ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the convergence of two apparently dissimilar disciplines, dynamical systems and computers, and its implications for the understanding of both complexity and biological computation. The architecture of organization appears in economic systems, formal research organizations and computing structures, and produces nonergodic behavior in many problems with a hierarchy of energy barriers. Molecular diffusion in complex macromolecules, and spin glasses, provide examples where this behavior is found. To finish this presentation in a more speculative note and report some studies that have undertaken to characterize the dynamics of behavior. Although unrelated to computation, these issues will illustrate how a very complex system such as the brain can sometimes be phenomenologically described using techniques which invoke only a few variables. The chapter presents some speculations about the application of dynamical systems to human behavior.
