Nonlinear Dynamics In The Life And Social Sciences

Incorporating chaos theory into psychology and the life sciences, this text includes empirical studies of neural encoding, memory, eye movements, warfare, business cycles and selection of time series analysis algorithms. There are theoretical chapters on emergence and social dynamics, and clinical contributions dealing with: the measurement of quality of life for psychiatric patients; psychosis; the organization of self; and the role of love in family dynamics. Finally ideas from non-linear dynamics are applied to understanding the creative process.

This book is based on a series of lectures on mathematical biology, the essential dynamics of complex and crucially important social systems, and the unifying power of mathematics and nonlinear dynamical systems theory.

Over the last two decades there has been a great deal of research into nonlinear dynamic models in economics, finance and the social sciences. This book contains twenty papers that range over very recent applications in these areas. Topics covered include structural change and economic growth, disequilibrium dynamics and economic policy as well as models with boundedly rational agents. The book illustrates some of the most recent research tools in this area and will be of interest to economists working in economic dynamics and to mathematicians interested in seeing ideas from nonlinear dynamics and complexity theory applied to the economic sciences.

Fractal dynamics provide an unparalleled tool for understanding the evolution of natural complexity throughout physical, biological, and psychological realms. This book’s conceptual framework helps to reconcile several persistent dichotomies in the natural sciences, including mind-brain, linear-nonlinear, subjective-objective, and even personal-transpersonal processes. A fractal approach is especially useful when applied to recursive processes of consciousness, both within their ordinary and anomalous manifestations. This novel way to study the interconnection of seemingly divided wholes encompasses multiple dimensions of experience and being. It brings together experts in diverse fields—neuropsychologists, psychiatrists, physicists, physiologists, psychoanalysts, mathematicians, and professors of religion and music composition—to demonstrate the value of fractals as model, method, and metaphor within psychology and related social and physical sciences. The result is a new perspective for understanding what has often been dismissed as too subjective, idiosyncratic, and ineffably beyond the scope of science, bringing these areas back into a natural-scientific framework.

This book provides new research on the advances in non-linear dynamics. Chapter One studies compactions in carbon nanotube arrays. Chapter Two reviews the elastic and plastic type behaviours in the Fractal Theory of Motion at nanoscale. Chapter Three analyses a particular model of tumour progression, assuming that the invasive cells, the connective tissue and the proteases are moving through a non-differential medium governed by the Non-Standard Scale Relativity Theory (NSRT) (Scale Relativity Theory with arbitrary constant fractal dimension). Chapter Four studies the process of drug release from a polymer matrix. Chapter Five examines the implications of drug release from a polymeric matrix process. Chapter Six reviews behaviours of travelling waves and Shapiro step types in a tumour-growth model. Chapter Seven discusses the astonishing evolutionary dynamics of a class of nonlinear discrete 2D pattern formations and growth models.

This book capitalizes on the developments in dynamical systems and education by presenting some of the most recent advances in this area in seventeen non-overlapping chapters. The first half of the book discusses the conceptual framework of complex dynamical systems and its applicability to educational processes. The second half presents a set of empirical studies that that illustrate the use of various research methodologies to investigate complex dynamical processes in education, and help the reader appreciate what we learn about dynamical processes in education from using these approaches.

This book represents a selection of papers presented at the Fourth Annual Conference of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and the Life Sciences, held at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, June 24-27, 1995. The book reflects the Society as a whole, consisting of applications of nonlinear methodology in psychophysics, neurophysiology, business and social science as well as applications of the nonlinear paradigm to issues arising in psychotherapy and the study of creativity. Unique are contributions on the use of Boolean networks in the study of psychosis and quality of life. Review articles on the appropriate use of time series methods in psychology and psychophysics provide a valuable reference.