Information and self organization. A macroscopic approach to complex systems (Q1210850)

This book contains a new development in the phenomenology of selforganizing systems which consists in the introduction of ideas from ``information theory''. After explaining the wide scope of his ideas in chapters 1 and 14 (which should be read sequencially), in chapters 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 13 he spells out the physico-mathematical foundations for the rest of the material. Even though there are applications scattered among the material in those chapters, most are presented in chapters 5 and 10 dedicated to laser physics. In chapter 11 a phenomenological model describing the phase coupling of hand motion is reported. Chapter 12 is devoted to pattern recognition. Chapter 4 contains the standard illustration of the formulation of thermodynamics via the maximum entropy principle. Although the use of entropy (or negentropy) dynamical systems theory and even topology and category theory in biology (look for the names of Schrödinger, Rashevsky, Waddington) has a long history, it is at well true that mixing ideas from ``information theory'' and synergetics is only beginning, and the present volume is a positive step towards a new tendency in scientific activity.