About the author John L. Casti is a Professor at the Institute for Econometrics, Operations Research, and System Theory at the Technical University of Vienna, Austria. He is the author or editor of nine books, including, most recently, Linear Dynamical Systems and Paradigms Lost: Conflicting Visions of Reality in Modern Science, a science book for the general reader. In addition, he has published over 70 research papers. Professor Casti received his PhD in mathematics from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, in 1970.