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The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature
Time, the fundamental dimension of our existence, has fascinated artists, philosophers, and scientists of every culture and every century. All of us can remember a moment as a child when time became a personal reality, when we realized what a "year" was, or asked ourselves when "now" happened. Common sense says time moves forward, never backward, from cradle to grave. Nevertheless, Einstein said that time is an illusion. Nature's laws, as he and Newton defined them, describe a timeless, deterministic universe within which we can make predictions with complete certainty. In effect, these great physicists contended that time is reversible and thus meaningless.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1996
53 people are currently reading
1968 people want to read
About the author
Ilya Prigogine
171 books124 followersIlya, Viscount Prigogine (Russian: Илья́ Рома́нович Приго́жин, Ilya Romanovich Prigozhin) was a Russian-born naturalized Belgian physical chemist and Nobel Laureate noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
October 18, 2024
Quite a bit beyond me, not a lot is penetrable by a layman, but some seriously thoughtful insights on the differences between creativity and determinism, in both the arts and the sciences.
Nobel laureate, Chemistry, 1977.
Nobel laureate, Chemistry, 1977.
July 4, 2009
It must be said that my background in mathematics (which is about what could be expected of a "layman" who is interested in science) was not quite up to following the mathematical demonstrations in the book. For a book allegedly written for a lay audience, the author could have done better laying out the mathematics, or at least recommending some introductory texts. At least the book is extensively footnoted, so one could presumably follow up on the references and educate oneself...
Without more confidence in the mathematical claims, it is hard to verify whether this text is as "revolutionary" as it claims to be. To give the authors the benefit of the doubt however, philosophically thier claim is a compelling one: that both classical Newtonian dynamics and quantum mechanics need to be extended by maths that can account for the probablistic behavior of ensembles; and when this is done it accounts (at a formal/mathematical level) for an "arrow of time" and explains irreversible processes (like movements towards equilibriums). The authors claim that this means we live in a probablistic, not a deterministic, universe. This much can be gleaned from reading the dust jacket. Without a strong background in mathematics/physics, I doubt if anyone will get much more out of this book.
Without more confidence in the mathematical claims, it is hard to verify whether this text is as "revolutionary" as it claims to be. To give the authors the benefit of the doubt however, philosophically thier claim is a compelling one: that both classical Newtonian dynamics and quantum mechanics need to be extended by maths that can account for the probablistic behavior of ensembles; and when this is done it accounts (at a formal/mathematical level) for an "arrow of time" and explains irreversible processes (like movements towards equilibriums). The authors claim that this means we live in a probablistic, not a deterministic, universe. This much can be gleaned from reading the dust jacket. Without a strong background in mathematics/physics, I doubt if anyone will get much more out of this book.
January 19, 2018
The book begins by asserting the importance of the role of time in the newly emerging science. Albert Einstein often asserted that Time is an illusion. This is true but only within the confines of classical Newtonian dynamics, relativity and quantum physics which do not distinguish between past and future. Yet everywhere - in chemistry, geology, cosmology, biology and the human sciences- past and future play different roles. This is the time paradox, one of the central concerns of this book. However, Prigogine believes that the paradox has been solved by the two recent developments in physics: the spectacular growth of non-equilibrium physics and the dynamics of unstable systems beginning with the idea of chaos.
Over the past several decades, a new science has been born, the physics of non-equilibrium processes, and has led to concepts such as self-organization and dissipative structures.This new science is widely used to day in a large spectrum of disciplines, including cosmology, chemistry, biology (including evolution), ecology and the social sciences.These processes illustrate the constructive role of time. Figuratively speaking, matter at equilibrium, with no arrow of time is blind, but with the arrow of time it begins to see. Without this new coherence due to irreversible, non-equilibrium processes, life on earth would be impossible to envision.
Classical science emphasized order and stability; now in contrast, we see fluctuations, instability, multiple choices, and limited predictability at all levels of observation. Classical and quantum physics can be extended to include instability and chaos. In classical physics, laws of nature express certitudes. Once instability is included, the meaning of the laws of nature changes radically, and they now express possibilities or probabilities. We are now able to include probabilities in the formulation of the basics laws of physics.
At the end of this century, it is often asked what the future of science may be. For some, such as Stephen W. Hawking in his Brief History of Time, we are close to the end, the moment when we shall be able to read the mind of God. In contrast, Prigogine believes that we are actually at the beginning of a new scientific era, the birth of a science that is no longer limited to idealized and simplified situations but reflects the complexity of the real world.
Is the universe ruled by deterministic laws ? What is the nature of time?. What could be the meaning of human freedom in a deterministic world of atoms?: Time-old questions that have occupied the human mind since the time of the Pre-Socratics 2500 years ago.Kant, Whitehead, Heiddeger and many other great thinkers felt that they had to make a tragic choice between an alienating science or an anti-scientific philosophy or theology. They attempted to find some kind of compromise, but they all failed... The history of Western philosophy is characterized by perpetual oscillations between viewing the world as an automaton and a theology in which God governs the universe.
Prigogine believes that the recent developments in the physics and mathematics associated with chaos and instability have opened up different avenues of investigation. We are beginning to see these problems, which deal with the very position of mankind in nature, in a new light, and can now avoid the contradictions and dilemmas of the past.
Prigogine emphasizes the constructive role of irreversibility, which is very striking in far-from-equilibrium situations. We are now learning that it is precisely through irreversible processes associated with the arrow of time that nature achieves its most delicate and complex structures. Life is possible only in a non-equilibrium universe. This is contrary to the classical view in which irreversibility is viewed as an illusion not as a basic law of nature. As the physicist Roman Smoluchowski put it, if we continued our observation for an immeasurably long time, all processes would apprear to be reversible.
The distinction between reversible and irreversible processes was introduced through the concept of entropy associated with the so-called Second Law of Thermodymanics. Entropy was defined by Rudolf Julius Clausius in 1865. According to this law, irreversible processes produce entropy. In contrast, reversible processes leave the entropy constant. We recall here Clausius's famous formulation: The energy of the universe is constant. The entropy of the universe is increasing. This increase in entropy is due to the irreversible processes that take place in the universe. Clausius's statement was the first formulation of an evolutionary view of the universe based on the existence of these processes. Arthur Stanley Eddington called entropy the arrow of time. Nevertheless, according to the fundamental laws of physics, there should be no irreversible processes. We therefore see that we have inherited two conflicting views of nature from the nineteenth century: the time-reversible view based on the classical laws of dynamics and the evolutionary view based on entropy. How can these views be reconciled ?
