how to mutate and take over the world? (pt 2)

A survey of various control applications in physics is given: control
of chaos, controlled synchronization, control of spatiotemporal
systems, control of molecular and quantum systems. An approach for
building models of system dynamics based on control methods is
discussed. The presented methods and results are illustrated by
examples of new approaches to classical problems: Stephenson-Kapitsa
pendulum, escape from a potential well, synchronization of coupled
oscillators, control of chemical reaction with phase transition,
controlled dissociation of molecules, controlled oscillations of
complex crystalline lattices. Controlled pendulums appear in many
parts of the book since pendulum models can be thought of as the
"atoms of nonlinear physics". - Alexander L. Fradkov, "Cybernetical
Physics: From Control of Chaos to Quantum Control", preface

Re: Open Ed Challenge

Fred said:

Possibility of Progress.--When a master of the old civilization vows to
hold no more discussion with men who believe in progress, he is quite
right. For the old civilization has its greatness and its advantages
behind it, and historic training forces one to acknowledge that it can
never again acquire vigor: only intolerable stupidity or equally
intolerable fanaticism could fail to perceive this fact. But men may
consciously determine to evolve to a new civilization where formerly
they evolved unconsciously and accidentally. They can now devise
better conditions for the advancement of mankind, for their
nourishment, training and education, they can administer the earth
as an economic power, and, particularly, compare the capacities of
men and select them accordingly. This new, conscious civilization is
killing the other which, on the whole, has led but an unreflective
animal and plant life: it is also destroying the doubt of progress
itself--progress is possible. I mean: it is hasty and almost
unreflective to assume that progress must necessarily take place: but
how can it be doubted that progress is possible? On the other hand,
progress in the sense and along the lines of the old civilization is
not even conceivable. If romantic fantasy employs the word progress
in connection with certain aims and ends identical with those of the
circumscribed primitive national civilizations, the picture presented
of progress is always borrowed from the past. The idea and the image
of progress thus formed are quite without originality.

-- http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38145/38145-h/38145-h.htm
(Of First and Last Things, section 24), cf.
http://attempter.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/scientism-1-of-5/