The Center Leo Apostel
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in collaboration with the Doctoral Programme of the VUB, invites 
everybody to the 23th of its interdisciplinary seminars in the series 
"Foundations". In this series CLEA invites scholars that are actively 
engaged in the research on the foundations of a particular discipline. 
Their lectures will always be directed to an interdisciplinary 
audience, and the discussions aim at confronting the foundations of 
the different disciplines.


                        S Y N E R G E T I C S
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        An interdisciplinary approach to Self-Organization in Nature.
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                     by Professor Dr. Hermann Haken
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Tuesday, 17 June 1997 at 5 p.m. in room 5B 404 (building B, fifth 
floor) Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Campus Oefenplein .


About the lecture: 
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Synergetics is an interdisciplinary field of research that deals with 
systems composed of many individual parts and that can spontaneously 
form spatial, temporal or functional structures without specific 
interference from the outside, i. e. by self-organization. 
Examples are provided in physics by pattern formations in fluids and 
lasers, and in chemistry by chemical reactions. These examples allow 
one to unearth general principles for self- organization, namely 
unstability, order parameters, and the slaving principle. These 
general principles can then be applied to numerous fields such as 
visual perception by the brain, the spontaneous formation of patterns 
of electric and magnetic activity in the brain and to the problem of 
decision making. Further applications include the development of a new 
type of computer, namely the synergetic computer. This approach also 
allows one to address the problem of the formation of specific 
movement patterns in animal locomotion. 


About the speaker:
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Hermann Paul Joseph Haken, born 1927, studied mathematics and physics 
at the Universities of Halle and Erlangen and earned his Ph.D in 1951 
at Erlangen. Since 1960 he is Professor of Theoretical Physics at the 
University of Stuttgart. He was a visiting professor and a visiting 
scientist at a variety of places including England, France, the United 
States of America, Russia, and Japan. He published 17 books in 10 
languages on solid state physics, laser physics, quantum optics, 
atomic and molecular physics, and in particular, synergetics, a field 
of research that he founded. He received numerous awards including the 
Albert Michelson Medal (USA), the Honda Prize (Japan), the Max-Planck-
Medal (Germany). He is member of several academies and of the order 
Pour le Merite, (Germany).

The presentations with questions will last about an hour. Afterwards, 
an hour or more is reserved for an in-depth, group discussion of the 
topic. 

More info at the CLEA office: phone 02-644 26 77 or via the Web-page: 
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/CLEA/