Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #450777 in Books
• Published on: 1984-03-01
• Released on: 1984-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback

Customer Reviews

A popularization of chaos and its philosophical implications
Prigogine argues persuasively that he has reconciled classical dynamics with the human conviction that the future cannot be predicted from a knowledge of initial conditions and differential equations alone. He draws the reader through his own intellectual odyssey from classical thermodynamics, through linear nonequilibrium thermodynamics, and finally to his holy grail of nonlinear nonequilibrium thermodynamics. I suspect he has identified the quantitative tools that will connect the Human Genome Project to a functional understanding of cell biology and physiology. Tools capable of dealing with complexity.
If you are a scientist who has followed these disciplines from afar, and who has wished for a succinct summary that does not shrink from rigor, then acquire this book. You will chuckle at the constant barbs directed across the English Channel, and you will learn wonderful things about thermodynamics and thermokinetics. So few scientific books reveal the authors' insights. Instead, they teem with facts and formulas. Prigogine and Stengers have bedded physics with philosophy as if they were matchmakers for an illicit tryst. You will find yourself whispering, "Aha!" And you will, as I have, wear out your pen with underlining. I loved Carl Sagan's "Demon Haunted World", but Sagan was speaking to everyman. Prigogine and Stengers are speaking to scientists in fields outside their own. They believe they have seen the light, and they want you to see it too. Give them the chance to convince you. You will not be disappointed.

A classic on self-organization
This work is one of the classics of the breakthrough period of chaos theory, complex systems, and self-organization theories. Mixing two modes and two cultures it stretches its bow between the nitty-gritty details of dissipative systems, and the history of the relations of the human and natural sciences, from the age of the emergence of thermodynamics to the present. The book has something now routinely filtered from discussion, the early critiques of the Newtonian mindset as it was starting to become dominant. The material on the history of the two cultures would seem to fall on deaf ears these days, and gives the book at depth not often seen in works of this type. Very much worth reading.

A thorough study of the history of quantum physics and an exhaustive description of how order emerges from chaos
Prigogine describes his ideas of how order emerged from a ground of chaos and how the processes of entropy can lead a system open to its environment to evolve greater complexity. He also gives an exposition of the relevance of science to society. Prigogine's Nobel prize-winning models of dissipative structures are difficult to understand but persistent effort will reward the reader. His theories are as applicable to the evolution and expansion of consciousness as to the emergence of life on earth from a relatively simple environment.