In the nineteenth century, Boltzmann introduced the Kinetic Theory of Gases, which is statistical. Poincare was so impressed by the success of theory that he wrote Perhaps the kinetic theory of gases will serve as a model ... physical laws will then take on a completely new form; they will take on a statistical character. These were prophetic words ... In an extraordinarily daring move, Boltzmann introduced probability as an empirical tool and paved way to the new physics... The physics of populations.
“The creativity of nature is connected to distance from equilibrium and is the result of irreversible processes” . Stresses applied to systems at or near equilibrium lead to fluctuations that are damped. In other words, the system gradually returns to equilibrium. However, a far from-equilibrium system may evolve spontaneously to a state of increased complexity. The ordering we observe is the outcome of irreversible processes, and could not be achieved at equilibrium. At equilibrium, the entropy of a system has a maximum value and the free energy is at its minimum. However, systems far from equilibrium do not conform to any minimum principle that is valid for functions of free energy or entropy production. As a consequence, there is no guarantee that fluctuations are damped. Near equilibrium, laws of nature are universal, but when they are far from equilibrium, they become mechanism dependent. We therefore begin to perceive the origin of the variety in nature we observe around us.
Once we have dissipative structures, we can speak of self-organization. Even if we know the initial values and boundary conditions, there are still many states available to the system among which it “chooses” as a result of fluctuations. Indeterminism as conceived by Whitehead, Bergson, and Popper now appears in physics. Bifurcations can be considered the source of diversification and innovation. These concepts are now applied to a wide group of problems in biology, sociology, and economics at interdisciplinary centers throughout the world. In Western Europe alone, there have been more than fifty centers for nonlinear processes founded over the past ten years.
“Darwin showed that we are one species of animal among many others”. This is a quote from the book, which shows that Prigogine is obviously an atheist.
There is still a gap between the most complex structures that we can produce in non-equilibrium situations in chemistry and the complexity we find in biological systems.
The maintenance of order in nature is maintained by self-organization.
Dissipative structures require an arrow of time.
The fathers of statistical physics: Maxwell, Boltzmann, Gibbs and Einstein.
We need both equilibrium and non-equilibrium physics to describe the world around us.
Epicurus’ dilemma today has been solved. We no longer find ourselves obliged to choose between a deterministic view of the universe as ruled by strict laws in which there is no room for creativity and one ruled by mere chance. Today, the situation has changed significantly in the sense that the more we know about our universe, the more difficult it becomes to believe in determinism (NOTE: Prigogine believes that theologies centered on God as the governor of the universe are just another form of determinism). Chance or probability is now a part of a new, extended rationality.
Prigogine’s view on cosmology (the more widely accepted Big Band Theory and The Steady State Theory) agrees with that of the Indian cosmologist Jayant Vishnu Narlikar, who wrote “Astrophysicists of today who hold the view that the ‘ultimate cosmological problem’ has been more or less solved may well be in for a few surprises before this century is out”.
“Many scientists have been willing to explain this singularity (the big bang) in terms of the “hand of God” or the triumph of the biblical story or creation.”
“Why is there something rather than nothing? The ultimate question beyond the range of positive knowledge. One answer to this question is a theory that defines the birth of our universe as a free lunch. Edward Tryon presented this idea in 1973. In his view, our universe can be described as having two forms of energy: one related to attractive gravitational forces, which is negative, and the other related to mass according to Einstein’s celebrated formula E = Mc2. It is tempting to speculate that the total energy of the universe could be zero, as is the energy of an empty universe. The big bang would thus be associated with fluctuations in the vacuum conserving the energy. Prigogine suggests that what happened in the big bang was an irreversible phase transition from a preuniverse that he calls the “quantum vacuum”. Thus, the birth of our universe is no longer seen to be associated with a singularity (a point of infinite density of matter and energy) that defies the laws of physics, but rather with an instability that is analogous to a phase transition or a bifurcation. This theory though, still has a number of vexing problems.”
“In accepting that the future is not determined, we come to the end of certainty” says Prigogine. He does not believe, however, that this is an admission of defeat for the human mind. He asserts that the opposite is true.
He views the universe as a giant thermodynamical system far from equilibrium, where we find fluctuations, instabilities, and evolutionary patterns at all levels.
Some great quotes from the end of the book:
For Einstein, science was a means of avoiding the turmoil of everyday existence. He compared scientific activity to the “longing that irresistibly pulls the town-dweller away from his noisy, cramped quarters and toward the silent high mountains. Einstein’s view of the human condition was profoundly pessimistic.
Science began with the Promethean affirmation of the power or reason, but it seemed to end in alienation – a negation of everything that gives meaning to human life.
Einstein repeatedly stated that he had learned more from Fyodor Dostoyevsky than from any physicist. In a letter to Max Born in 1924, he wrote that if he were forced to abandon strict causality (classical physics and relativity), he “would rather be a cobbler, or even an employee in a gaming house, than a physicist”. In order to be of any value at all, physics has to satisfy his need to escape the tragedy of the human condition. “And yet and yet”, when Einstein was confronted by Godel with the extreme consequences of his quest, the denial of the very reality that physics endeavors to describe, Einstein recoiled. (Godel took Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and classical physics and showed that past and future are equivalent and that it is possible to travel back in time).
Prigogine has tried to follow a narrow path between two conceptions that both lead to alienation: a world ruled by deterministic laws, which leaves no place for novelty, and a world ruled by a dice-playing God, where everything is absurd, acausal, and incomprehensible.
Prigogine ends his book with the following words:
“As we follow along the narrow path, we discover that a large part of the concrete world around us has until now “slipped through the meshes of the scientific net”, to use Whitehead’s expression. We face new horizons at this privileged moment in the history of science”.
Over the past several decades, a new science has been born, the physics of non-equilibrium processes, and has led to concepts such as self-organization and dissipative structures.This new science is widely used to day in a large spectrum of disciplines, including cosmology, chemistry, biology (including evolution), ecology and the social sciences.These processes illustrate the constructive role of time. Figuratively speaking, matter at equilibrium, with no arrow of time is blind, but with the arrow of time it begins to see. Without this new coherence due to irreversible, non-equilibrium processes, life on earth would be impossible to envision.
