This special book you look on the Internet is a new kind multi-layered e-book, which, according to your choice and interest describes our world and the systems around us.
The book is about the same, about systems and controls on different levels, addressing readers of different backgrounds and interests. In its several surfaces it intends to give explanations about these topics for high-school educated interested people, for experts with different professions even with non-technical background, for undergraduate students who would like for to get deeper knowledge in system and control theory, for specialists using and building several systems and for those who search the beauty and deepness of modern system theory.
The book starts with a comics-like surface for those who are generally interested in the topic. The next surface gives the explanations of these pictures. Two surfaces can be seen parallel. The main topics are discussed then on another surface on undergraduate level. Some examples with system view are shown from various areas of life (e.g. cooking, driving a car, examples related to energy production or oil refineries, economy, etc.). Another surface gives deeper insight into some topics of modern mathematical system theory.
This multilevel e-book is also an open experiment for those who feel something similar and would like to give an orientation on their own speciality in the sea of knowledge flooding continuously. The book and its idea is of free use.
The first surface intends to show that our whole world, inside and outside, is composed of systems. Therefore it can be stated that the frames of our thinking, i.e. our philosophy is originated from analyzing the common features of these systems.
The essence of system theory: different systems have a number of common basic properties which characterize their behavior. Mathematics is the common tool for the analysis and design of systems. In each level of this book the mathematical forms describing the common behavior are shown in some extent. These are the differential equations, the Maxwell and Hamilton equations, some elements of group theory, spaces and transformations describing the behavior of systems. Repetition of the same basic thought on different levels is maybe a most practical and beautiful approach to system view.
A separate chapter is devoted to the two methods of controlling the behavior of systems. One method is control based on negative feedback. The second is using the methods of the so called artificial intelligence, which use mainly logical and probabilistic considerations translated to our everyday thinking schemes.
A further material was written for specialists who would desire to think further in topics of modern system theory, provoking system thinking.
The educational surface accompanies continuously the discussions of the other surfaces. This surface is related to the undergraduate control course of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. It does not substitute a conventional control textbook, rather emphasizes the basic conceptions, joining to the philosophical surface of the book and providing analysis and synthesis methods. Examples are also given illustrating the aims of the book and the usefulness of the methods. A roadmap helps the coordination, indicating which pages contain educational content.
An annotated glossary belongs to the text. The explanations of all the conceptual and technical words appear onto a mouse click.
A comic strip is our peculiarity. It tries to demonstrate the more abstract concepts with simple tools, as comic strips make it with the oral texts generally. This is also part of our experiment. We hope that this method will find not only followers but also developers.
With these hopes we dispatch this experiment employing us for a long time.