Order Out of Chaos by Ilya Prigogine

By Ilya Prigogine

Ilya Prigogine, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1977 for his paintings at the thermodynamics of non-equilibrium structures, makes his principles obtainable to a large viewers during this booklet, which has engendered immense debate in Europe and the US. He and his colleague, Isabelle Stengers, convey how the 2 nice subject matters of vintage technological know-how, order and chaos, which coexisted uneasily for hundreds of years, are being reconciled in a brand new and unforeseen synthesis

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We begin to be able to give some answers. Order and disorder are complicated notions: the units involved in the static descrip­ tion of dynamics are not the same as those that have to be introduced to achieve the evolutionary paradigm as expressed by the growth of entropy. This transition leads to a new con­ cept of matter, matter that is "active," as matter leads to irre­ ver sible processes and as irrever sible processes organize matter. The evolutionary paradigm, including the concept of en­ tropy, has exerted a considerable fascination that goes far beyond science proper.

According to others, the Newtonian strat­ egy consisted in isolating some central, specific fact and then using it as the basis for all further deductions concerning a given set of phenomena. In this perspective Newton's genius was located in his pragmatism. He did not try to explain grav­ itation; he took it as a fact. ; point. Physicians thus felt that they were authorized by Newton to refashion the vitalist conception and to speak of a "vital force" sui generis, the use of which would give the description of living phenomena a hoped-for systematic consistency.

Three centuries have now elapsed since Newton's Principia. Science has grown at an incredible speed, permeating the life of all of us. Our scientific horizon has expanded to truly fan­ tastic proportions. On the microscopic scale, elementary par­ tide physics studies processes involving physical dimensions of the order of w- ts em and times of the order of I0-22 sec­ ond. On the other hand, cosmology leads us to times of the order of 1010 years, the "age of the universe. " Science and technology are closer than ever.

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