Complexity and Synergetics

Stefan C. Müller, Peter J. Plath, Günter Radons, Armin Fuchs

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9783319643335
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319643342
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: System Theory
• Index: Biological Sciences

All of us are confronted with complex phenomena occurring in daily life and in the living and inanimate nature surrounding us. Our scientific curiosity strives to unravel the mechanisms at work to create such complexity. Among various approaches to solve this problem, the field of synergetics, developed by Hermann Haken, has proven very successful as a general and interdisciplinary concept for describing and explaining complex phenomena that appear in systems under non-equilibrium conditions. These comprise dynamical states in evolving systems, spatial structure-forming processes, synchronization of states and regulatory mechanisms, and many other examples. The encompassing concepts have been applied to many disciplines, like physics, chemistry, biology, and beyond those also from synergetics to information theory, brain science, economics, and others.

Starting from basic methods of complexity research and synergetics, this volume contains thirty contributions on complex systems that exhibit spontaneous pattern formation far from thermal equilibrium. Written by international experts and young researchers assembled under one roof, this volume reflects state of the art research from a variety of scientific fields and disciplines where complexity theory and synergetics are important or even indispensable tools today and in the future.

Table of contents

• Preface
• Contents
• Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 About Self-organization of Information and Synergetics
• 2 Some Aspects of Synergetics. From Laser Light to Cognition
• Physics
• Dynamical Systems with Time-Varying Delay: Dissipative and More Dissipative Systems
• Markov Property of Velocity Increments in Burgers Turbulence
• Beads in a Rotating Box
• Power Grids as Synergetic Systems
• Chemistry
• 7 Nonlinear Phenomena in Heterogeneous Catalysis
• 8 Catalytic Oxidation of CO—A Striking Example of Synergetics
• 9 Understanding Earth: The Self-organization Concept and Its Geological Significance; on the Example of Liesegang-Structures and Electric Fields
• Pattern Formation in Microemulsions Affected by Electric Fields
• 11 Unpinning of Spiral Waves
• 12 Battery—Determination and Forecast via Synergetics
• Dynamics and Control of Spiral and Scroll Waves
• One-Way Diffusion and Active Motion of Ionic Liquids in a Dissolution Process in Water
• Biology
• Pattern Formation in Marine Systems
• 16 Nonlinear Behavior of a Self-Propelled Droplet Coupled with a Chemical Oscillatory Reaction
• All About Cells
• Propagation and Aggregation of Motile Cells of Escherichia coli Pattern
• From Synchronised to Desynchronised Glycolytic Oscillations in Individual Yeast Cells
• Economy
• Financial Market Models
• Structural Change in (Economic) Time Series
• Brain and Coordination Dynamics
• 22 Coarse-Graining to Investigate Cerebral Cortex Dynamics
• Coordination Dynamics and Synergetics: From Finger Movements to Brain Patterns and Ballet Dancing
• 24 The Human Dynamic Clamp: A Probe for Coordination Across Neural, Behavioral, and Social Scales
• Design Principle for a Population-Based Model of Epileptic Dynamics
• Discrete Modeling for a Minimal Circuit in the Hippocampus
• Additional Topics
• 27 I See What You Do Not See
• Performative Science---Transgressions from Scientific to Artistic Practices and Reverse
• Dynamics and Synchronisation in Wind Farms
• Special Lecture
• 30 A Primer for Deterministic Thermodynamics and Cryodynamics
• Index