'Unity through Diversity': Austrian Experts and International Systems: Thinking after 1945

• In Event: Habsburg Experts between Austria-Hungary and the United States

Abstract

Born just outside Vienna in 1901, Ludwig von Bertalanffy was the self-proclaimed founder of General System Theory, a meta-disciplinary scientific program that promised to develop “system laws” that scaled across disciplines and locations. This paper explores the contours of the expert status Bertalanffy cultivated over the course of his career as he promoted General System Theory in Austria, the United States, and beyond.Drawing on correspondence, published and unpublished manuscripts, public lectures, and media appearances, this paper reconstructs transnational networks of knowledge production and demonstrate the deep entanglement of prewar Viennese philosophy and postwar scientific internationalism.

Author

• Libby S O'Neil, Yale U