Chaotics

The new discipline of chaotics will alter our thinking about the real forces of change in our society. As presented here, chaotics emphasizes that the real world cannot be understood in terms of conventional deterministic philosophies or standard chaos theory, but that complexity in itself has a powerful but subtle role to play. How does this apply to business and society? To what degree are our lives governed by misguided notions-or do our businesses succeed by chance-because real societal and business forces and their effects are not really understood? Beginning with the foundations of the discipline, this book applies chaotics to business and wealth creation and to society. On the social side, it examines a sea-change in the philosophy of everyday living, be it the concept of employment or our relationship to the environment. The book examines personal identity and its loss in modern society, as well as the search for new contacts and gratification through technology. The authors look at the stunted growth of philosophy against science but emphasize what philosophy has to tell us in a chaotic world. A major new text which will be of interest to professionals and scholars in business, government, and society.

Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments
Foundations of Chaotics
A Routemap to the Concepts and the Book
An Overview of Chaos and Complexity
Insights from Numbers and Visualizing Chaos
Contrasts in Chaos Theory, Complex Systems Theory, and Greek Omelettes, in the Search for Chaotic Axioms
Business Chaotics: Perspectives on Wealth Creation--a Positive Approach
Production for Increasing Returns
Economics, Intelligence and Turbulence
Technology Forecasting, with a Safety Net
Breakthrough and Soft Landing
Social Chaotics: Principles for Designing and Building Society--a Sea-Change in the Philosophy of Living
Earthly Space-Time Trade-Offs
Employment, Unemployment and Its Antidotes
The Coming Take-Off of the Third World
An Environment in Search of Its Guardians
A Recap
Briefly, Thinking with Chaotics--And Our 21st Century Agenda
Appendices: Computing under Chaotics--Slow Decay versus Self-Organization; Playing Simple Games with Numbers
Bibliography
Glossary of Terms
Index