Vladimir Dimitrov – författare

Fuzziology studies the fuzziness inherent in what we know about ourselves, the sources and nature of our experience, our thoughts and feelings, drives for understanding and urges to create and realise our potential. This kind of fuzziness is at the core of our existence, at the essence of our humanness. It affects any field of human activity, be it mathematical study of fuzzy equations and fuzzy integrals; engineering design and implementation of fuzzy logic-based methodologies; fuzzy control systems or fuzzy robots. Social fuzziology investigates the role of fuzziness in understanding the dynamic complexity of human existence in the social world. It is a study of the nexus between the complex demands of life -individual and social -and the fuzziness of thinking. Since human evolution over 2 billion years has seen the co-evolution of social complexity with human language and thought, it is likely that the fuzziness of language and thought is especially intimately formed by the demands of social complexity, just as social complexity is sustained by the inherent fuzziness of language and thought. Social fuzziology is not simply one field of application of fuzziology. Given the initial state of the development of fuzziology, social fuzziology needs to develop hand in hand with fuzziology, each helping to advance the other.

Fuzzy logic is a way of thinking that is responsive to human zeal to unveil uncertainty and deal with social paradoxes emerging from it. In this book a number of articles illustrate various social applications to fuzzy logic. The engineering part of the book contains a number of papers, devoted to the description of fuzzy engineering design methodologies. In order to share the experience gained we select papers describing not the application result only but the way how this result has been obtained, that is explaining the design procedures. The potential readership of this book includes researchers and students, workers and engineers in both areas of social and engineering studies. It can be used as a handbook and textbook also. The book includes some examples of real fuzzy engineering.

At the beginning of the new millennium, fuzzy logic opens a new challenging perspective in information processing. This perspective emerges out of the ideas of the founder of fuzzy logic - Lotfi Zadeh, to develop 'soft' tools for direct computing with human perceptions. The enigmatic nature of human perceptions manifests in their unique capacity to generalize, extract patterns and capture both the essence and the integrity of the events and phenomena in human life. This capacity goes together with an intrinsic imprecision of the perception-based information. According to Zadeh, it is because of the imprecision of the human imprecision that they do not lend themselves to meaning representation through the use of precise methods based on predicate logic. This is the principal reason why existing scientific theories do not have the capability to operate on perception-based information. We are at the eve of the emergence of a theory with such a capability. Its applicative effectiveness has been already demonstrated through the industrial implementation of the soft computing - a powerful intelligent technology centred in fuzzy logic. At the focus of the papers included in this book is the knowledge and experience of the researchers in relation both to the engineering applications of soft computing and to its social and philosophical implications at the dawn of the third millennium. The papers clearly demonstrate that Fuzzy Logic revolutionizes general approaches for solving applied problems and reveals deep connections between them and their solutions.

The book applies the principles and insights of Fuzzy Logic to the complexity of social life. It draws on the full range of the social sciences, including some of the most up-to-date work on the escalating complexities of post modern life, e.g. new information technologies in a global world, new forms of consciousness and identity, new relationships between humans, machines, nature and environment. The volume is interdisciplinary, combining expertise from Fuzzy Logic and the Postmodern Social Sciences, synthesising and applying concepts and methods of Fuzzy Logic in innovative ways to the world of social life. It gives readers from the social sciences a comprehensive, exciting and practical guide for applying Fuzzy Logic, while bringing a rich body of social problems and concepts on to the agenda for researchers in Fuzzy Logic and related fields.

Fuzziology studies the fuzziness inherent in what we know about ourselves, the sources and nature of our experience, our thoughts and feelings, drives for understanding and urges to create and realise our potential. This kind of fuzziness is at the core of our existence, at the essence of our humanness. It affects any field of human activity, be it mathematical study of fuzzy equations and fuzzy integrals; engineering design and implementation of fuzzy logic-based methodologies; fuzzy control systems or fuzzy robots. Social fuzziology investigates the role of fuzziness in understanding the dynamic complexity of human existence in the social world. It is a study of the nexus between the complex demands of life -individual and social -and the fuzziness of thinking. Since human evolution over 2 billion years has seen the co-evolution of social complexity with human language and thought, it is likely that the fuzziness of language and thought is especially intimately formed by the demands of social complexity, just as social complexity is sustained by the inherent fuzziness of language and thought. Social fuzziology is not simply one field of application of fuzziology. Given the initial state of the development of fuzziology, social fuzziology needs to develop hand in hand with fuzziology, each helping to advance the other.

At the beginning of the new millennium, fuzzy logic opens a new challenging perspective in information processing. This perspective emerges out of the ideas of the founder of fuzzy logic - Lotfi Zadeh, to develop ''soft'' tools for direct computing with human perceptions. The enigmatic nature of human perceptions manifests in their unique capacity to generalize, extract patterns and capture both the essence and the integrity of the events and phenomena in human life. This capacity goes together with an intrinsic imprecision of the perception-based information. According to Zadeh, it is because of the imprecision of the human imprecision that they do not lend themselves to meaning representation through the use of precise methods based on predicate logic. This is the principal reason why existing scientific theories do not have the capability to operate on perception-based information. We are at the eve of the emergence of a theory with such a capability. Its applicative effectiveness has been already demonstrated through the industrial implementation of the soft computing - a powerful intelligent technology centred in fuzzy logic. At the focus of the papers included in this book is the knowledge and experience of the researchers in relation both to the engineering applications of soft computing and to its social and philosophical implications at the dawn of the third millennium. The papers clearly demonstrate that Fuzzy Logic revolutionizes general approaches for solving applied problems and reveals deep connections between them and their solutions.

Fuzzy logic is a way of thinking that is responsive to human zeal to unveil uncertainty and deal with social paradoxes emerging from it. In this book a number of articles illustrate various social applications to fuzzy logic. The engineering part of the book contains a number of papers, devoted to the description of fuzzy engineering design methodologies. In order to share the experience gained we select papers describing not the application result only but the way how this result has been obtained, that is explaining the design procedures. The potential readership of this book includes researchers and students, workers and engineers in both areas of social and engineering studies. It can be used as a handbook and textbook also. The book includes some examples of real fuzzy engineering.