Erich Jantsch (8 January 1929 12 December 1980) was an Austrian system-theorist, philosopher, astrophysicist, engineer, educator, author, consultant and futurist, especially known for his work in the social systems design movement in Europe in the 1970s.
Biography
Born in Vienna in 1929, Jantsch studied physics at the University of Vienna, where he obtained his doctorate in astrophysics in 1951. Subsequently, he did a post-doctorate study at the Indiana University Bloomington for another year. He continued to work in Europe and United States. From 1957 to 1962 Jantsch worked as an engineer and physicist in Switzerland. In 1974, Jantsch stayed at the Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio, "where he was one of the first distinguished residents invited by the Rockefeller Foundation".
Jantsch was an advisor to twenty governments, several international organizations and research institutes. He had been "alone and lonely, abandoned by friends, misunderstood by colleagues".
The Self-Organizing Universe
Jantsch's Gauthier Lectures in System Science given in May 1979 at the University of California in Berkeley became the basis for his book The Self-Organizing Universe: Scientific and Human Implications of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution, published by Pergamon Press in 1980 as part of the System Science and World Order Library edited by Ervin László. The book deals with self-organization as a unifying evolutionary paradigm that incorporates cosmology, biology, sociology, psychology, and consciousness. Jantsch is inspired by and draws on the work of Ilya Prigogine concerning dissipative structures and nonequilibrium states.
Now out of print for many years, The Self-organizing Universe has been influential in the interdisciplinary fields of biomimicry, holism, co-evolution, and self-organization. It was extensively cited in Ken Wilber's integral philosophy book Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution.
Reception
Jantsch was described as "quiet and modest", but as an "original polymath and genius" by Ralph H. Abraham in "The Genesis of Complexity".
Magoroh Maruyama wrote in a eulogy:
<blockquote>Jantsch succumbed at the age of 51 to the material and physical hardships that worsened progressively during the last decade of his prolific and still young life. This makes us realize again the harsh and brutal conditions of life some of the innovators must endure. ... Let us face squarely the fact that Jantsch was given no paid academic job during a decade of his residence in Berkeley—a town considered to be a foremost spawning ground of scientific and philosophical innovations." Jantsch penned his own epitaph: "Erich Jantsch died on __ in Berkeley after a painful illness. He was almost 52 and grateful for a very rich, beautiful and complete life. His ashes have been scattered over the sea, the cradle of evolution."</blockquote>
Jantsch's Design for Evolution is described as "a seminal work on general evolution theory (GET)" by Ralph H. Abraham in "The Genesis of Complexity".