Hello Paul, All.
Icon/Ikon Books, publishers of those stimulating 'for beginners/
Introducing' series of cartoon books, has published "Chaos for
Beginners". Don't have the ISBN. It has too much physics for my
liking but is an excellent introduction to the subject with
recommendations for further reading.
I took note of the following text c. page 132:
Local and Global Chaos
Prigogine's ideas on self-organization have also led to the notion of
"self-organized cities" or "chaotic cities". In cities,
self-organization occurs in two forms: local or microscopic chaos and
global macroscopic or deterministic chaos. Local chaos is a result of
the behaviour of the individual components of a city, e.g. the
movement of cars on a motorway
[Figure: traffic jam and a driver with a cartoon bubble 'bloody chaos']
Deterministic chaos arises when, as a consequence of
self-organization, the individual parts are attracted by a few
attractors. The city jumps back and forth chaotically from one
attractor to another. For example, on a freeway, the movement of cars
is randomly distributed at nights and almost uniformly distributed at
rush hours.
[Figure: multi-level motorway junction with a bubble 'There is thus a
shift from chaos to order and then back to chaos']
The play between chaos and order shows up in daily routines and not
just in long-term development.
ENDS
For further reading on dissipative systems try I. Prigogine & I.
Stengers [1984] "Order out of chaos", altho this may lead towards
thermodynamics.
With very best wishes,
Pascal Desmond
Business Manager
World Transport Policy & Practice
ISSN 1352-7614.
World Transport Policy & Practice
Eco-Logica Ltd., 53 Derwent Road, LANCASTER, LA1 3ES. U.K.
telephone +44 1524 63175 fax +44 1524 848340
Editor: Professor John Whitelegg [log in to unmask]
Business manager: Pascal Desmond [log in to unmask]
http://www.ecoplan.org/wtpp/index.htm
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Kind regards
Pascal Desmond
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