Classical science emphasized order and stability; now in contrast, we see fluctuations, instability, multiple choices, and limited predictability at all levels of observation. Classical and quantum physics can be extended to include instability and chaos. In classical physics, laws of nature express certitudes. Once instability is included, the meaning of the laws of nature changes radically, and they now express possibilities or probabilities. We are now able to include probabilities in the formulation of the basics laws of physics.
At the end of this century, it is often asked what the future of science may be. For some, such as Stephen W. Hawking in his Brief History of Time, we are close to the end, the moment when we shall be able to read the mind of God. In contrast, Prigogine believes that we are actually at the beginning of a new scientific era, the birth of a science that is no longer limited to idealized and simplified situations but reflects the complexity of the real world.
Is the universe ruled by deterministic laws ? What is the nature of time?. What could be the meaning of human freedom in a deterministic world of atoms?: Time-old questions that have occupied the human mind since the time of the Pre-Socratics 2500 years ago.Kant, Whitehead, Heiddeger and many other great thinkers felt that they had to make a tragic choice between an alienating science or an anti-scientific philosophy or theology. They attempted to find some kind of compromise, but they all failed... The history of Western philosophy is characterized by perpetual oscillations between viewing the world as an automaton and a theology in which God governs the universe.
Prigogine believes that the recent developments in the physics and mathematics associated with chaos and instability have opened up different avenues of investigation. We are beginning to see these problems, which deal with the very position of mankind in nature, in a new light, and can now avoid the contradictions and dilemmas of the past.
Prigogine emphasizes the constructive role of irreversibility, which is very striking in far-from-equilibrium situations. We are now learning that it is precisely through irreversible processes associated with the arrow of time that nature achieves its most delicate and complex structures. Life is possible only in a non-equilibrium universe. This is contrary to the classical view in which irreversibility is viewed as an illusion not as a basic law of nature. As the physicist Roman Smoluchowski put it, if we continued our observation for an immeasurably long time, all processes would apprear to be reversible.
The distinction between reversible and irreversible processes was introduced through the concept of entropy associated with the so-called Second Law of Thermodymanics. Entropy was defined by Rudolf Julius Clausius in 1865. According to this law, irreversible processes produce entropy. In contrast, reversible processes leave the entropy constant. We recall here Clausius's famous formulation: The energy of the universe is constant. The entropy of the universe is increasing. This increase in entropy is due to the irreversible processes that take place in the universe. Clausius's statement was the first formulation of an evolutionary view of the universe based on the existence of these processes. Arthur Stanley Eddington called entropy the arrow of time. Nevertheless, according to the fundamental laws of physics, there should be no irreversible processes. We therefore see that we have inherited two conflicting views of nature from the nineteenth century: the time-reversible view based on the classical laws of dynamics and the evolutionary view based on entropy. How can these views be reconciled ?
In the nineteenth century, Boltzmann introduced the Kinetic Theory of Gases, which is statistical. Poincare was so impressed by the success of theory that he wrote Perhaps the kinetic theory of gases will serve as a model ... physical laws will then take on a completely new form; they will take on a statistical character. These were prophetic words ... In an extraordinarily daring move, Boltzmann introduced probability as an empirical tool and paved way to the new physics... The physics of populations.
“The creativity of nature is connected to distance from equilibrium and is the result of irreversible processes” . Stresses applied to systems at or near equilibrium lead to fluctuations that are damped. In other words, the system gradually returns to equilibrium. However, a far from-equilibrium system may evolve spontaneously to a state of increased complexity. The ordering we observe is the outcome of irreversible processes, and could not be achieved at equilibrium. At equilibrium, the entropy of a system has a maximum value and the free energy is at its minimum. However, systems far from equilibrium do not conform to any minimum principle that is valid for functions of free energy or entropy production. As a consequence, there is no guarantee that fluctuations are damped. Near equilibrium, laws of nature are universal, but when they are far from equilibrium, they become mechanism dependent. We therefore begin to perceive the origin of the variety in nature we observe around us.
Once we have dissipative structures, we can speak of self-organization. Even if we know the initial values and boundary conditions, there are still many states available to the system among which it “chooses” as a result of fluctuations. Indeterminism as conceived by Whitehead, Bergson, and Popper now appears in physics. Bifurcations can be considered the source of diversification and innovation. These concepts are now applied to a wide group of problems in biology, sociology, and economics at interdisciplinary centers throughout the world. In Western Europe alone, there have been more than fifty centers for nonlinear processes founded over the past ten years.
“Darwin showed that we are one species of animal among many others”. This is a quote from the book, which shows that Prigogine is obviously an atheist.
There is still a gap between the most complex structures that we can produce in non-equilibrium situations in chemistry and the complexity we find in biological systems.
The maintenance of order in nature is maintained by self-organization.
Dissipative structures require an arrow of time.
The fathers of statistical physics: Maxwell, Boltzmann, Gibbs and Einstein.
We need both equilibrium and non-equilibrium physics to describe the world around us.
Epicurus’ dilemma today has been solved. We no longer find ourselves obliged to choose between a deterministic view of the universe as ruled by strict laws in which there is no room for creativity and one ruled by mere chance. Today, the situation has changed significantly in the sense that the more we know about our universe, the more difficult it becomes to believe in determinism (NOTE: Prigogine believes that theologies centered on God as the governor of the universe are just another form of determinism). Chance or probability is now a part of a new, extended rationality.
Prigogine’s view on cosmology (the more widely accepted Big Band Theory and The Steady State Theory) agrees with that of the Indian cosmologist Jayant Vishnu Narlikar, who wrote “Astrophysicists of today who hold the view that the ‘ultimate cosmological problem’ has been more or less solved may well be in for a few surprises before this century is out”.
“Many scientists have been willing to explain this singularity (the big bang) in terms of the “hand of God” or the triumph of the biblical story or creation.”
“Why is there something rather than nothing? The ultimate question beyond the range of positive knowledge. One answer to this question is a theory that defines the birth of our universe as a free lunch. Edward Tryon presented this idea in 1973. In his view, our universe can be described as having two forms of energy: one related to attractive gravitational forces, which is negative, and the other related to mass according to Einstein’s celebrated formula E = Mc2. It is tempting to speculate that the total energy of the universe could be zero, as is the energy of an empty universe. The big bang would thus be associated with fluctuations in the vacuum conserving the energy. Prigogine suggests that what happened in the big bang was an irreversible phase transition from a preuniverse that he calls the “quantum vacuum”. Thus, the birth of our universe is no longer seen to be associated with a singularity (a point of infinite density of matter and energy) that defies the laws of physics, but rather with an instability that is analogous to a phase transition or a bifurcation. This theory though, still has a number of vexing problems.”
