DOMINIC W. MASSARO, editor
University of California, Santa Cruz

The Chaos Between Our Ears

Dynamical Cognitive Science
By Lawrence M. Ward. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002. xv + 355 pp. Cloth, $47.00.

Nonlinear dynamical systems theory (NDS) is composed of mathematical concepts concerning attractors, bifurcations, structural stability and instability, chaos, fractals, catastrophes, self-organizing processes, cellular automata, genetic algorithms, and other evolutionary processes. NDS is also known as chaos theory and complexity theory. NDS has already had a widespread impact in physics and biology and growing impact in economics. NDS offers original explanations and insights for psychological phenomena generally (Abraham, Abraham, & Shaw, 1990; Abraham & Gilgen, 1995; Barton, 1994; Robertson & Combs, 1995; Sulis & Combs, 1996; Guastello, 2001). The journal Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences is perhaps the most concentrated sourceof new developments in psychology. Within psychology, NDS has also made recent contributions to the understanding of human cognition, of which Dynamical Cognitive Science by Lawrence M. Ward is a recent case in point.