# Quote — Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life

> The ideas set forth by organismic biologists during the first half of the twentieth century helped to give birth to a new way of thinking — "systems thinking" — in terms of connectedness, relationships, context. According to the systems view, the essential properties of an organism, or living system, are properties of the whole, which none of the parts have. They arise from the interactions and relationships among the parts. These properties are destroyed when the system is dissected, either physically or theoretically, into isolated elements. Although we can discern individual parts in any system, these parts are not isolated, and the nature of the whole is always different from the mere sum of its parts. The systems view of life is illustrated beautifully and abundantly in the writings of Paul Weiss, who brought systems concepts to the life sciences from his earlier studies of engineering and spent his whole life exploring and advocating a full organismic conception of biology.

- Author: [Fritjof Capra](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fritjof-capra.md)
- Book: [The Web of Life](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fritjof-capra/the-web-of-life.md)
- Page: 29
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fritjof_Capra#The_Web_of_Life_(1996)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/fritjof-capra/the-web-of-life/the-ideas-set

## More from this book

> 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.

p. 43 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fritjof-capra/the-web-of-life/tektology-was-the.md)

> The so-called free market does not provide consumers with proper information, because the social and environmental costs of production are not part of the current economic models. ...an ecological tax reform would be strictly revenue neutral, shifting the tax burden from income taxes to "eco-taxes." …the taxes would be added to existing products, forms of energy, services, and materials, so that prices would better reflect true costs.

p. 300 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fritjof-capra/the-web-of-life/the-so-called-free.md)

> In the Germany of the 1920s, the Weimar Republic, both orga­nismic biology and Gestalt psychology were part of a larger intellectual trend that saw itself as a protest movement against the increasing fragmentation and alienation of human nature. The entire Weimar culture was characterized by an antimechanistic outlook, a "hunger for wholeness". Organismic biology, Gestalt psychology, ecology, and, later on, general systems theory all grew out of this holistic zeitgeist.

p. 32 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fritjof-capra/the-web-of-life/in-the-germany.md)