exploring complexity - aalborg universitet探索.pdf

European Journal of Operational Research 30 (1987) 97-103 97 North-Holland Exploring complexity Ilya P R I G O G I N E Universitd Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium and University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, U.S.A. It has become a tradition of the Center for equilibrium phase transitions. In short, traffic the- Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics to ory presents many characteristics of non-linear organize every year a workshop dealing with sys- systems. tems far from equilibrium. However, this year the I am sure this lesson was present to my mind workshop is held on a special occasion, as it is when I was working on possible extensions of held in honour of Robert Herman, who was cel- thermodynamics to far from equilibrium condi- ebrating his 70th birthday in 1984. tions, and pondering the possibility of the emer- Robert Herman is a man of many talents. To gence of new, dissipative structures. congratulate him on this occasion, we could have As Robert Herman will discuss the prob- organized a workshop on cosmology or molecular lematics of traffic flow, I believe it will be more physics, as he has obtained fundamental results in appropriate forme to present a general survey of both fields. But it happens that he is best known some of the problems involved in the exploration among his colleagues for his contributions to oper- of complexity. ational research, specially for his work on the theory of vehicular traffic. This is an aspect