “is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism. … Our whole European culture is moving for some time now, with a tortured tension headlong. … Why has the advent of nihilism become necessary? Because the values we had hitherto thus draw their final consequence; because we must experience nihilism before we can find out what value these values’ really had.”

Nietzsche regarded Christianity as the value system to be discarded and replaced by a new one. One possible answer to Nietzsche’s demand for new values was the notion of progress, the belief that science and technology will carry mankind into a paradisiac future. It can be stated with no elaborate discussion that, up to comparatively recent times, the belief in progress was the dominant ideology of our civilization, and that now we have become doubtful. As this question unavoidably leads to platitudes, let us quickly dispose of it. It is an obvious fact that now I can fly from Los Angeles to Boston in eight hours, whereas twenty years ago this trip would have taken four days by train; that the number of automobiles, washing machines, and television sets is multiplying; that the situation of the American worker today is not comparable to that of fifty years ago, or even to that of his European colleague; that the average life span has increased some twenty years in the past few decades, and so forth ad infinitum.

Let us also pass over the dangers inherent in this development: the hydrogen bomb; the possible social and psychological implications of automation; the Malthusian menace of further overcrowding our planet in consequence of the advances of modern medicine; and all the rest. Whether the sum total of human happiness and misery has increased, decreased, or remained approximately constant during the course of human history nobody can tell because there is no yardstick to measure it. Considering the two total wars and the number of minor ones within the life span of one generation, the balance does not automatically jump in favor of our epoch as against the Thirty Years War, the Spanish Inquisition, or the French Revolution.

Life and history are no idyll. When we look back, we find the greatest geniuses, from the prophets in the Bible to Sophocles, Dante, Michelangelo, and even Goethe, filled with dismay about their times; with what modern philosophers would call existential anxiety, deep-rooted doubts about the meaning and goals of life. Nevertheless, we hardly commit an exaggeration when saying that there never was a more profound insecurity about our directions than in present times; a deeper, more all-pervading gap between facts and values, between the world which is and the world which ought to be.

The early Christians in the Roman catacombs did not know whether they would see the next day, but they did know that their martyrdom granted the Crown of Life. The Italian Renaissance was politically one of the most atrocious episodes in history, but it sublimated its gore and cruelty into Giotto’s frescos at St. Francis’s in Assisi and into the Sistine Chapel and the triumphal glory of St. Peter’s. The French Revolution slaughtered thousands at the altar of Liberty, but it brought a new idea into the world which will not perish. We, with all our skyscrapers, space vehicles, comfortable homes, economic abundance, our cars, and doubled life span, are not so fortunate. Whether the abyss of atomic annihilation will devour us or whether we manage precariously to dance at its brink, if everything is said, our creed is that of Iago in Verdi’s Otello—Sento il fango originario in me; e pot? La morte e nulla (I come from primeval slime, and my destiny is death and nothing).

Let us not believe that spiritual qu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Source Notes
• Introduction
• 1 Man’s Universe of Symbols
• 2 Human Values in a Changing World
• 3 Comments on Aggression
• 4 Systems Perspectives on the Problem of Mental Illness
• 5 A Definition of the Symbol
• 6 An Etymology of Symbolism
• 7 The Evolutionary Origins of Symbolism
• 8 The Mind-Body Problem: A New View
• 9 General Theory of Systems: Application to Psychology
• 10 Toward a Generalized Theoretical Model for Psychology
• 11 Problems of Education in America
• 12 On Interdisciplinary Study
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Appendix
• Index