Order out of Chaos [Paperback]

In the book "Order Out of Chaos", Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers investigate both historically and in a scientific sense how order may arise within certain physical systems, so-called dissipative systems. The book itself is divided into three separate "books": Book 1: The Delusion of the Universe, Book 2: The Science of Complexity and Book 3: From Being to Becoming.

In Book 1, some issues pertaining to the history and philosophy of science are raised including issues such as the social origins of science, its relationship to ancient Platonic ideas and the issue of whether classical science led to a dehumanisation of the world. The second stage then explores the basis of classical science as identified with the Newtonian synthesis and how change is represented within it, including time. This study explores more than just the well known collaborators such as Descarte and Newton, others such as Diderot, Hegel and Bergson are also discussed. These thinkers are not ignored or ridiculed as has been done in the past but rather their issues are taken seriously.

In the second book they start to discuss how the science of thermodynamics differs from classical mechanics and the principles of conservation of energy and entropy are discussed. Then they embark on a discussion of how the old thermodynamics of Boltzmann is unable to explain completely how the inherently time reversable equations are unable to explain the irreversability of the entropy law. Some exmaples are given of various physical processes such as chemical reactions and bifurcations and symmetry breaking is introduced. Near the end of this second book the instability of nonlinear physical systems is discussed and how this leads to complex phenomena.

In the third book, there is some discussion of quantum mechanics in order to see if the entropy priciple reigns in this realm as well. The ideas of equilibrium, probablity of random particle motions as well as the arrow of time are mulled over. Non-equilibrium thermodynamics is explored and how a study of random processes is necessary to understand time irreversability as well as how entropy can act as a selection principle in the initial conditions of physical systems. This finally leads to the conclusion section which studies how this new area of science, far from equilibrium systems act as a way of re-enchanting nature once again. This new era promises far more interesting behahaviour than classical linear science. It revamps the idea that time acts as a factor in processes rather than just as a parametr to measure their change.

This is a superb book, one of those rare popular science texts which actually contributes something new and invigorating to the layman rather than simply a revamp of old well worn ideas which then remain as a kind of set piece to demonstrate how well understood the universe is and how science is the only way to study it. This book leaves open many questions, gives incentive to many a layman and scientist, re-invigorates their ideas and promises that nature is far more interesting and creative than is advocated by the popular science press or in fact the media in general. This book does not discuss seemingly now banal issues such as evolution verses intelligent design with its associated champions but rather lets the reader know that as Hamlet states: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy".

Prigogine (and the philosopher and chemist Isabelle Stengers) I met in Order out of Chaos (1984, French original La nouvelle alliance 1979) and later in many other books. About "modern" analytical-reductionist science from the 17th century it is said in the book: "Nature's humiliation is parallell to the glorification of whatever escapes it, God and man" (p. 53 in the Swedish translation from 1984). The depreciation of nature unites science and religion. But life is "the outermost consequence of the occurrence of self-organizing processes, instead of being something outside nature's order" (172). We are the last creation of the nature we learnt to despise. "The classical science", it is said summarizing, "the mythical science about a simple, passive world, belongs to the past, killed not by philosophical criticism or empirical resignation but by the internal development of science itself" (57).
With the help of Prigogine's theory, covering both matter and life, we can overcome the biases of natural science and humanities. For natural science deals with a world without Man, the humanities - and still more "humanism" - with Man without world. The first case can be felt to be poor and inane and the second one to be narrow-minded and anthropocentric. This depends on the fact that in both cases it is a question of abstraction and construction. For the world is one only, it is only we who persist in dividing it into two: Man and Nature, soul and body, mind and matter.
So it becomes urgent to contemplate the relationships between both sides, something I did already in my doctoral dissertation, Landscape and Nature in [Selma Lagerlöf's] Gösta Berling's Saga and the Wonderful Adventures of Nils (in Swedish). That is why it is such a bliss to work and (re)search in the way I do now. And whoever understood how to focus wholeness and process in a great novel and so succeeded to grasp its way of functioning also got prerequisitions to understand big and small systems in the world, from the whirl and the candle light to Earth as a geological-biological organisation. The way of thinking is the same. And evolution runs from matter to man.
Ilya Prigogine (1917-2003) was professor in physical chemistry in Brussels and Austin, Texas. He got the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1977. From an early interest in the humanities he went to a career in natural science, a career that made him the Newton of our time. In contrast to the first Newton, he despises a worldview that does not enclude both Nature and Man (including the scientist himself). And since Prigogine created such a world-view that is adequate and valid, he can be said to be greater than Newton.