Extending chaos and complexity theory to address life, brain and quantum foundations

摘要

Years ago, many researchers proposed that chaos theory could provide a kind of universal theory of the qualitative behavior of all dynamical systems. Thus it could provide a solid mathematical foundation for unifying efforts to address the three really fundamental questions of basic science: (1) what is life?; (2) what is mind or intelligence?; (3) what are the underlying physical laws of the universe? Chaos theory is essentially a recent extension of a larger field of mathematics which it is part of: nonlinear system dynamics (NSD). It mainly addresses systems governed by Ordinary Differential Equations (ODE) or their discrete-time cousins. Because the vast bulk of models now used in computational neuroscience are ODE models, it is only natural that neuroscience has developed great interest in the use of NSD as a tool for analyzing and designing neural network models. Walter Freeman, in particular, has played a seminal role in describing how chaos theory can be used in computational neuroscience, in his classical models of the olfactory system, described in articles in Scientific American and many scientific journals and IJCNN proceedings. His colleague Morris Hirsch in mathematics has helped provide a solid foundation for this work. This work has helped to inspire many efforts throughout the world to use chaos as a design principle in computer systems and in artificial neural network (ANN) design. Recently, however, several issues or questions have begun to emerge, some at Berkeley and some in other places. The author discusses these questions and their implications.