UE 141J: THE NONLINEAR WORLD - A DISCOVERY SEMINAR
The purpose of this course is to introduce the students to the science of "complex" processes. Most processes that we observe or encounter that matter such as hurricanes, earthquakes, avalanches, cell division, cryptography, stock market fluctuations, disease progression and cure, animal behavior, black holes, dark energy, creation of the Universe, etc. are complex processes. Thus, in a sense, this course is about the science of everything that is strange and wonderful and peculiar and dangerous that we encounter.
Why should there be a discovery seminar on the most common things around us then? Because the well charted science that we learn about in school and college and the university deals with rather simple problems - problems where everything is more or less well behaved and so much so that we have very little idea about how to construct quantifiable descriptions of complex phenomena.
This won't be a quantitative class. I will focus on the basic concepts and how their interplay can lead to evolution of complex phenomena. If you are game, we can delve into quantitative analysis but this is not a requirement for this course.
My first topic of discussion will consider one of the most fundamental and mysterious questions we face as intelligent human beings - how did this Universe in which we live come into being? Are there other Universes? How large is this Universe? What was it like a few billion years ago and what will it be like a few billion years from now?
Here is a heads up on what's to come