”...the overall fate of the world depends on the adoption by humanity of a new sort of values based on a general systems Weltanschauung. ”We are seeking another basic outlook: the world as organization. This (outlook) would profoundly change the categories of our thinking and influence our practical attitudes. We must envision the biosphere as a whole...with mutually reinforcing or mutually destructive interdependancies. We need a global system of mutually simbiotic societies, mapping new conditions into a flexible institutional structure and dealing with change through constructive reorganization.”

This proposal assumed that the celebration would be essentially concerned in searching how to answer:

Why, how and what for should we create a WELTANSCHUUNG (worldview)?

as criteria generated by Bertalanffy's Systems Thinking in order to determine what system science should be for.

Then, it was suggested that the whole event might become explicitly a renewed endeavor of the Systems Community toward the development of a General Systems WELTANSCHAUUNG (worldview), needed as an indispensable framework for continuously searching how to make sustainable the presence of humanity in time and in space. Such a suggestion arose necessarily after being recognized that during millennia humans have been involved in an unconscious adventure without realizing that their world have been always growing disorderly.

1. A second proposal considered that this celebration would comprise:
   Bertalanffy - personality and research;
2. Methodology - the General Systems Approach;
3. The Tools (Dynamic Systems, Beyond Dynamic Systems, Cybernetics, Second Order Cybernetics),
4. Ideas from Application Fields (Physical Systems, Biological Systems, Social Systems) and
5. Future Perspectives (A Unified View? and Lessons from Specialists?)

BAC 2001 took place despite there was not time enough to evaluate properly these two appraisals. Neither have the organizers the resources needed for organizing them consistently and harmoniously.

Besides other difficulties emerged from time to time during some necessary inquiries and exchange of views causing some uncertainty about the whole celebration, which looked as if it were a risky meeting.

After all it can be argued that altogether this celebration was again another confrontation between the two main contradictory interpretations that have been determining the features of the Systems Movement:

* The BOTTOM ==> UP approach which evolved from the "systems analysis”, engendered by the relatively ancient analytical way of thinking conceived by Galileo Galilei through his ”Metodo Resolutivo”. This stream has in fact determined the trajectory of the Western civilization along the last four centuries while being diversely developed, though it has been inconsistently implemented. This approach has been recently reinforced by the whole set of technical methods known as "operational research” whose pragmatic features have been causing numerous incoherent conditions.

* The TOP ==> DOWN approach derived from the organismic or gestalt assumption, which led Bertalanffy to confirm first of all the validity of a reconceived holistic way of thinking needed unavoidably for comprehending how living beings perform as open systems. An approach that in addition has become indispensable for conceiving properly and making functional any social system that were considered necessary for cooperatively organizing diverse human performances. It is an approach that aims at clearly seeing the forest for the trees, in order to identify first the whole before trying to recognize its parts and the way these parts are dynamically interrelated.

BAC 2001 never intended to recognize every aspect of the whole Bertalanffian thinking, mainly because it would be impossible to examine in four days what he thought from the 1920s until 1972. However, most participants started to recognize – though not necessarily to agree – what might be the impact of Bertalanffian Systems Thinking in the seriously troubled situation of the human society, which Bertalanffy forecasted more than 30 years ago.

Anyhow, BAC 2001 was an ideological confrontation supported by the following claim:
"The trend we have spoken of appears to be toward science, that is, appropriate conceptual models of reality, without neglecting or denying human concerns. If this is so, science is more than the accumulation of facts and technological exploitation of knowledge in the service of the Establishment: it may still be able to present a grand view and to become deeply humanistic in its endeavour. If we achieve as much as contributing a bit toward humanization of science, we have done our share in the service of society and civilization". [Bertalanffy, L. von: "Robots, Men and Minds. Part One: Toward a New Image of Man " (page 114) 1967]"

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