Fluctuations and Order

This book is the result of a growing realization that fluctuations play an active, even creative, role in nonequilibrium processes such as self-organization, pattern formation, and information processing and energy transduction in biological systems. In contrast to the general notion that fluctuations represent an undesirable "noise" in such systems - unimportant at best and undesirable or disruptive at worst - this book points toward a view in which fluctuations are fundamental aspects of the systems under study and frequently serve a constructive or stabilizing role in the dynamics. It…