“In accepting that the future is not determined, we come to the end of certainty” says Prigogine. He does not believe, however, that this is an admission of defeat for the human mind. He asserts that the opposite is true.
He views the universe as a giant thermodynamical system far from equilibrium, where we find fluctuations, instabilities, and evolutionary patterns at all levels.
Some great quotes from the end of the book:
For Einstein, science was a means of avoiding the turmoil of everyday existence. He compared scientific activity to the “longing that irresistibly pulls the town-dweller away from his noisy, cramped quarters and toward the silent high mountains. Einstein’s view of the human condition was profoundly pessimistic.
Science began with the Promethean affirmation of the power or reason, but it seemed to end in alienation – a negation of everything that gives meaning to human life.
Einstein repeatedly stated that he had learned more from Fyodor Dostoyevsky than from any physicist. In a letter to Max Born in 1924, he wrote that if he were forced to abandon strict causality (classical physics and relativity), he “would rather be a cobbler, or even an employee in a gaming house, than a physicist”. In order to be of any value at all, physics has to satisfy his need to escape the tragedy of the human condition. “And yet and yet”, when Einstein was confronted by Godel with the extreme consequences of his quest, the denial of the very reality that physics endeavors to describe, Einstein recoiled. (Godel took Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and classical physics and showed that past and future are equivalent and that it is possible to travel back in time).
Prigogine has tried to follow a narrow path between two conceptions that both lead to alienation: a world ruled by deterministic laws, which leaves no place for novelty, and a world ruled by a dice-playing God, where everything is absurd, acausal, and incomprehensible.
Prigogine ends his book with the following words:
“As we follow along the narrow path, we discover that a large part of the concrete world around us has until now “slipped through the meshes of the scientific net”, to use Whitehead’s expression. We face new horizons at this privileged moment in the history of science”.
June 24, 2012
Although some of the more discipline-friendly language eluded my grasp, I appreciated the connections (outside of the realm of science )that Prigogine made and I found his argument about the existence of time and the uncertainty that it brings with it to physics to be quite exciting (at several junctures); however, the early note that he wrote about the book being written for those outside of the hard sciences seem to me to be a tad exaggerated.
October 22, 2014
Completely missed the general audience.
The irreversibility of time, far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics,autopoeisis of complex systems - who wouldn't have been excited about this book?
But ... I just got roughed up by a math-stick. Better to read Deacon's Incomplete Nature for a clearer exposition of this topic, I think.
The irreversibility of time, far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics,autopoeisis of complex systems - who wouldn't have been excited about this book?
But ... I just got roughed up by a math-stick. Better to read Deacon's Incomplete Nature for a clearer exposition of this topic, I think.
June 17, 2020
Em “O Fim das Certezas”, o Nobel de Química Ilya Prigogine expõe como (1) a física de não equilíbrio e (2) a descrição de sistemas dinâmicos instáveis permitem uma reconciliação das leis físicas (tanto as clássicas quanto as quânticas) com a ideia de “flecha do tempo”. Dos avanços desses dois campos, evocam-se os conceitos de irreversibilidade e de caos, capazes de subsidiar a quebra da simetria temporal vigente na imensa maioria das leis físicas — com a notável exceção da entropia termodinâmica. Para Prigogine, “o possível é mais rico que o real”. Uma descrição física capaz de acomodar uma noção de tempo dentro de uma “visão comum de mundo” deve tratar “[…] de construir uma dinâmica das correlações [entre corpos, massas, entidades…] e não mais uma dinâmica das trajetórias”.
Como muitos outros livros que buscam trilhar um meio termo entre divulgação científica e exposição científica, “O Fim das Certezas” rapidamente se torna matematicamente hermético. Ainda assim, a sua leitura é bem vinda, pois Prigogine escreve passagens verdadeiramente lindas quando contrapõe literatura (Tagore, Dostoievski, Nabokov, Borges) e filosofia (Bergson, Whitehead, Snow) à físico-química. Destaco o seguinte trecho:
“A ciência é um diálogo com a natureza […] Compreender a natureza foi um dos grandes projetos do pensamento ocidental. Ele não deve ser identificado com o de controlar a natureza. Seria cego o senhor que acreditasse compreender seus escravos sob pretexto de que eles obedecem às suas ordens. Evidentemente, quando nos dirigimos à natureza, sabemos que não se trata de compreendê-la da mesma forma como compreendemos um animal ou um homem. Mas também aí se aplica a convicção de Nabokov: ‘O que pode ser controlado não é nunca totalmente real, o que é real não pode nunca ser rigorosamente controlado’. Quanto ao ideal clássico da ciência, o de um mundo sem tempo, sem memória e sem história, ele evoca os pesadelos descritos nos romances de Huxley, de Orwell e de Kundera.”
Como muitos outros livros que buscam trilhar um meio termo entre divulgação científica e exposição científica, “O Fim das Certezas” rapidamente se torna matematicamente hermético. Ainda assim, a sua leitura é bem vinda, pois Prigogine escreve passagens verdadeiramente lindas quando contrapõe literatura (Tagore, Dostoievski, Nabokov, Borges) e filosofia (Bergson, Whitehead, Snow) à físico-química. Destaco o seguinte trecho:
“A ciência é um diálogo com a natureza […] Compreender a natureza foi um dos grandes projetos do pensamento ocidental. Ele não deve ser identificado com o de controlar a natureza. Seria cego o senhor que acreditasse compreender seus escravos sob pretexto de que eles obedecem às suas ordens. Evidentemente, quando nos dirigimos à natureza, sabemos que não se trata de compreendê-la da mesma forma como compreendemos um animal ou um homem. Mas também aí se aplica a convicção de Nabokov: ‘O que pode ser controlado não é nunca totalmente real, o que é real não pode nunca ser rigorosamente controlado’. Quanto ao ideal clássico da ciência, o de um mundo sem tempo, sem memória e sem história, ele evoca os pesadelos descritos nos romances de Huxley, de Orwell e de Kundera.”
January 17, 2018
On a scientific philosophical scale, Prigogine accomplishes what Whitehead or Bergson could not. On a scientific scale, he somewhat rescues all those who are incessantly struggling in the quagmire of Quantum paradox as well as limitations of classical Newtonian mechanics. He also rescues those probabilistic realists who have a deterministic idealist lurking deep inside, i.e., with respect to conceptualization of time. Finally he rescues some essential aspects of nature, namely the Time, Memory and History; and he rescues them in the context of their physicality. Drawing a lot from Poincare and Operator Theory, he lays out mathematical tools which establish a demarcation between sheer poetic metaphor and real science.
