Three examples of irregular bursty behaviour in nonlinear systems have been presented. Crisis-induced intermittency is found in the simple electronic circuits used to study these effects. It has been argued that these examples have in common the property of being variable structure systems, whose configurations can depend on the dynamical response. Important variable structure system applications are described in economics. ecology, and software. These systems also exhibit sudden changes in behaviour due to their dynamics alone. Since ecological systems are observed to be adaptive, responsive, and emergent, it is suggested that the variable structure approach may underly this desirable behaviour, and that study of these systems may allow us to incorporate the emergent and adaptive properties into autonomous engineered systems which do not necessarily rely on human judgement for these desirable properties.
Finally, a pertinent quotation . This is from an article in
New Scientist, 13 June 1998, by Brian Goodwin on the emergent
cooperative behaviours in ant colonies, which are a result of
non-linear dynamical processes. He says, talking about
Richard Dawkins's emphasis on the genetic explanation
of evolution, "This is where the science of complexity
and the study of emergent phenomena come into play. They bridge
a serious gap in evolutionary thinking. In the process, they are
shifting the emphasis from genes and fitness, to emergent order
as a primary source of evolutionary novelty. "