Structurally stable systems (Q1089655)

Various generalizations and modifications of roughness (structural stability) of a dynamical system are reviewed. The notion of coarseness was introduced by Andronov and Pontryagin in 1937. Because both mathematical and physical motivations were used, this notion turned out to be fruitful in theory and in applications. The subsequent generalizations and modifications are based solely on mathematical ideas, and they try to exploit properties encountered more recently in the study of abstract dynamical systems, such as properties of nonwandering points, hyperbolic sets, trajectories on topologically peculiar surfaces, generic systems, etc. As a consequence of this essentially ars-pro-artis point of view, these generalizations and modifications have not yet found any genuine physical (biological, etc.) applications. The author recognizes this fact, but contends that the absence of applied relevance is bound to disappear sooner or later, and claims that the discovery of the Lorenz attractor constitutes a first breakthrough. Unfortunately the Lorenz model of convective fluid flow is physically useless, because it does not describe the properties of any real fluid.