Description

2013 Reprint of 1958 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. A series of lectures on the role of nonlinear processes in physics, mathematics, electrical engineering, physiology, and communication theory. From the preface: "For some time I have been interested in a group of phenomena depending upon random processes. One the one hand, I have recorded the random shot effect as a suitable input for testing nonlinear circuits. On the other hand, for some of the work that Professor W. A. Rosenblith and I have been doing concerning the nature of the electroencephalogram, and in particular of the alpha rhythm, it has occurred to me to use the model of a system of random nonlinear oscillators excited by a random input. . . . At the beginning we had contemplated a series of only four or five lectures. My ideas developed pari passu with the course, and by the end of the term we found ourselves with a set of fifteen lectures. The last few of these were devoted to the application of my ideas to problems in the statistical mechanics of gases. This work is both new and tentative, and I found that I had to supplement my course by the writing over of these with the help of Professer Y. W. Lee. "