Ancient alchemy : the elements through the ages - Inner alchemy : elemental symbols and the psyche - Somatic alchemy - Elemental movement - Embodying the elements.

The idea of this book is to establish a new scientific discipline, “noology,” under which a set of fundamental principles are proposed for the characterization of both naturally occurring and artificial intelligent systems. The methodology adopted in Principles of Noology for the characterization of intelligent systems, or “noological systems,” is a computational one, much like that of AI. Many AI devices such as predicate logic representations, search mechanisms, heuristics, and computational learning mechanisms are employed but they are recast in a totally new framework for the characterization of noological systems. The computational approach in this book provides a quantitative and high resolution understanding of noological processes, and at the same time the principles and methodologies formulated are directly implementable in AI systems. In contrast to traditional AI that ignores motivational and affective processes, under the paradigm of noology, motivational and affective processes are central to the functioning of noological systems and their roles in noological processes are elucidated in detailed computational terms. In addition, a number of novel representational and learning mechanisms are proposed, and ample examples and computer simulations are provided to show their applications. These include rapid effective causal learning (a novel learning mechanism that allows an AI/noological system to learn causality with a small number of training instances), learning of scripts that enables knowledge chunking and rapid problem solving, and learning of heuristics that further accelerates problem solving. Semantic grounding allows an AI/noological system to “truly understand” the meaning of the knowledge it encodes. This issue is extensively explored. This is a highly informative book providing novel and deep insights into intelligent systems which is particularly relevant to both researchers and students of AI and the cognitive sciences.

Fuzzy logic is widely used in machine control. The term ‘fuzzy’ refers to the fact that the logic involved can deal with concepts that cannot be expressed as either ‘true’ or ‘false’, but rather as ‘partially true’. Fuzzy set theory is very suitable for modeling the uncertain duration in process simulation, as well as defining the fuzzy goals and fuzzy constraints of decision-making. It has many applications in industry, engineering and social sciences. This book presents the proceedings of the 2015 International Conference on Fuzzy Systems and Data Mining (FSDM2015), held in Shanghai, China, in December 2015. The application domain covers geography, biology, economics, medicine, the energy industry, social science, logistics, transport, industrial and production engineering, and computer science. The papers presented at the conference focus on topics such as system diagnosis, rule induction, process simulation/control, and decision-making. They include papers on solving practical problems with intelligent algorithms; statistical analysis; classification and clustering; and association rule learning. They also reflect the frontier in data mining research and address the challenges posed to data analytics research by the increasingly large datasets yielded by many application domains, together with new types of unstructured data. The book provides an overview of the ways in which fuzzy theory and data mining principles are applied in various fields, and will be of interest to all those who work in either the theory or practice of fuzzy systems and data mining.

In Aristotle’s Ever-turning World in Physics 8 Dougal Blyth analyses, passage by passage, Aristotle’s reasoning in his explanation of cosmic movement, and provides a detailed evaluation of ancient and modern commentary on this centrally influential text in the history of ancient and medieval philosophy and science. In Physics 8 Aristotle argues for the everlastingness of the world, and explains this as deriving from a single first moved body, the sphere of the stars whose rotation around the earth is caused by an immaterial prime mover. Blyth’s explanation of Aristotle’s individual arguments, techniques of reasoning and overall strategy in Physics 8 aims to bring understanding of his method, doctrines and achievements in natural philosophy to a new level of clarity.

Marking the 30th anniversary of the European Conference on Modelling and Simulation (ECMS), this inspirational text/reference reviews significant advances in the field of modelling and simulation, as well as key applications of simulation in other disciplines. The broad-ranging volume presents contributions from a varied selection of distinguished experts chosen from high-impact keynote speakers and best paper winners from the conference, including a Nobel Prize recipient, and the first president of the European Council for Modelling and Simulation (also abbreviated to ECMS). This authoritative book will be of great value to all researchers working in the field of modelling and simulation, in addition to scientists from other disciplines who make use of modelling and simulation approaches in their work.

Laban/Bartenieff Movement Studies: Contemporary Applications offers a framework for understanding movement as it influences our perceptions of ourselves and others. In moving through that framework, Wahl explains what the movement analysis is, how it works, and how readers can use it in their lives.

This collection of original papers provides an overview of the state of the art of research in the area of human motor control, with an approach that has movement biomechanics as a common base. The reader can find interesting information in this book and a stimulus for new studies and investigations.