Nonlinear and Complex Systems
“Using a term like nonlinear science is like referring to the bulk of zoology as the study of non-elephant animals.” —Stanislaw Ulam
Nonlinearity quite commonly arises through the collective behavior of even the simplest systems: it is insufficient to simply (linearly) add the effects of the components. Instead, the interactions between the components lead to such emergent phenomena as chaos, solitons, fractals and meta/multi-stability. The resulting dynamics can be highly unpredictable, even though the underlying physics is deterministic, but also can result in non-equilibrium pattern formation.