From Being to Becoming: Time and Complexity in the Physical Sciences

Ilya Prigogine (1917-2003) was a Russian-born naturalized Belgian physical chemist and Nobel Laureate noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility. This 1980 book was perhaps his first work intended for a "general reader" (see his Order Out of Chaos, Is Future Given?, and The End of Certainty for later, easier-to-read books).

He has three main theses: (1) "irreversible processes are as REAL as reversible ones." (2) "irreversible processes play a fundamental CONSTRUCTIVE role in the physical world." (3) "irreversibility is deeply rooted in dynamics." He adds, "This formulation leads to a unified picture that enables us to relate many aspects of our observations of physical systems to biological ones. The intention is not to 'reduce' physics and biology to a single scheme, but to clearly define the various levels of description and to present conditions that permit us to pass from one level to another."

One of his key paragraphs (pg. 83-84) is this: "Biological order is both architectural and functional; furthermore, at the cellular and supercellular levels, it manifests itself by a series of structures and coupled functions of growing complexity and hierarchical character. This is contrary to the concept of evolution as described in the thermodynamics of isolated systems, which leads simply … to 'disorder.' … The unexpected new feature is that nonequilibrium may … lead to a new type of structure, the DISSIPATIVE structures, which are essential in the understanding of coherence and organization in the nonequilibrium world in which we live."