Table of Contents

Part 1 How nature handles complexity: what is a pattern? kinds of patterns; principles of dynamic pattern formation; the messages of self-organized patterns; new laws to be expected in the organism; matters of mind and matter; the mind revealed? or, what this book's about. Part 2 Self-organization of behaviour - the basic picture: some historical remarks about the science of psychology; are actions self-organized? if so, how? from synergies to synergetics; requirements of a theory of self-organized behaviour. Part 3 Self-organization of behaviour - first steps of generalization: Hubris tempered? on Harvard horses and Russian cats; coordination between components of an organism; coordination between organisms; on coupling. Part 4 Extending the basic picture - breaking away: relative coordination; relative coordination explained; absolute and relative coordination unified; related models - fireflies, lampreys, and lasers; instability and the nature of life - the intermittency mechanism exposed postscript. Part 5 Intentional dynamics: goal-directness in biology; the second cornerstone of biological self-organization - informational; specificity; intentional behaviourial change; related views - termites, predator-prey cycles, and quantum mechanics; summing up. Part 6 Learning dynamics: issues in learning; the main concepts; the 'seagull effect' - competition and cooperation; questions of learning; transfer and generalization - symmetry again; behaviourial development; evolution and morphogenesis; summary and conclusions. Part 7 perceptual dynamics: the barrier of meaning - perceptual dynamics I; the barrier of meaning - perceptual dynamics II; metastability of mind; principles of perceiving - calculating, settling, resonating, and twinkling. Part 8 Self-organizing dynamics of the nervous system: microscale events; mesoscale events; macroscale events; extending the basic picture...again; postscript on etymology. Part 9 Self-organization of the human brain: prolegomenon; obstacles to understanding; the brain is not a static machine; the 'brain dynamics' approach - fractural dimension; spatiotemporal patterns of the brain; models of brain behaviour - coupled modes and Sil'nikov chaos; summary and conclusions - brain behaviour.

About the Author

J. A. Scott Kelso holds the Glenwood and Martha Creech Chair in Science at Florida Atlantic University and is Founder and Director of the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences.