Paradigms of Complexity. Fractals and Structures in the Sciences

摘要

This document contains all accepted papers to Fractal 2000, the 6th International Multidisciplinary Conference, held 16-19 April 2000 in Singapore. One of the aims of the conference was to review the current status in the field of fractals within realm of complexity and to explore future directions. There is a plenitude of examples in nature displaying complex patterns. The couplings responsible for these intricate patterns give rise to processes and phenomena that are absent when couplings are not present. The universality of such systems can be observed over a wide range of scales, from sub-atomic domain to that of cosmology. Furthermore, in addition to physics, mathematics, and chemistry, where these phenomena were observed first, the existence of complex systems has been confirmed in many disciplines such as medicine, biology, economics and sociology. The underlying geometry is frequently non-Euclidean and can be best analyzed using the tools of fractal analysis.