As we stand at the precipice of the twenty first century the ability to capture and transmit copious amounts of information is clearly a defining feature of the human race. In order to increase the value of this vast supply of information we must develop means for effectively processing it. Newly emerging disciplines such as Information Engineering and Soft Computing are being developed in order to provide the tools required. Conferences such as the International Conference on Information Processing and ManagementofUncertainty in Knowledge-based Systems (IPMU) are being held to provide forums in which researchers can discuss the latest developments. The recent IPMU conference held at La Sorbonne in Paris brought together some of the world's leading experts in uncertainty and information fusion. In this volume we have included a selection ofpapers from this conference. What should be clear from looking at this volume is the number of different ways that are available for representing uncertain information. This variety in representational frameworks is a manifestation of the different types of uncertainty that appear in the information available to the users. Perhaps, the representation with the longest history is probability theory. This representation is best at addressing the uncertainty associated with the occurrence of different values for similar variables. This uncertainty is often described as randomness. Rough sets can be seen as a type of uncertainty that can deal effectively with lack of specificity, it is a powerful tool for manipulating granular information.

These two volumes consisting of Foundations and Applications provide the current status of theoretical and empirical developments in "computing with words." In philosophy, the twentieth century is said to be the century of language. This is mainly due to Wittgenstein who said: "The meaning of a word is its use in the language game." "The concept game is a concept with blurred edges." In the first phrase, "the language game" implies the everyday human activity with language, and in the latter, "game" simply implies an ordinary word. Thus, Wittgenstein precisely stated that a word is fuzzy in real life. Unfortunately this idea about a word was not accepted in the conventional science. We had to wait for Zadeh's fuzzy sets theory. Remembering Wittgenstein's statement, we should consider, on the one hand, the concept of "computing with words" from a philosophical point of view. It deeply relates to the everyday use of a word in which the meaning of a word is fuzzy in its nature.

This landmark in the development of the state space approach was written by two pioneers in the field. It chiefly concerns the technique's application to systems described by differential equations. Problems of stability and controllability receive particular attention, and connections between this approach and classical techniques are highlighted. 1963 edition.