Synergetics — From Microscopic to Macroscopic Order

Some Introductory Remarks on Synergetics.- I Order, Chaos, Indeterminancies.- Time Pattern Transitions in Biochemical Processes.- Chaotic Behaviours Observed in Homogeneous Chemical Systems.- Wave-Number Selection in Rotating Couette-Taylor Flow.- Periodic and Chaotic Patterns in Selected Quantum Optical Systems.- Chaos in Lasers.- The Falling Pencil and Superfluorescence: Macroscopic Indeterminacies After the Decay of Unstable Equilibria.- II Ordered Structures and Processes in Biomembranes.- On the Formation of Transient Order in Biological Membranes.- Generalized Moment Description of Brownian Dynamics in Biological Systems.- Nonequilibrium Current Noise Generated by Ordered Ion Transport Processes in Biological Membranes.- The Molecular Machine of Photosynthesis-Physico-Chemical Aspects.- III Evolution of Structures.- Polynucleotide Replication and Biological Evolution.- The Evolution Strategy. A Mathematical Model of Darwinian Evolution.- Multigene Families and their Implications for Evolutionary Theory.- Evolution of Biothermodynamic Systems.- Self-Organising Dynamic Models of Human Systems.- IV Social Sciences.- Some Applications of Basic Ideas and Models of Synergetics to Sociology.- A Synergetic Approach to Energy-Oriented Models of Socio-Economic- Technological Problems.- New Synergisms in Socio-Economic Systems: More Questions than Answers.- On the Entropy of Economic Systems.- V Complex Systems.- Death - From Microscopic to Macroscopic Disorder.- Local Synaptic Modification Can Lead to Organized Connectivity Patterns in Associative Memory.- The Organization of Action in Time.- New Problems for an Old Brain - Synergetics, Cognition and Evolutionary Epistemology.- Index of Contributors.