The volume is particularly addressed to the human sciences. It aims to show that these sciences could greatly profit from reframing their problems in the moved spirit of systems theory. The individual sections concern: 1, general systems; 2, semiotics; 3, knowledge and cognition; 4, culture; 5, music; 6, language; 7, literature - 29 authors - among whom one finds e.g. M. Bunge, H. Haken, G. Klit, E. Laszlo, B. Nicolescmu, F. Wuketitis etc - deal with systems in general, they show the application of systems concepts and ideas in individual human sciences, they advance a number of models and hypotheses and offer concrete examples. The volume yields an extensive survey of the history of systems thinking in different sciences and is an excellent state of the art for all pertinent disciplines. It covers relevant concepts as self-organization, evolution, chaos, synergetics, complexity, information, law, theory, cognition, and model building. This collection of essays bears testimony to the mutual penetration and cross-fertilization of all sciences. It is an pioneering enterprise dispensing with the idea of priority of the natural sciences over the human sciences.
It closes our century and comes up with a research programme for the next one.