Vladimir Dimitrov - Böcker

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.

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.

The book focuses on both the engineering applications of fuzzy logic and soft computing and its social applications and philosophical insights at the dawn of the third millennium. The included papers clearly demonstrate that fuzzy logic revolutionizes general approaches to solving applied problems and reveals deep connections between those approaches and the underlying unique theoretical framework. The book consists of three parts: Understanding Society, Mathematics, and Modelling and Control Systems. The first part reveals different aspects of fuzziology, a new study of fuzziness inherent in human knowledge. The second part explores the mathematical foundations of soft computing, while the third part elicits its innovative engineering applications.

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.