The system problem is essentially the problem of the limitation of ana — Ludwig von Bertalanffy

"The characteristic of the organism is first that it is more than the sum of its parts and second that the single processes are ordered for the maintenance of the whole."

"The rule is derived inductively from experience, therefore does not have any inner necessity, is always valid only for special cases and can anytime be refuted by opposite facts. On the contrary, the law is a logical relation between conceptual constructions; it is therefore deductible from upper [übergeordnete] laws and enables the derivation of lower laws; it has as such a logical necessity in concordance with its upper premises; it is not a mere statement of probability, but has a compelling, apodictic logical value once its premises are accepted"

"Wholeness [Ganzheit], Gestalt, is the primary attribute of life."

"What in the whole denotes a causal equilibrium process, appears for the part as a teleological event."

"The science of life has nowadays to a certain extent become a crossroad, in which the contemporary intellectual developments converge. The biological theories have acquired a tremendous ideological [weltanschauliche], yes even public and political significance... The condition of biology, problematic in many respects, has led to the situation that the “philosophies of life” were until now by no means satisfactory from the scientific as much as the practical point of view; we see all the more clearly the importance of the theoretical clarification of biology."

"Our conception is that of a theory about the system in an inertial state... if the organism is a system in an inertial state, as our law expresses it, the metabolic processes generally have to follow the established system; the ever progressing findings must replace the general expression of a system in an inertial state by a more and more detailed knowing about the nature of this system and its chemical, osmotic, fermentive system conditions."