theory and management by the late 19th century. Founding and early development Where assumptions in Western science from Plato and Aristotle to Isaac Newton's Principia (1687) have historically influenced all areas from the hard to social sciences (see, David Easton's seminal development of the "political system" as an analytical construct), the original systems theorists explored the implications of 20th-century advances in terms of systems. Between 1929 and 1951, Robert Maynard Hutchins at the University of Chicago had undertaken efforts to encourage innovation and interdisciplinary research in the social sciences, aided by the Ford Foundation with the university's interdisciplinary Division of the Social Sciences established in 1931. Many early systems theorists aimed at finding a general systems theory that could explain all systems in all fields of science. "General systems theory" (GST; German: allgemeine Systemlehre) was coined in the 1940s by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, who sought a new approach to the study of living systems. Bertalanffy developed the theory via lectures beginning in 1937 and then via publications beginning in 1946. According to Mike C. Jackson (2000), Bertalanffy promoted an embryonic form of GST as early as the 1920s and 1930s, but it was not until the early 1950s that it became more widely known in scientific circles. Jackson also claimed that Bertalanffy's work was informed by Alexander Bogdanov's three-volume Tectology (1912-1917), providing the conceptual base for GST. A similar position is held by Richard Mattessich (1978) and Fritjof Capra (1996). Despite this, Bertalanffy never even mentioned Bogdanov in his works. The systems view was based on several fundamental ideas. First, all phenomena can be viewed as a web of relationships among elements, or a system. Second, all systems, whether electrical, biological, or social, have common patterns, behaviors, and properties that the observer can analyze and use to develop greater insight into the behavior of complex phenomena and to move closer toward a unity of the sciences. System philosophy, methodology and application are complementary to this science. Cognizant of advances in science that questioned classical assumptions in the organizational sciences, Bertalanffy's idea to develop a theory of systems began as early as the interwar period, publishing "An Outline for General Systems Theory" in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science by 1950. In 1954, von Bertalanffy, along with Anatol Rapoport, Ralph W. Gerard, and Kenneth Boulding, came together at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo