{"id":8036,"date":"2019-05-22T16:03:20","date_gmt":"2019-05-22T16:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/general_system_theory_-gst\/"},"modified":"2019-05-22T16:03:20","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T16:03:20","slug":"general_system_theory_-gst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/general_system_theory_-gst\/","title":{"rendered":"General system theory (GST)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A courageous attempt by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.isss.org\/lumLVB.htm\" class=\"cc-route-enabled\" target=\"_self\" data-editable-link=\"http:\/\/www.isss.org\/lumLVB.htm&amp;target=_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ludwig von Bertalanffy<\/a> (1901-1972) to provide a systems framework for promoting interdisciplinary research. &nbsp;Drawing largely on irreversible thermodynamics and exploring its application to living systems, he devised not so much a theory, as a general model of organization applicable to open systems at different levels of analysis. &nbsp;In this respect, he came to influence to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/gb\/knowledge\/isbn\/item1160663\/?site_locale=en_GB\" class=\"cc-route-enabled\" target=\"_self\" data-editable-link=\"http:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/gb\/knowledge\/isbn\/item1160663\/?site_locale=en_GB?target=_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Piaget<\/a> when he pointed out to him that his depiction of developmental stages amounted to static equilibrium encountered in closed systems. &nbsp;Following this exchange, Piaget considered his stages to be temporary stable states in an open system. &nbsp;At the heart of von Bertalanffy&#8217;s GST was the notion of logical homologies:&nbsp;even though the substrates of two systems may be different, their behavior could follow the same laws. &nbsp;The problem was that GST lacked the mathematical tools for discovering such &#8216;laws&#8217;, and consequently failed to meet its potential. &nbsp;The rise of dynamical systems theory in more recent years has enabled this and other shortcomings of GST to be overcome.<\/p>\n<p>See <a href=\"closed_system\">Closed system<\/a>, <a href=\"dynamical_systems_approaches\">Dynamical systems approaches<\/a>, <a href=\"ecological_systems_theory\">Ecological systems theory<\/a>, <a href=\"homology\">Homology<\/a>, <a href=\"irreversible_thermodynamics\">Irreversible thermodynamics<\/a>, <a href=\"open_system\">Open system<\/a>, <a href=\"organization\">Organization<\/a>, <a href=\"system\">System<\/a>, System approach  <\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><\/body><\/html><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A courageous attempt by Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972) to provide a systems framework for promoting interdisciplinary research. &nbsp;Drawing largely on irreversible thermodynamics and exploring its application to living systems, he devised not so much a theory, as a general model of organization applicable to open systems at different levels of analysis. &nbsp;In this respect, he &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/general_system_theory_-gst\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;General system theory (GST)&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-8036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-glossary","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}