Future Trends in Synergetics

Abstract

After a brief description of the goals of synergetics, basic concepts of this interdisciplinary field, such as order parameters and the slaving principles, are sketched. Close to instability points the dynamics of a complex system can be reduced to low dimensional dynamics, where fluctuations can be included. First steps towards the extension of the slaving principle towards delay equations and towards situations far away from instability points are outlined. While the problem of pattern formation has been at the focus of synergetics, new lines of research are the analysis of observed patterns and pattern recognition. The principle of the synergetic computer requires further elaborations. Teaching robots, using concepts of synergetics, may be an important task. New kinds of devices that may return to analogue processes seem to be feasible; here the parallelism of processes will be in the foreground of future research. First steps into this direction were done by studies of lasers and new kinds of semiconductor devices. According to this author’s opinion, physics will play an increasingly important role in medicine, especially in medical diagnosis. Here synergetics can be of help for instance in analysing MEG and EEG recordings, where first steps are reported. A challenging problem remains in how far physical devices can mimick brain functions. Pattern recognition by the synergetic computer and related devices as well as learning by robots are only first steps. It is hoped that the concept of order parameters and the slaving principle will be of use here also.