Sadly, the book cannot be accessed easily by a layreader and even if you have an experience with modelling of dynamical systems and familiarity with the phase space, Hamiltonians and spectral decompositions, you need to bring out a paper and pen to work around some of the mathematics that he stretches out for the reader. However, it's not more than that and it's not very tough. I disagree with the reviewers who believe that Prigogine should have toned down the mathematical element to make it more accessible for a layreader. His reasoning is primarily mathematical and his apriori assumptions are phenomenologically consistent with observation. This is how popular science should be written to separate it from prevailing popular science genre, which basically compromises too much in my opinion. In this aspect, Prigogine is a conservative scientist-writer like Roger Penrose or Norbert Weiner.
Sadly, the book cannot be accessed easily by a layreader and even if you have an experience with modelling of dynamical systems and familiarity with the phase space, Hamiltonians and spectral decompositions, you need to bring out a paper and pen to work around some of the mathematics that he stretches out for the reader. However, it's not more than that and it's not very tough. I disagree with the reviewers who believe that Prigogine should have toned down the mathematical element to make it more accessible for a layreader. His reasoning is primarily mathematical and his apriori assumptions are phenomenologically consistent with observation. This is how popular science should be written to separate it from prevailing popular science genre, which basically compromises too much in my opinion. In this aspect, Prigogine is a conservative scientist-writer like Roger Penrose or Norbert Weiner.
May 13, 2015
[Nota preliminar: li a edição brasileira feita pela Unesp, que ainda não foi cadastrada.]
Às vezes faltam cientistas que se arrisquem mais em teses originais, mas o modo como Prigogine o faz não serve como o melhor dos exemplos. Embora suas ideias sejam bastante interessantes (a verdadeira natureza da matéria seria estatística, o que ajudaria resolver diversos problemas como a assimetria do tempo e o indeterminismo), o livro traz uma coleção de aplicações matemáticas sem uma análise crítica mais profunda, de maneira que serve mais para atrair seguidores que promover a discussão científica (embora alguém possa razoavelmente defender que atrair seguidores é justamente o primeiro passo para formar uma corrente científica).
Além disso, o livro alcança um tom informal demais para uma obra técnica, ao mesmo tempo que complexo demais para uma obra de divulgação. Assume-se um conhecimento avançado de física, que permita entender afirmações da seguinte natureza: "Ora, como mostra qualquer manual, quando operadores não comutam, não têm as mesmas funções próprias."
A edição brasileira tem ainda o inconveniente de ser descuidada na notação matemática (sen 2x/y não é o mesmo que sen (2x/y)) e de seguir literalmente certas expressões do francês, por exemplo "funções próprias" a partir de "fonctions propres", quando o usual em português seria "autofunção".
Às vezes faltam cientistas que se arrisquem mais em teses originais, mas o modo como Prigogine o faz não serve como o melhor dos exemplos. Embora suas ideias sejam bastante interessantes (a verdadeira natureza da matéria seria estatística, o que ajudaria resolver diversos problemas como a assimetria do tempo e o indeterminismo), o livro traz uma coleção de aplicações matemáticas sem uma análise crítica mais profunda, de maneira que serve mais para atrair seguidores que promover a discussão científica (embora alguém possa razoavelmente defender que atrair seguidores é justamente o primeiro passo para formar uma corrente científica).
Além disso, o livro alcança um tom informal demais para uma obra técnica, ao mesmo tempo que complexo demais para uma obra de divulgação. Assume-se um conhecimento avançado de física, que permita entender afirmações da seguinte natureza: "Ora, como mostra qualquer manual, quando operadores não comutam, não têm as mesmas funções próprias."
A edição brasileira tem ainda o inconveniente de ser descuidada na notação matemática (sen 2x/y não é o mesmo que sen (2x/y)) e de seguir literalmente certas expressões do francês, por exemplo "funções próprias" a partir de "fonctions propres", quando o usual em português seria "autofunção".
March 30, 2009
Prigogine makes lots of interesting arguments in this book. He argues at length for the necessity of an arrow of time to account for time-irreversible processes studied in thermodynamics. Far-from-equilibrium processes and chaotic systems provide the examples, and as he points out, these are the most common things found in nature (all the time-reversible stuff is generally a simplification of what actually occurs in nature). At the end of the book, he offers a solution to the problem of the special role of the observer in quantum mechanics. I also found his refutation of determinism to be quite interesting. Quantum mechanics often comes up in discussions of freewill/determinism because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, but Prigogine argues that the real breakdown happens in chaotic systems (Schrodinger equation being deterministic and time-reversible). It is not exactly a light read, but well worth the time.
October 2, 2016
This was a hard book to read. I will not pretend to know or even understand that hundreds of equations and mathematics presented. I dutifully read it all as if running a hand along over a body of water and absorbed what I could. If I got it, then Ilya is saying that he's proven that time reversibility is not in fact possible. The arrow of time points in one direction... or at least it has so far. This guy is really smart and even though I only understood about 75% of the book, it was very good.
Currently reading
October 22, 2009I don't read a lot of complex scientific literature outside of my EBIO classes, especially not physics related, but this has so far been an enjoyable read.
November 20, 2023
"The End of Certainty," another of Prigogine's works, delves deeply into the issue of time in classical and quantum mechanics. Unlike his other books aimed at a general audience, this one requires a more robust mathematical foundation to fully grasp the concepts discussed.
Prigogine begins by examining the concept of time through the prism of determinism and its influence on our perception of time. The book then transitions to exploring statistical mechanics, which deals with particle populations. Initially, it was thought that statistical approaches were merely interim solutions and that precise calculations of particle movements were achievable with sufficient computational resources. However, Poincaré's work, particularly his resonance theorem, challenged this assumption, highlighting the inherent limitations.
The discussion then shifts to nonlinearity and its intriguing aspects, such as bifurcations. Prigogine dedicates considerable attention to the implications of Poincaré's resonance in the context of correlation dynamics, illustrating how system correlations are inherently tied to potential functions and are inextricable. He delves into the intricacies of density operators and their solutions in equilibrium states, introducing novel solutions that emerge when venturing beyond Hilbert space to include components with imaginary parts. He explains that in Hilbert space, the only solutions are unitary and time-symmetric, not affecting the system’s state. However, in Liouville space, new solutions emerge from the spectral decomposition of the density matrix, each representing a harmonic oscillator and essentially reflecting the system's correlations. These solutions allow for the analysis of the spatial and temporal dynamics of large particle ensembles.
