The Sixth Annual Conference of the Center for Nonlinear Studies at the Los Alamos National Laboratory was held May 5-9, 1986, on the topic "Nonlinearity in Condensed Matter: Lessons from the Past and Prospects for the Future. " As conference organizers, we felt that the study of non- linear phenomena in condensed matter had matured to the point where it made sense to take stock of the numerous lessons to be learned from a variety of contexts where nonlinearity plays a fundamental role and to evaluate the prospects for the growth of this general discipline. The successful 1978 Oxford Symposium on nonlinear (soliton) struc- ture and dynamics in condensed matter (Springer Ser. Solid-State Sci. , Vol. 8) was held at a time when the ubiquity of solitons was just begin- ning to be appreciated by the condensed matter community; in subsequent years the soliton paradigm has provided a rather useful framework for in- vestigating a large number of phenomena, particularly in low-dimensional systems. Nevertheless, we felt that the importance of nonlinearity in wider arenas than "solitonics" merited a significant expansion in the scope of the conference over that of the 1978 symposium. Indeed, many of the lessons are quite general and their potential for cross-fertilization of otherwise poorly connected disciplines was certainly one of the prime motivations for this conference. Thus, while these proceedings contain many contribu- tions pertaining to soliton behavior in different contexts, the reader will find much more as well, particularly in the later chapters.
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