Good condition. -- This book contains the invited papers of an international symposium on synergetics; which was held at SchloB Elnfaru, Bavaria, TRG, April 27 to May 1, 1981. At our previous meetings on synergetics the self-organized formation of structures in quite different disciplines stood in the foreground of our interest. More recently it has turned out that phenomena characterized by the word "chaos" appear in various disciplines, and again far-reaching analogies in the behavior of quite different systems become visible. Therefore this meeting was devoted not only to problems connected with the occurrence of ordered structures but also to most recent results obtained in the study of chaotic motion. In the strict mathematical sense we are dealing here with deterministic chaos, i.e., irregular motion described by deterministic equations. While in this relatively young field of research computer experiments and computer simulations predominated in the past, there now seems to be a change of trend, namely to study certain regular features of chaos by analytical methods. I think considerable progress has been achieved in this respect quite recently. This theoretical work is paralleled by a number of very beautiful experiments in different fields, e.g., fluid dynamics, solid-state physics, and chemistry. -- For the first time at this kind of meeting we have included plasma physics, which presents a number of most fascinating problems with respect to instabilities, formation of structures, and related phenomena. -- I hope that the readers will find this volume as useful as our previous ones, giving a survey on experimental and theoretical studies on synergetic systems. -- This symposium was made possible by a grant from the Volkswagenwerk Foundation, Hannover, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank the foundation for its continuous and very effective support of synergetics. -- I owe particular thanks to my secretary, Mrs. U.Funke, for her great and indispensable help in organizing this symposium and for her assistance in editing these proceedings. (Beginning of preface). ISBN 9783540111016