In the later chapters, Prigogine asserts that Liouville space, unlike Hilbert space, forms a semi-group. This distinction introduces an asymmetry crucial for understanding not only the arrow of time but also phenomena like wave function collapse and the emergence of structure and memory in particle systems due to spatial and temporal correlations.
The book concludes by revisiting special and general relativity, highlighting their inherent time symmetry issues. Prigogine discusses Einstein's views on time symmetry and the critiques raised by his colleague, Kurt Gödel, especially regarding paradoxes like time travel to the past. Finally, Prigogine explores cosmological time asymmetry, positing that it originates from the time asymmetries inherent in thermodynamics and quantum mechanics.
Prigogine begins by examining the concept of time through the prism of determinism and its influence on our perception of time. The book then transitions to exploring statistical mechanics, which deals with particle populations. Initially, it was thought that statistical approaches were merely interim solutions and that precise calculations of particle movements were achievable with sufficient computational resources. However, Poincaré's work, particularly his resonance theorem, challenged this assumption, highlighting the inherent limitations.
The discussion then shifts to nonlinearity and its intriguing aspects, such as bifurcations. Prigogine dedicates considerable attention to the implications of Poincaré's resonance in the context of correlation dynamics, illustrating how system correlations are inherently tied to potential functions and are inextricable. He delves into the intricacies of density operators and their solutions in equilibrium states, introducing novel solutions that emerge when venturing beyond Hilbert space to include components with imaginary parts. He explains that in Hilbert space, the only solutions are unitary and time-symmetric, not affecting the system’s state. However, in Liouville space, new solutions emerge from the spectral decomposition of the density matrix, each representing a harmonic oscillator and essentially reflecting the system's correlations. These solutions allow for the analysis of the spatial and temporal dynamics of large particle ensembles.
In the later chapters, Prigogine asserts that Liouville space, unlike Hilbert space, forms a semi-group. This distinction introduces an asymmetry crucial for understanding not only the arrow of time but also phenomena like wave function collapse and the emergence of structure and memory in particle systems due to spatial and temporal correlations.
The book concludes by revisiting special and general relativity, highlighting their inherent time symmetry issues. Prigogine discusses Einstein's views on time symmetry and the critiques raised by his colleague, Kurt Gödel, especially regarding paradoxes like time travel to the past. Finally, Prigogine explores cosmological time asymmetry, positing that it originates from the time asymmetries inherent in thermodynamics and quantum mechanics.
Want to read
December 7, 2025 Στα σημεία διακλάδωσης λαμβάνουν ψάρα διαρκώς γεγονότα, που εξαρτώνται απο τις διακυμάνσεις.
Αΰτο είναι πολύ ενδιαφέρον, γιατί σημαίνει πως οι δράσεις μεμονωμένων ατόμων έχουν κάποιο νόημα. Μη νομίζετε ότι η δράση σας είναι ασήμαντη ή μάταιη' Ακόμα και μια μικρή δράση μπορεί να ενισχυθεί σημανστικά σε μια κρίσιμη κατάσταση.
Αΰτο είναι πολύ ενδιαφέρον, γιατί σημαίνει πως οι δράσεις μεμονωμένων ατόμων έχουν κάποιο νόημα. Μη νομίζετε ότι η δράση σας είναι ασήμαντη ή μάταιη' Ακόμα και μια μικρή δράση μπορεί να ενισχυθεί σημανστικά σε μια κρίσιμη κατάσταση.
April 10, 2010
No, I didn't understand a thing he wrote. This book and author are quite beyond this mere mortal.
September 28, 2021
This book is the sequel and supplement to "Order Out of Chaos". It is best to read OOoC first, and then "The Arrow of Time" by Highfield and Coveney, then "The End of Certainty".
A lot of schlepp just to master a hard book?
Yes.
Is it worth it?
Not if you aren't interested in the hard questions. Funnily enough, pretentiously literate readers of fashionable fiction or pseudo-philosophy will wade through meaningless or superficial wads of text just for the sake of being able to say they have read it, but not to go the extra mile to read genuine challenges to understand approaches to making sense of the real bases of existence.
But suit yourself; you don't need my permission to ignore the opportunity.
Several of the reviews have discussed the content of this book at impressive depth, but important aspects that appealed to me personally, seem to have passed them by. The book points out in passing, a concept that not only excludes determinism, but time reversibility as well, irrespective of Laplace's ideas of time reversal. It does however accommodate causality, irrespective of relativity, QM, Boltzmannian thermodynamics, or purely Newtonian physical principles. To me this was one of the major classes of insights that it provided. Ever since reading it I have seen physics more fundamentally in the light of information/entropy, and whole vistas have opened up.
It does not answer all reasonable questions along those lines, but let's not be greedy; even to be left with new questions is a major reward for a bit of mental challenge.
If you are game for the challenge, then read the book, discuss it, leave it for a year or two, then read it again. Prigogine was one of the great minds of the 20th century, a century that produced more very great minds than any others documented in the past. And I say that without disrespect to the great minds of the past, who made their advances out of a slough of ignorance; the giants that provided the shoulders on which the geniuses of our day stood.
The insights that thes books gave, were worth a bit of hard digging, providing deeper thought than I ever found in the likes of Tolstoy, Freud, James, Dostoevsky or others vaunted for their alleged influence on the intellectual heritage of mankind.
A lot of schlepp just to master a hard book?
Yes.
Is it worth it?
Not if you aren't interested in the hard questions. Funnily enough, pretentiously literate readers of fashionable fiction or pseudo-philosophy will wade through meaningless or superficial wads of text just for the sake of being able to say they have read it, but not to go the extra mile to read genuine challenges to understand approaches to making sense of the real bases of existence.
But suit yourself; you don't need my permission to ignore the opportunity.
Several of the reviews have discussed the content of this book at impressive depth, but important aspects that appealed to me personally, seem to have passed them by. The book points out in passing, a concept that not only excludes determinism, but time reversibility as well, irrespective of Laplace's ideas of time reversal. It does however accommodate causality, irrespective of relativity, QM, Boltzmannian thermodynamics, or purely Newtonian physical principles. To me this was one of the major classes of insights that it provided. Ever since reading it I have seen physics more fundamentally in the light of information/entropy, and whole vistas have opened up.
