CALL for PAPERS and COMMENTS in order to participate in the Symposium IV (NIMW)
"New Image of Man and Woman
supported by a new General Anthropology"
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This Symposium is one of the events that has been planned as an Homage to
Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy. It has been conceived as a FORUM for
presentation of papers, lectures, speeches, posters and also an Open Space
for self-organized debates and discussions. It will take place in the
International Conference on Systems Thinking Globally Concerned
Bertalanffy Anniversary Conference BAC 2001
UNITY <==> through <==> DIVERSITY
November 1-4, 2001
University of Vienna and Vienna University of Technology
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It aims at searching reliable ways for building the interdisciplinary
enterprise (comprising human biology, psychology, psychiatry, sociology,
linguistics, economics, the arts,...) that may help to create societal
circumstances needed for allowing the individual emergence during the life
of every person learning on his/her own to consciously develop his/her
peculiar personality, while his/her intrinsic spontaneity was confronted to
diverse cultural, economic and social conditions determined peculiarly by
the performance of those humans that constitute every human society,...
It will be taken into account that during the history of civilization, many
humans have been deshumanized due to the technological control and
unilateral (arbitrary) conquest of Nature and exploitation of masses of
people; ...being ignored that some hominids in the past could create for
the whole species an environment of their own out of symbols; which allowed
our ancestors to become living beings (humans) potentially capable to
develop abilities to direct their own evolution on ethical levels, through
the cultivation of humane values; but...
The model of the human being as an open system - a GST principle - may
allow any person to see the individual human being as a whole dynamic
entity rather than as an assortment of parts, processes and traits. When
humans learn to perceive each other as a complex whole characterized
diversely by many traits (gender, age, race,...) -Bertalanffy suggested
-the world might be able to achieve a revolution of harmony.
Bertalanffy believed humanity faces a clear and present danger of being
dehumanized, even destroyed, by debasing self-images. He noted that in the
past mass persuasion had been generally practiced as a craft and claimed
that this problem had taken on a frighteningly pseudo-scientific form as a
modern behavioral engineering (founded by Watson and developed by Skinner,
who were inspired by the Pavlov's conditioned reflexes in rats). This
behaviorism would lead towards totalitarianism (either a benevolent one, as
in Huxley's Brave New World, or a malevolent one, as in Orwell's 1984).
Bertalanffy was explicitly against the
positivist-mechanistic-reductionistic approach that produced this
psychological technology which aimed at increasing the control of people.
Consequently he became deeply interested in finding out what would be a
"new science of man" or general anthropology "The image of man is not only
a theoretical question,... it is a question of the preservation of man as
human"
Dear Reader, you are invited to send a 'position text ' (around 1000
words), arguments, comments and questions, for the Conversazione on NIMW
that may take place before the Conference.
Abstracts of papers (500 -1000 words), for being submitted in the
Conference, may also be sent for being considered to elohimjl
<elohimjl@mail.zserv.tuwien.ac.at>
Your contribution is welcome in a normal e-mail message.
No attachments please
For taking part in the conversazione before the conference it is necessary
to become a subscriber sending the text:
subscribe bertalanffy-list
to
lists@igw.tuwien.ac.at
Everybody may visit http://www.bertalanffy.org/discus where all the
previous and following contributions for the debate will be included
Conference Fee:
Rich countries EURO 140
Poor countries EURO 70
Students EURO 50
Received on Sat Sep 8 23:36:38 2001
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