Author : Graeme Snooks
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 510 pages
File Size : 22,11 MB
Release : 2002-09-11
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1134775717
This book discusses the nature and process of change in human society over the past two million years. The author draws on economic, historical and biological concepts to examine the driving forces of change and looks to likely developments in the future. This analysis produces some very thought-provoking and controversial conclusions.
Author : Harry F. Dahms
Publisher : Emerald Group Publishing
Page : 313 pages
File Size : 36,13 MB
Release : 2012-10-29
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1781900345
Emphasis is placed in Continental European social theory, and on the importance of political analyses to theorizing modern societies. This title focuses on dynamic processes that gave way to illuminate structural features of modern social life.
Author : J. A. Scott Kelso
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 48,33 MB
Release : 1995
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780262611312
foreword by Hermann Haken For the past twenty years Scott Kelso's research has focused on extending the physical concepts of self- organization and the mathematical tools of nonlinear dynamics to understand how human beings (and human brains) perceive, intend, learn, control, and coordinate complex behaviors. In this book Kelso proposes a new, general framework within which to connect brain, mind, and behavior.Kelso's prescription for mental life breaks dramatically with the classical computational approach that is still the operative framework for many newer psychological and neurophysiological studies. His core thesis is that the creation and evolution of patterned behavior at all levels--from neurons to mind--is governed by the generic processes of self-organization. Both human brain and behavior are shown to exhibit features of pattern-forming dynamical systems, including multistability, abrupt phase transitions, crises, and intermittency. Dynamic Patterns brings together different aspects of this approach to the study of human behavior, using simple experimental examples and illustrations to convey essential concepts, strategies, and methods, with a minimum of mathematics. Kelso begins with a general account of dynamic pattern formation. He then takes up behavior, focusing initially on identifying pattern-forming instabilities in human sensorimotor coordination. Moving back and forth between theory and experiment, he establishes the notion that the same pattern-forming mechanisms apply regardless of the component parts involved (parts of the body, parts of the nervous system, parts of society) and the medium through which the parts are coupled. Finally, employing the latest techniques to observe spatiotemporal patterns of brain activity, Kelso shows that the human brain is fundamentally a pattern forming dynamical system, poised on the brink of instability. Self-organization thus underlies the cooperative action of neurons that produces human behavior in all its forms.
Author : Asish Ghosh
Publisher : Springer
Page : 252 pages
File Size : 14,92 MB
Release : 2015-04-06
Category : Science
ISBN : 3319107356
This book is a study of the interactions between different types of systems, their environment, and their subsystems. The author explains how basic systems principles are applied in engineered (mechanical, electromechanical, etc.) systems and then guides the reader to understand how the same principles can be applied to social, political, economic systems, as well as in everyday life. Readers from a variety of disciplines will benefit from the understanding of system behaviors and will be able to apply those principles in various contexts. The book includes many examples covering various types of systems. The treatment of the subject is non-mathematical, and the book considers some of the latest concepts in the systems discipline, such as agent-based systems, optimization, and discrete events and procedures.
Author : Judith A. Howard
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 19,36 MB
Release : 2006-11-02
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780521030151
Sociologists generally study macrolevel institutions and social processes with little reference to the individual. Psychologists, on the other hand, tend to study individual-level processes with little reference to society. This volume, featuring contributions from influential scholars in US social psychology, brings the link between the individual and society into focus. The chapters in the volume are distinguished by their concentration on either cognitive, affective or behavioural processes. These analyses eschew the traditional psychological approach to individual-level processes and instead offer intriguing accounts of how thought, emotion and action are embedded in social context and are central to the dynamic between self and society. Together, the 14 chapters present a synthesis of theory and research that are a major force in stimulating and influencing investigations of the link between the individual and the larger society.
Author : Albert Rutherford
Publisher :
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 50,99 MB
Release : 2020-08-13
Category :
ISBN :
Learn to be comfortable with change. Increase your tolerance for uncertainty. Chaos and unpredictability dominate our world- affecting even the smallest of events. We often cannot predict how seemingly insignificant actions will alter our lives. This may lead us into rash decisions driven by the urge to regain control and quickly fix problems. But poorly considered decisions often create more problems for us than they solve.If you can't fight something, get to know it and use it to your advantage.This book is a primer on nonlinear system dynamics and chaos; how these forces shape our world and how to overcome their adverse effects. Reading this book will teach you to prepare for unpredictable events, and give you the tools to navigate the challenges of a chaotic world. The Systems Thinker - Dynamic Systems sheds light on why sometimes life sometimes unfolds counterintuitively to expectations, how small changes can lead to tremendously big ones over time.- Learn the difference between linear and nonlinear systems and their effect on your life.- Deepen your knowledge about the additivity and homogeneity principle.- How to use synergy and interference in real life?- What are feedback loops and how can they generate equilibrium?Explore and fix the "problems that never seem to go away".- - Detailed introduction to chaos theory and the butterfly effect.- Learn the importance of exponentials, power laws, long-tail distribution, phase transitions, bifurcation, and strange attractors.- Discover the world of fractals.Get introduced to the world of chaos. Learn about the Raleigh-Benard instability, Metcalf's Law, Edward Lorenz's discovery of the Butterfly Effect, Benoit Mandelbrot's concept of fractals, the Koch snowflake and others. Incorporate the concept of chaos and unpredictability into your life to -counterintuitively - find more peace and predictability.
