Order Out of Chaos
Man's New Dialogue with Nature
Published on 23. January 2018
384 pages
978-1-78663-101-5 (ISBN)
Description
Order Out of Chaos is a sweeping critique of the discordant landscape of modern scientific knowledge. In this landmark book, Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine and acclaimed philosopher Isabelle Stengers offer an exciting and accessible account of the philosophical implications of thermodynamics. Prigogine and Stengers bring contradictory philosophies of time and chance into a novel and ambitious synthesis. Since its first publication in France in 1978, this book has sparked debate among physicists, philosophers, literary critics and historians.
More details
Series
Edition
Ebook UK & RoW
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Reflowable
ISBN-13
978-1-78663-101-5 (9781786631015)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
01/2018
Verso Books
€30.00
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Persons
Isabelle Stengers is a professor of philosophy at the Universit¿ Libre de Bruxelles. Trained as a chemist and philosopher, her publications include Cosmopolitics, a comprehensive reconsideration of the entire history of modern science from Galileo to contemporary complexity theory. She received the grand prize for philosophy from the Acad¿mie Fran¿aise in 1993.
Viscount Ilya Romanovich Prigogine was a Belgian physical chemist noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems and irreversibility. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1977.
Viscount Ilya Romanovich Prigogine was a Belgian physical chemist noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems and irreversibility. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1977.
Content
- Intro
- Halftitle Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Table of Contents
- Foreword: Science and Change
- Preface: Man's New Dialogue with Nature
- Introduction: The Challenge to Science
- Book One: The Delusion of the Universal
- Chapter I: The Triumph of Reason
- The New Moses
- A Dehumanized World
- The Newtonian Synthesis
- The Experimental Dialogue
- The Myth at the Origin of Science
- The Limits of Classical Science
- Chapter II: The Identification of the Real
- Newton's Laws
- Motion and Change
- The Language of Dynamics
- Laplace's Demon
- Chapter III: The Two Cultures
- Diderot and the Discourse of the Living
- Kant's Critical Ratification
- A Philosophy of Nature? Hegel and Bergson
- Process and Reality: Whitehead
- "Ignoramus, Ignoramibus": The Positivist's Strain
- A New Start
- Book Two: The Science of Complexity
- Chapter IV: Energy and the Industrial Age
- Heat, the Rival of Gravitation
- The Principle of the Conservation of Energy
- Heat Engines and the Arrow of Time
- From Technology to Cosmology
- The Birth of Entropy
- Boltzmann's Order Principle
- Carnot and Darwin
- Chapter V: The Three Stages of Thermodynamics
- Flux and Force
- Linear Thermodynamics
- Far from Equilibrium
- Beyond the Threshold of Chemical Instability
- The Encounter with Molecular Biology
- Bifurcations and Symmetry-Breaking
- Cascading Bifurcations and the Transitions to Chaos
- From Euclid to Aristotle
- Chapter VI: Order Through Fluctuations
- Fluctuations and Chemistry
- Fluctuations and Correlations
- The Amplification of Fluctuations
- Structural Stability
- Logistic Evolution
- Evolutionary Feedback
- Modelizations of Complexity
- An Open World
- Book Three: From Being to Becoming
- Chapter VII: Rediscovering Time
- A Change of Emphasis
- The End of Universality
- The Rise of Quantum Mechanics
- Heisenberg's Uncertainty Relation
- The Temporal Evolution of Quantum Systems
- A Nonequilibrium Universe
- Chapter VIII: The Clash of Doctrines
- Probability and Irreversibility
- Boltzmann's Breakthrough
- Questioning Boltzmann's Interpretation
- Dynamics and Thermodynamics: Two Separate Worlds
- Boltzmann and the Arrow of Time
- Chapter IX: Irreversibility-the Entropy Barrier
- Entropy and the Arrow of Time
- Irreversibility as a Symmetry-Breaking Process
- The Limits of Classical Concepts
- The Renewal of Dynamics
- From Randomness to Irreversibility
- The Entropy Barrier
- The Dynamics of Correlations
- Entropy as a Selection Principle
- Active Matter
- Conclusions: From Earth to Heaven-the Reenchantment of Nature
- An Open Science
- Time and Times
- The Entropy Barrier
- The Evolutionary Paradigm
- Actors and Spectators
- A Whirlwind in a Turbulent Nature
- Beyond Tautology
- The Creative Course of Time
- The Human Condition
- The Renewal of Nature
- Notes
- Index
