IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2017 - 86

economists, so biologists lack a knowledge of the
inevitabilities so important in the economic behaviour of society.
Figure 10 shows the cover of this book. As it appears
to be unavailable except for inspection in a few libraries
in German-speaking areas, my brief account is based
on Dittmann [7].
The publication had a very small distribution. In
1961 Wagner admitted authorship and claimed that
the book was suppressed soon after appearance by
the "new rulers" of Germany. The publisher, too, is a
bit of a mystery. Born in Bohemia in 1875, Emil
Haim founded his small publishing company in
1910. The fact that he had abandoned Judaism in
1919 and died in 1937 did not save his business
from confiscation the following year after the Austrian Anschluss.

Early Steps

FIGURE 8. The opening page of Staatsbiologie, which was to

cover the anatomy, physiology, and pathology of the State.

(a)

(b)

Significant early German work in biological areas was
associated with information ideas. There is certainly a
need to avoid post-hoc overinterpretation; nevertheless,
the early recognition of the importance of feedback
loops in the control of the functions of living organisms
was a huge step, as was the recognition of the wider
application of systems ideas, including early system flow
diagrams. To the modern reader, the work of Uexküll is
the most interesting, and of great significance for the
development of the application of information and systems ideas to both biological and social systems. It is
worth concluding with two of his
philosophical ideas from [6]:
All reality is a subjective phenomenon - this must form
the great fundamental recognition of biology. It is quite
pointless to search the entire
world for reasons independent of the subject; we shall
always encounter objects
which owe their structure to
the subject.
T he v a s t ne s s [o f t he
world] forms the invisible
canvas on which the panorama surrounding every one of
us is painted in the color of
the local signs and forms [...]
An objective picture of the
world, appropriate to all
subjects, must necessarily
remain a phantom.

(c)

FIGURE 9. The conversion of a topographical diagram into systems diagrams. (a)

Topographical approach. (b) A systems approach. (c) Distribution of the produce.
86

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

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DECEMBER 2017



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