Author : Joseph E. Stiglitz
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 427 pages
File Size : 41,42 MB
Release : 2015-10-06
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0231540620
“A superb new understanding of the dynamic economy as a learning society, one that goes well beyond the usual treatment of education, training, and R&D.”—Robert Kuttner, author of The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy Since its publication Creating a Learning Society has served as an effective tool for those who advocate government policies to advance science and technology. It shows persuasively how enormous increases in our standard of living have been the result of learning how to learn, and it explains how advanced and developing countries alike can model a new learning economy on this example. Creating a Learning Society: Reader’s Edition uses accessible language to focus on the work’s central message and policy prescriptions. As the book makes clear, creating a learning society requires good governmental policy in trade, industry, intellectual property, and other important areas. The text’s central thesis—that every policy affects learning—is critical for governments unaware of the innovative ways they can propel their economies forward. “Profound and dazzling. In their new book, Joseph E. Stiglitz and Bruce C. Greenwald study the human wish to learn and our ability to learn and so uncover the processes that relate the institutions we devise and the accompanying processes that drive the production, dissemination, and use of knowledge . . . This is social science at its best.”—Partha Dasgupta, University of Cambridge “An impressive tour de force, from the theory of the firm all the way to long-term development, guided by the focus on knowledge and learning . . . This is an ambitious book with far-reaching policy implications.”—Giovanni Dosi, director, Institute of Economics, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna “[A] sweeping work of macroeconomic theory.”—Harvard Business Review
Author : Elizabeth Shove
Publisher : SAGE
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 36,18 MB
Release : 2012-05-17
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1446290034
Everyday life is defined and characterised by the rise, transformation and fall of social practices. Using terminology that is both accessible and sophisticated, this essential book guides the reader through a multi-level analysis of this dynamic. In working through core propositions about social practices and how they change the book is clear and accessible; real world examples, including the history of car driving, the emergence of frozen food, and the fate of hula hooping, bring abstract concepts to life and firmly ground them in empirical case-studies and new research. Demonstrating the relevance of social theory for public policy problems, the authors show that the everyday is the basis of social transformation addressing questions such as: how do practices emerge, exist and die? what are the elements from which practices are made? how do practices recruit practitioners? how are elements, practices and the links between them generated, renewed and reproduced? Precise, relevant and persuasive this book will inspire students and researchers from across the social sciences. Elizabeth Shove is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University. Mika Pantzar is Research Professor at the National Consumer Research Centre, Helsinki. Matt Watson is Lecturer in Social and Cultural Geography at University of Sheffield.
Author : Granino A. Korn
Publisher : CRC Press
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 48,58 MB
Release : 2016-04-19
Category : Mathematics
ISBN : 1439836434
Showing you how to use personal computers for modeling and simulation, Interactive Dynamic-System Simulation, Second Edition provides a practical tutorial on interactive dynamic-system modeling and simulation. It discusses how to effectively simulate dynamical systems, such as aerospace vehicles, power plants, chemical processes, control systems, a
Author : Mikko Rask
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 152 pages
File Size : 37,46 MB
Release : 2019-12-14
Category :
ISBN : 9780367891022
The field of public participation is developing fast, with phenomena such as citizen science and crowdsourcing extending the resource base of research, stimulating innovation and making science more accessible to the general population. Promoting public participation means giving more weight to citizens and civil society actors in the definition of research needs and in the implementation of research and innovation. As yet, there is limited understanding of the implications of widespread use of public participation and as a result, there is a risk that it will become a burden for research and an obstacle to bridging the gap between research and society. This volume presents the findings of a three-year international study on innovative public participation. The resulting work studies the characteristics and trends of innovative public participation through a global sample of 38 case studies. It provides theoretical generalisations on the dynamics of public participation, suggestions for an evaluation framework and clear empirical examples of how public participation works in practice. Illustrated by best practice cases, the authors identify characteristics which contribute to successful public participation. The book is aimed primarily at scholars and practitioners of public participation, as well as research managers, policy makers and business actors interested in related issues. There is also a secondary market for students and scholars of European governance studies, sociology and political sciences.
