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The study of nonlinear dynamics offers “unexplored possibilities” for overcoming the current “stalemate” in knowing how to face the many threats facing modern civilization. So concludes a statement issued following a study week organized last month by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

The statement was drawn up by Marcelo Sanchez Sornod, chancellor of the academy, and Vladimir Keilis-Borok, of the International Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory and Mathematical Geophysics in Moscow. It has been put forward as a contribution to the deliberations of the World Conference on Science.

The authors say that the meeting extended a wide range of debates on the applications of nonlinear dynamics to critical phenomena. It also identified areas in which the resources offered by such a form of analysis “have not been fully exploited”.

In particular, the meeting suggested that one area might be the study of scenarios of transition to “unsustainability”, and ways of responding to them. “Such a study may help to overcome a lack of interest in this question, something which was criticized by several speakers,” say the authors of the statement.

“We should engage neither in Cassandra-like announcements of future catastrophes, nor in any irresponsible optimism,” the authors write. “Today, in the face of the global complexity of our contemporary context, the human being, more than ever before, is called upon to find that right kind of rationality which will achieve survival and sustainability through the application of new and well-deployed practical criteria.”

Full text: http://helix.nature.com/wcs/m16s.html