Stephen J. Guastello, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI

Abstract: Scientific progress tends to travel in waves of interest in particular topics. Sometimes the flow of work on important and difficult topics is interrupted by an attention-getting fad or a surprise new funding source with its own agenda. Our own area of science has experienced waves of its own. There were tides of untested theory in the late 1970s and again in the early 1990s. Each was followed by conceptual consolidation and challenging tests of some of those early ideas in the middle-to-late 1980s and again in the middle-to-late 1990s. A substantial portion of the best material from the latter wave appeared here in NDPLS. In the Call for Creative Theory Papers, the editorial board requested manuscripts containing new and creative applications of nonlinear dynamics to problems in psychology, life sciences, economics, and other social sciences. The objective was to compose this special issue of brief theoretical pieces, a portion of which span to the next issue in January, 2003.