IN THE BEGINNING
HE SOCIETY for General Systems Re-T search started very modestly in the fall of 1954. The story has been told many times, but it is a good one and worth repeating.
The four founding fathers were gathered around a lunch table at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford not long after that institution started. There was Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Ralph Gerard, Anatol Rapoport, and myself. We had already discovered that we had reached much the same place in our thinking from very differing origins: Bertalanffy from biology, Gerard from physiology, Rapoport from mathematical network theory, and myself from economics. It was so clear that we were all on the same wavelength, that somebody-I forget who-said, "Let's form a society." Then with a good deal of good humored joking we decided to do so.
Somebody observed that the American Association for the Advancement of Science was meeting that December in Berkeley and said, "Why don't we call a meeting and see if anybody comes? If nobody comes, obviously we should not form a society." So around the table we drew up a manifesto and gave the society its first name, which was the Society for the Advancement of General Systems Theory.
The manifesto, with an invitation to the