Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature

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.

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.

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.

The whole problem with writing about a book, and especially this one, is that one has to cut a long story short. A story long enough to encompass a fair amount of scientific history - elaborated, if not referenced exhaustively. Not that it is meant to be. Prigogine's journey does not offer to take you by the hand for a guided tour of order, complexity and self-organisation. Rather, it keeps to the spirit of Toffler's introduction, (Was it coincidental that it was the other way round?!) where he talks about the wonderful art of scientific dissection. Order out of chaos, however, is a difficult read for the anyone who has been initiated into the scientific non-fiction. For those who expect the book to be a popular account of concepts in complexity and self-organisation, the intense style and the depth of detail can be exhausting. Like Penrose in the Emperor's New Mind, Prigogine's style is uncompromising. Toffler's introduction is fitting, if only in parts. The book does not offer explanations. Rather, Prigogine prefers to illumate his readers with his keen philosophical bent. It is here that the book triumphs. The effort that has gone into integrating the ideas in the book, the subtle nuances reflecting Prigogine's own views is truly commendable. But then, one should be fairly conversant with the loopholes that science finds itself in. The description of the behaviour of complex systems warrants some mention. The idea of switching between reality and mathematical description does not gel with the rest of the narrative in parts - specially when chemistry is the running example. Well, Prigogine wasn't writing the book with the intention of it being self-contained - and he makes no bones about it. That is the seed of inspiration, I suppose, for any writer, be it for the cause of science or for the sheer love for the written word. Prigogine has shown that philosophy is in some way inseparable from what many consider the scientist's playground. And we are glad that he has shared his views with us.

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.