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Book Cover for: The Many Faces of Complexity: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Beauty, Aleksandar Zecevic

The Many Faces of Complexity: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Beauty

Aleksandar Zecevic

Beauty plays an important role in the domain of science and mathematics, and has often served as a "pointer" to new discoveries. Although we cannot fully explain why this approach has been so effective, we can say a great deal about how it works in practice. This book provides the technical background that will allow readers to explore this topic, and gain a better understanding of how aesthetic criteria are used in science. It will also help them see how our sense of beauty relates to natural forms and processes, and contributes to our ability to analyze them. These questions are examined from the perspective of information theory, fractal geometry, complexity theory and nonlinear dynamics, each of which provides us with a different way to investigate the connection between our mathematical models and the physical reality that they represent. Specific topics that are discussed in this context include information entropy, quantum computing, chaos theory, catastrophes, cellular automata and random Boolean networks. The book also contains a separate section on infinite sets, whose properties defy our intuition and stretch the human imagination far beyond anything that we can experience. Our capacity to engage in such speculations is a unique gift, and can often be the source of profound aesthetic experiences (as Kant rightly recognized many years ago).

Book Details

  • Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
  • Publish Date: May 12nd, 2018
  • Pages: 298
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.61in - 6.69in - 0.62in - 1.05lb
  • EAN: 9781987652963
  • Categories: General

About the Author

Dr. Aleksandar Zecevic is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and the Associate Dean for Graduate Studies at Santa Clara University. His technical research interests include the control of complex systems, graph theoretic decomposition algorithms, electric power systems and nonlinear dynamics. Some of his most important results in these fields are summarized in his book: Control of Complex Systems: Structural Constraints and Uncertainty. Over the past 15 years, Dr. Zecevic has also done a considerable amount of work in the area of science and religion. His two books: Truth, Beauty and the Limits of Knowledge: A Path from Science to Religion and The Unknowable and the Counterintuitive: The Surprising Insights of Modern Science, are devoted to this topic. His most recent project is a trilogy on interdisciplinary aesthetics: The Beauty of Nature and the Nature of Beauty, Ten Dialogues about Art and Beauty and The Many Faces of Complexity: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Beauty. Each of these books provides a different perspective on beauty, and the role that it plays in the sciences, the humanities and the arts.