Ilya Prigogine
The future is uncertain... but this uncertainty is at the very heart of human creativity.Collection: Future
We grow in direct proportion to the amount of chaos we can sustain and dissipateCollection: Chaos
The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero.Collection: Zero
The world is richer than it is possible to express in any single language.Collection: World
The real is only one realization of the possible.Collection: Real
Entropy is the price of structure.Collection: Structure
The main character of any living system is openness.Collection: Character
The irreversibility of time is the mechanism that brings order out of chaos.Collection: Order
The more we know about our universe, the more difficult it becomes to believe in determinism.Collection: Believe
The idea of spontaneous generation of life in its present form is therefore highly improbable even to the scale of the billions of years during which prebotic evolution occurred.Collection: Years
It is a remarkable fact that the second law of thermodynamics has played in the history of science a fundamental role far beyond its original scope. Suffice it to mention Boltzmann's work on kinetic theory, Planck's discovery of quantum theory or Einstein's theory of spontaneous emission, which were all based on the second law of thermodynamics.Collection: Hard Work
(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.Collection: Real
Now we see evolutionary trends in a variety of areas ranging from atomic and molecular physics through fluid mechanics, chemistry and biology to large scale systems of relevance in environmental and economic sciencesCollection: Environmental
In far from equilibrium conditions, the concept of probability that underlies Boltzmann's order principle is no longer valid if the structures we observe do not correspond to a maximum of complexionsCollection: Order