AINS Austrian Institute for Nonlinear Studies

Emergent Quantum Mechanics and beyond

If one can say that much of traditional science operates by an implicit linear mapping of objects of knowledge onto observing knowledge acquisitors (i.e., by linear information transfer from objects to observers), then one may very well characterize the present situation in the natural sciences as one of a movement towards a «nonlinear», e.g. circular, relation between objects of knowledge and their investigators (observers). Recursive models, feedback loops, emergence of complex behavior and structures, just to highlight some ideas, are such new modeling devices derived from a nonlinear ansatz.
Concerning the formal meaning of the word, the extension of linear models in the sciences to nonlinear ones has opened vast new areas of research, including investigations of systems with unprecedented degrees of complexity.