It does not answer all reasonable questions along those lines, but let's not be greedy; even to be left with new questions is a major reward for a bit of mental challenge.
If you are game for the challenge, then read the book, discuss it, leave it for a year or two, then read it again. Prigogine was one of the great minds of the 20th century, a century that produced more very great minds than any others documented in the past. And I say that without disrespect to the great minds of the past, who made their advances out of a slough of ignorance; the giants that provided the shoulders on which the geniuses of our day stood.
The insights that thes books gave, were worth a bit of hard digging, providing deeper thought than I ever found in the likes of Tolstoy, Freud, James, Dostoevsky or others vaunted for their alleged influence on the intellectual heritage of mankind.
June 4, 2023
Ilya Prigogine’s “The End of Certainty” is a read that is by turns edifying and onerous. Physicists since Newton have described the universe as deterministic and ``time-symmetrical.'' Human experience, as well as much of modern philosophy, finds assertions of this nature to be troubling, if not appallingly untenable. Indubitably, when scientific accord belies common sense, the defile between what C.P. Snow described as the two cultures is vastly deepened.
Prigogine’ s exposition mixes clear prose with dense mathematics. Prigogine assumes the reader is familiar with many aspects of modern physics: particle interactions, thermodynamics, cosmology, and classical and quantum mechanics. Prigogine’s conjectures regarding the statistical and probabilistic basis for asymmetrical and irreversible physical processes is compelling; unfortunately, the validity of these claims may exceed the capacity of the general reader.
The “arrow of time,” a term coined by Eddington, and alluded to by the author, refers to the "asymmetry" of time. This arrow results from the second law of thermodynamics which says that in an isolated system, entropy tends to increase as a function of time. Entropy, a measure of microscopic disorder, is ubiquitous; hence, the second law implies that time is asymmetrical with respect to the amount of order in the system.This asymmetry, according to some physicists, distinguishes between future and past, despite the fact that measuring entropy does not really measure what we call time.
As the author highlights, Boltzmann attempted to show that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is only statistically true, in the sense that microscopic violations occur repeatedly, but not to the extent or magnitude that would falsify the argument for entropy. However, as Prigogine points out, this ground is laden with paradoxes, chief among them, the Poincare recurrence theorem, which addresses the values of the particles in a closed system.
Prigogine has attempted to thread the needle between a world of strict determinism, and a world of chance and chaos, ruled by a God who plays dice. For the most part, his analysis is sensible, and his prescription for areas of future scientific research prudent.
Prigogine’ s exposition mixes clear prose with dense mathematics. Prigogine assumes the reader is familiar with many aspects of modern physics: particle interactions, thermodynamics, cosmology, and classical and quantum mechanics. Prigogine’s conjectures regarding the statistical and probabilistic basis for asymmetrical and irreversible physical processes is compelling; unfortunately, the validity of these claims may exceed the capacity of the general reader.
The “arrow of time,” a term coined by Eddington, and alluded to by the author, refers to the "asymmetry" of time. This arrow results from the second law of thermodynamics which says that in an isolated system, entropy tends to increase as a function of time. Entropy, a measure of microscopic disorder, is ubiquitous; hence, the second law implies that time is asymmetrical with respect to the amount of order in the system.This asymmetry, according to some physicists, distinguishes between future and past, despite the fact that measuring entropy does not really measure what we call time.
As the author highlights, Boltzmann attempted to show that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is only statistically true, in the sense that microscopic violations occur repeatedly, but not to the extent or magnitude that would falsify the argument for entropy. However, as Prigogine points out, this ground is laden with paradoxes, chief among them, the Poincare recurrence theorem, which addresses the values of the particles in a closed system.
Prigogine has attempted to thread the needle between a world of strict determinism, and a world of chance and chaos, ruled by a God who plays dice. For the most part, his analysis is sensible, and his prescription for areas of future scientific research prudent.
September 22, 2022
so, i'll be honest, i finally gave up on the one chapter i couldn't get through (6, on QM) but i'll be returning to it at some point. overall a really engaging read if you feel like working through some of the mathematical notions with pen and paper a little bit. nobel prize winning soviet physicist who took bergson's side of the bergson-einstein thing on time seriously - subjective time and its marked directionality are things that cannot contradict physics but are also not easily accounted for within it. he cuts the gordian knot (or at least frays it a little) with the notion of irreversibility, which arises only in aggregates or populations of ideal particles. only aggregates age - there's something about time that arises only with extension in space (?)...
maybe the less scattered and more straightforward train of thought to follow here is: he's advocating a kind of middle way between the 'hard determinism' of physicists of auld that found maybe its last great adherent in the arch-spinozist einstein, and the absurdness of the dice-playing God he found so repulsive. the fact that prigogine (and coauthor isabelle stengers) is taking seriously the ~humanist gauntlet thrown down by bergson while not sacrificing mathematical or physical rigour is very admirable to me. his nobel in chemistry for non-equilibrium thermodynamics is that rare accolade that actually seems meaningful.
prigogine and stengers clearly have had serious engagement (though it only surfaces in bits and pieces) with the history of western philosophy on the issue, from epicurus to heidegger, which is also impressive. they tie tagore, homer, borges, and stephen jay gould into their exposition with ease. just quite plainly a pleasure to read, and sincerely quite 'deep', but too dense for me to unravel in one go.
maybe the less scattered and more straightforward train of thought to follow here is: he's advocating a kind of middle way between the 'hard determinism' of physicists of auld that found maybe its last great adherent in the arch-spinozist einstein, and the absurdness of the dice-playing God he found so repulsive. the fact that prigogine (and coauthor isabelle stengers) is taking seriously the ~humanist gauntlet thrown down by bergson while not sacrificing mathematical or physical rigour is very admirable to me. his nobel in chemistry for non-equilibrium thermodynamics is that rare accolade that actually seems meaningful.
prigogine and stengers clearly have had serious engagement (though it only surfaces in bits and pieces) with the history of western philosophy on the issue, from epicurus to heidegger, which is also impressive. they tie tagore, homer, borges, and stephen jay gould into their exposition with ease. just quite plainly a pleasure to read, and sincerely quite 'deep', but too dense for me to unravel in one go.
