Synergetics Applied to Pattern Formation and Pattern Recognition

Synergetics is the study and analysis of complex systems which are composed of many subsystems. These systems show the ability to selforganize spontaneously on macroscopic scales, i.e. we may observe highly ordered spatial, temporal, or spatio-temporal structures on scales which are much larger than the corresponding characteristic scales of the subsystems. As a result, we conclude that there must be very many subsystems coherently involved in order to produce these highly regular states on characteristic scales of the composed system. Synergetics offers a unified viewpoint to the emergence of such patterns and the underlying processes. Furthermore, powerful mathematical methods have been developed in this field to understand and predict the spontaneous occurrence of order, qualitatively as well as quantitatively.