Editorial 'Trust me I am a doctor': From parsimonious models to pragmatic decision-making and control

摘要

During the 5th IFAC World Congress which took place in Prague (Czech Republic) in 2005 Professor Rudolf Kalman delivered a keynote speech when he famously declared: 'understand the mathematics and the rest is easy', referring of course to solving complex problems. Surprisingly perhaps, Professor Michael Athans did somehow challenge this argument by pointing out that there exist systems that do not necessarily lend themselves to mathematical descriptions, such as those associated with Management Systems, for instance, and as a consequence subjective reasoning (I suggest e.g. fuzzy logic-based reasoning) should play a more significant role in this case.