This book contains the courses given at the Fourth School on Statistical
Physics and Cooperative Systems held at Santiago, Chile, from 12th to
16th December 1994. This School brings together scientists working on
subjects related to recent trends in complex systems. Some of these
subjects deal with dynamical systems, ergodic theory, cellular automata,
symbolic and arithmetic dynamics, spatial systems, large deviation
theory and neural networks. Scientists working in these subjects come
from several aeras: pure and applied mathematics, non linear physics,
biology, computer science, electrical engineering and artificial
intelligence. Each contribution is devoted to one or more of the
previous subjects. In most cases they are structured as surveys,
presenting at the same time an original point of view about the topic
and showing mostly new results. The expository text of Roberto Livi
concerns the study of coupled map lattices (CML) as models of spatially
extended dynamical systems. CML is one of the most used tools for the
investigation of spatially extended systems. The paper emphasizes
rigorous results about the dynamical behavior of one dimensional CML;
i.e. a uniform real local function defined in the interval [0,1],
interacting with its nearest neighbors in a one dimensional lattice.