It took many decades for Peirce's coneept of a relation to find its way
into the microelectronic innards of control systems of eement kilns,
subway trains, and tunnel-digging machinery. But what is amazing is that
the more we leam about the basically simple coneept of a relation, the
more aware we become of its fundamental importanee and wide ranging
ramifications. The work by Di Nola, Pedrycz, Sanchez, and Sessa takes us
a long distanee in this direction by opening new vistas on both the
theory and applications of fuzzy relations - relations which serve to
model the imprecise coneepts which pervade the real world. Di Nola,
Pedrycz, Sanchez, and Sessa focus their attention on a eentral problem
in the theory of fuzzy relations, namely the solution of fuzzy
relational equations. The theory of such equations was initiated by
Sanchez in 1976, ina seminal paper dealing with the resolution of
composite fuzzy relational equations. Sinee then, hundreds of papers
have been written on this and related topics, with major contributions
originating in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Poland, Japan, China, the
Soviet Union, India, and other countries. The bibliography included in
this volume highlights the widespread interest in the theory of fuzzy
relational equations and the broad spectrum of its applications.