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Before the 1940s the terms system and systems thinking had been used by several scientists, but it was Bertalanffy's concepts of an open system and a general systems theory that established systems thinking as a major scientific movement

Fritjof Capra

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Fritjof Capra
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: February 1
Environmentalist
Physicist
Writer
Vienna
Austria
Term
Scientist
Used
Concepts
Established
Thinking
Terms
Scientists
General
Systems
Theory
Several
Movement
Scientific
System
Majors
Open
Major

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During periods of relaxation after concentrated intellectual activity, the intuitive mind seems to take over and can produce the sudden clarifying insights which give so much joy and delight.
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Tektology was the first attempt in the history of science to arrive at a systematic formulation of the principles of organization operating in living and nonliving systems.
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Organizations need to undergo fundamental changes, both in order to adapt to the new business environment and to become ecologically sustainable.
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In the end, the aggressors always destroy themselves, making way for others who know how to cooperate and get along. Life is much less a competitive struggle for survival than a triumph of cooperation and creativity.
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At the deepest level of ecological awareness you are talking about spiritual awareness. Spiritual awareness is an understanding of being imbedded in a larger whole, a cosmic whole, of belonging to the universe.
Fritjof Capra
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In Hinduism, Shiva the Cosmic Dancer, is perhaps the most perfect personification of the dynamic universe. Through his dance, Shiva sustains the manifold phenomena in the world, unifying all things by immersing them in his rhythm and making them participate in the dance - a magnificent image of the dynamic unity of the Universe.
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Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science but man needs both.
Fritjof Capra
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The creativity and adaptability of life expresses itself through the spontaneous emergence of novelty at critical points of instability. Every human organization contains both designed and emergent structures. The challenge is to find the right balance between the creativity of emergence and the stability of design.
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Mystics understand the roots of the Tao but not its branches scientists understand its branches but not its roots. Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science but man needs both.
Fritjof Capra
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Modern physics had shown that the rhythm of creation and destruction is not only manifest in the turn of the seasons and in the birth and death of living creatures, but is also the very essence of inorganic matter. For modern physicists...Shiva's dance is the dance of subatomic matter.
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For children, most importantly, being in the garden is something magical.
Fritjof Capra
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The more we study the major problems of our time, the more we come to realise that they cannot be understood in isolation. They are systemic problems, which means that they are interconnected and interdependent.
Fritjof Capra
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Subatomic particles do not exist but rather show 'tendencies to exist', and atomic events do not occur with certainty at definite times and in definite ways, but rather show 'tendencies to occur'.
Fritjof Capra
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Knowledge cannot be separated from a certain way of life which becomes its living manifestation. To acquire mystical knowledge means to undergo a transformation one could even say that the knowledge is the transformation.
Fritjof Capra
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A sustainable human community is designed in such a manner that its ways of life, technologies, and social institutions honor, support, and cooperate with nature's inherent ability to sustain life.
Fritjof Capra
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The term paradigm, from the Greek paradeigma (pattern), was used by Kuhn to denote a conceptual framework shared by a community of scientists and providing them with model problems and solutions
Fritjof Capra
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Doing work which has to be done over and over again helps us recognize the natural cycles of growth and decay, of birth and death, and thus become aware of the dynamic order of the universe. Ordinary work, as the root meaning of the term indicates, is work that is in harmony with the order we perceive in the natural environment.
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Ecology and spirituality are fundamentally connected, because deep ecological awareness, ultimately, is spiritual awareness.
Fritjof Capra
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Zen phrase says The instant you speak about a thing you miss the mark.
Fritjof Capra
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Whenever the essential nature of things is analysed by the intellect, it must seem absurd or paradoxical. This has always been recognized by the mystics, but has become a problem in science only very recently.
Fritjof Capra