The Systems View of the World: A Holistic Vision for Our Time

There is more to science than observation, experiment and mathematical formulas: There is also an implicit and vitally important view of the world. This book is the fruit of over three decades of research by Ervin Laszlo, foremost systems scientist and integrative thinkier; it is a clear and comprehensive statement of what the new sciences tell us about living nature, the universe, and ourselves.

Understanding the meaning behind the complex formulas of scientists is more important today than ever before: The holistic and integrative revolution at the end of the century is as rapid and profound as the Einsteinian and quantum revolution was at its beginning. Physicists, cosmologists, biologists, ecologists, and cognitive scientists, together with chaos theorists and cyberneticians, are discovering consistency in nature; the basic and universal laws of evolution and self-organization. Their students project a view of the world that is not mechanistic and atomistic: It is organic and holistic--a view of dynamic wholes, self-creative systems. Grasping the contours of this view is to come to understand the world as it is now discovered by leading-edge scientists. This book is part of the essential literacy of our age.