Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers present a wide ranging and well documented discourse on the gradual emergence of philosophical and scientific thought in regard to conceptions of order and chaos.
In the exposition of one of the main thematic threads of their subject matter, the authors itemise three types of conceptually different systems, only two of which were academically studied and (generally) understood by the progressive expansion of scientific research and theory in relation to the study of natural phenomena exhibited around us - in our terrestrial environment upon this earth, and in the local cosmic environment within which the terrestrial is embedded.
Systems which are in equilibrium or systems which are close to equilibrium are the first two phenomena presented, during which it is noted that such systems are - almost exclusively - the subject matter of the traditional and classical sciences. Such systems are relatively stable, exhibiting known and predictable characteristics which may be represented in parameter driven mathematical models.
However Prigogine chose to attempt investigation of a third and largely ignored class of systems - those which were far from equilibrium. His research earned him the Nobel Prize in 1977, for his work on the thermodynamics of nonequlibrium systems, and his contribution towards the understanding of natural processes and their descriptions has earnt him the respect of many scientists and academics in many fields. The authors have subtitled their publication Man's New Discourse with Nature, and progressively introduce and discuss the conceptual differences between the traditional mechanistic interpretation of the so-called laws of cause and effect and the inability of this paradigm alone to provide explanation for that class of phenomenal systems in which equilibrium conditions are not maintained.
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