One of the core issues in biology is the organisation of parts and processes. How can it arise? How can it be dynamically maintained? How can it evolve? Three scientific giants worked on such questions in Vienna and came up with concepts and theories that lay the foundation for further fruitful research. Paul A. Weiss (1898–1989) performed experiments in developmental biology and neuroscience which entailed many system concepts that contradict a mechanistic understanding in biology. Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) set up a theoretical biology, with a system approach at its centre. Rupert Riedl (1925–2005) took the system approach to evolutionary biology and provided explanations for the possibility and limitations of the arising of ever more complex order in living organisms. All three authors considered the whole – the system unit – to be at least as important as the parts for explanations in biology. They developed the system concept in different although connected ways. For all of them, the three-dimensional form was important. Key questions included how the morphological form changes in development and evolution and how this unit determines the parts. Microdeterminism, which refers to the idea that macroscopic phenomena are only determined by events on the micro- or molecular level, has to be complemented by macrodeterminacy (Weiss), which works in the diametrically opposite direction. This distinction points to the hierarchic arrangement of parts and processes in the organism – another basic concept. One question is how this hierarchy originates in development (Weiss, Bertalanffy) and evolution (Riedl). The modalities of influences in a system can be of different sorts; polytonic in the terminology of Weiss. Electric charge distribution, temperature gradients, chemical processes – all these modalities have to be considered. These and other concepts have been elaborated on by the three thinkers, who personally knew each other. The problem of organization, however, remains unsolved. This calls for further research in theory and praxis, research that also makes use of recent knowledge and tools. The talk focuses on the questions that the early thinkers wanted to solve and the approaches they used for that end. Whether this is related to a (new) paradigm or not, and whether it is in line with systems biology or not has to be discussed. [Research funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): P22955-G17]