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From: jss@sftri.UUCP (J.S.Schwarz)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: Re: Non-linear systems.
Message-ID: <333@sftri.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 20-Jan-85 20:51:42 EST
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Posted: Sun Jan 20 20:51:42 1985
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> 
> I remember some constructions we did in math in college many (many!) years
> ago with functions that were "discontinuous everywhere". Has the above
> sort of thing been done with physical systems? Is this the sort of stuff
> Catastrophy Theory is supposed to deal with?
> 
> 
> Rob Warnock
> Systems Architecture Consultant
> 

No. The subject is nonequilibrium thermodynamics.  A good introduction
is the book

	From Being to Becoming:
	Time and Complexity in the Physical Sciences

	by  Ilya Prigogine

	W. H. Freeman & Co.
	ISBN 0-7167-1108-7 pbk

(Prigogine won a Nobel prize for work related to the contents of the
book, but this book is readable by those with a year or two of
undergraduate physics.)

Jerry Schwarz