Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction and Plan
- 2 Principles of Feedback Control
- 3 Discrepancy-Reducing Feedback Processes in Behavior
- 4 Discrepancy-Enlarging Loops, and Three Further Issues
- 5 Goals and Behavior
- 6 Goals, Hierarchicality, and Behavior: Further Issues
- 7 Public and Private Aspects of the Self
- 8 Control Processes and Affect
- 9 Affect: Issues and Comparisons
- 10 Expectancies and Disengagement
- 11 Disengagement: Issues and Comparisons
- 12 Applications to Problems in Living
- 13 Hierarchicality and Problems in Living
- 14 Chaos and Dynamic Systems
- 15 Catastrophe Theory
- 16 Further Applications to Problems in Living
- 17 Is Behavior Controlled or Does It Emerge?
- 18 Goal Engagement, Life, and Death
- References
- Name Index
- Subject Index
14 - Chaos and Dynamic Systems
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction and Plan
- 2 Principles of Feedback Control
- 3 Discrepancy-Reducing Feedback Processes in Behavior
- 4 Discrepancy-Enlarging Loops, and Three Further Issues
- 5 Goals and Behavior
- 6 Goals, Hierarchicality, and Behavior: Further Issues
- 7 Public and Private Aspects of the Self
- 8 Control Processes and Affect
- 9 Affect: Issues and Comparisons
- 10 Expectancies and Disengagement
- 11 Disengagement: Issues and Comparisons
- 12 Applications to Problems in Living
- 13 Hierarchicality and Problems in Living
- 14 Chaos and Dynamic Systems
- 15 Catastrophe Theory
- 16 Further Applications to Problems in Living
- 17 Is Behavior Controlled or Does It Emerge?
- 18 Goal Engagement, Life, and Death
- References
- Name Index
- Subject Index
Summary
Many people are coming to believe that the world is filled with chaos and catastrophe. We're not referring to war, famine, hurricanes, and earthquakes here, but to two sets of ideas in scientific thought. In this chapter and the next we explore these ideas as they bear on self-regulation. Both chaos theory (or dynamic systems theory) and catastrophe theory have implications for behavioral self-regulation. Our treatment here isn't technical, and implications go well beyond the points made here (see Beer, 1995; Kelso, 1995; Nowak & Vallacher, in press; Port & van Gelder, 1995; Smith & Thelen, 1993; Thelen & Smith, 1994; Vallacher & Nowak, 1994; van Geert, 1994). However, even this brief treatment suggests points of contact between these ideas and those in earlier chapters (see also Vallacher & Nowak, 1997, and the commentaries that follow it).
DYNAMIC SYSTEMS
Chaos theory, or dynamic systems theory, has been heralded as a new science by some (Gleick, 1987) and regarded more skeptically by others. Several introductions to it are available (e.g., Alligood, Sauer, & Yorke, 1997; Barton, 1994; Brown, 1995; Field & Golubitsky, 1992; Gleick, 1987; Ruelle, 1991; Stewart, 1990; Thelen & Smith, 1994; Vallacher & Nowak, 1994, 1997; Waldrop, 1992). Rather than present a complete overview, we describe several focal themes, then indicate places where we think these themes apply to subjects of our interest.
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- On the Self-Regulation of Behavior , pp. 250 - 274Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998
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