July 18, 2025
De wiskunde in het boek was voor deze lezer (heeeel) moeilijk te volgen , maar daar kan de schrijver niets aan doen , met wiskunde en natuurkunde uitleg geven over de tijdrichting , onomkeerbare en omkeerbare processen , het boek doet filosofische vragen en bedenkingen oproepen , waarvoor 5 sterren ,
Ik blijf nog met heel wat vragen zitten en de antwoorden voeren een strijd in mijn hoofd welke juist zouden kunnen zijn ,
Bv vrije wil. Macroscopisch determinisme , de voorspelbare (?) gang van de maan , de zon , eb en vloed van de zee , tegenover microscopisch onvoorspelbaarheid van kwantummechanica , …..
Voorspelbare chaos , maar ergens tussenin ruimte voor vrije wil , …. Het staat vast dat het niet vast staat , …. Met ergens in een atoom een onzichtbaar omslagpunt , …. Onzichtbaar door het tijdsverschil? …. Het kan toch niet beide waar zijn , …. Determinatie en onvoorspelbaarheid , …
Dat zijn toch tegenovergestelde ,(?) …. Dan liever determinatie dat geeft me rust ,
Hoe komt dit Sherlock? De dader is niet van hier , ontsnapt in de tijd , ..
Er is geen dader Watson , die moet nog gevormd worden , ….
Dat klopt toch niet … een fractie van een seconde die 10 jaar duurt of omgekeerd , …
Het boek probeert me met wiskunde en natuurkunde (on) wijs te maken dat het , er
Determinatie en onvoorspelbaarheid is , dat sommige processen omkeerbaar zijn en andere niet
( waaruit de tijd volgt of voorgaat dat was ook niet zo duidelijk )
Op het laatst stond dat het huidige heelal zou kunnen ontstaan zijn uit een steady State , …? … dan was ie toch niet helemaal steady , …
5 sterren , om te verdwalen in wiskunde /natuurkunde of we nu vrij , half vrij of niet vrij zijn ,
Of er begin was of niet , …. Een nieuw begin , … uit iets zonder begin
ik ben wat de weg kwijt ,
Ik blijf nog met heel wat vragen zitten en de antwoorden voeren een strijd in mijn hoofd welke juist zouden kunnen zijn ,
Bv vrije wil. Macroscopisch determinisme , de voorspelbare (?) gang van de maan , de zon , eb en vloed van de zee , tegenover microscopisch onvoorspelbaarheid van kwantummechanica , …..
Voorspelbare chaos , maar ergens tussenin ruimte voor vrije wil , …. Het staat vast dat het niet vast staat , …. Met ergens in een atoom een onzichtbaar omslagpunt , …. Onzichtbaar door het tijdsverschil? …. Het kan toch niet beide waar zijn , …. Determinatie en onvoorspelbaarheid , …
Dat zijn toch tegenovergestelde ,(?) …. Dan liever determinatie dat geeft me rust ,
Hoe komt dit Sherlock? De dader is niet van hier , ontsnapt in de tijd , ..
Er is geen dader Watson , die moet nog gevormd worden , ….
Dat klopt toch niet … een fractie van een seconde die 10 jaar duurt of omgekeerd , …
Het boek probeert me met wiskunde en natuurkunde (on) wijs te maken dat het , er
Determinatie en onvoorspelbaarheid is , dat sommige processen omkeerbaar zijn en andere niet
( waaruit de tijd volgt of voorgaat dat was ook niet zo duidelijk )
Op het laatst stond dat het huidige heelal zou kunnen ontstaan zijn uit een steady State , …? … dan was ie toch niet helemaal steady , …
5 sterren , om te verdwalen in wiskunde /natuurkunde of we nu vrij , half vrij of niet vrij zijn ,
Of er begin was of niet , …. Een nieuw begin , … uit iets zonder begin
ik ben wat de weg kwijt ,
August 27, 2019
The only reason I gave this book four stars, as opposed to a mediocre three, was that I found the topic profoundly fascinating and insights very thought-provoking. The general thesis both challenged my previously held notions about physics and highlighted some of the limitations and logical difficulties encountered by the current scientific paradigm.
Furthermore, I appreciated the author's attempts at projecting his view of the universe onto a philosophical space that makes room for human curiosity, creativity and purpose on earth. Such an enlightened humanism is in short supply these days. To this end, he characterizes science as a medium for "dialogue between humans and nature"- a guiding theme throughout the book, one which fires up the first chapter by attempting to resolve the paradox of Epicurean atomism. Hence, the dialogue began over 2000 years ago in ancient Greece and the author's commitment to sustaining its full momentum is most laudable.
Having said that, I felt the author assumed way too much of his audience and presented the mathematical formalism in a way that definitely required more explanation. The chapters on thermodynamics, relativity and quantum physics were minimally intelligible to anyone with some background in physics, chemistry or engineering. However, the chapter on chaotic maps was just too congested with mathematical representations accessible only to someone with extensive knowledge in these subjects.
Summing up the score, this book has intensely peaked my curiosity in chaos theory and irreversible thermodynamics.
Furthermore, I appreciated the author's attempts at projecting his view of the universe onto a philosophical space that makes room for human curiosity, creativity and purpose on earth. Such an enlightened humanism is in short supply these days. To this end, he characterizes science as a medium for "dialogue between humans and nature"- a guiding theme throughout the book, one which fires up the first chapter by attempting to resolve the paradox of Epicurean atomism. Hence, the dialogue began over 2000 years ago in ancient Greece and the author's commitment to sustaining its full momentum is most laudable.
Having said that, I felt the author assumed way too much of his audience and presented the mathematical formalism in a way that definitely required more explanation. The chapters on thermodynamics, relativity and quantum physics were minimally intelligible to anyone with some background in physics, chemistry or engineering. However, the chapter on chaotic maps was just too congested with mathematical representations accessible only to someone with extensive knowledge in these subjects.
Summing up the score, this book has intensely peaked my curiosity in chaos theory and irreversible thermodynamics.
May 16, 2025
Classical thermodynamics, and quantum dynamics describe the world according to time-reversible laws, and so scientists usually perceive of the “arrow of time,” as marching forward, which we sense throughout our lives, as an accident, probably due to our measurement. However, Ilya developed an alternative that conveys the arrow of time is not accidental, but an expression of real irreversibility of phenomena. This is due to the indeterminate nature that defines at least persistent and resonant dynamics, rather than deterministic trajectories empirically perceived through thought or experimentation in closed-systems. In other words, the reason we developed “laws” rather than “probabilities” in dynamics MAY be because laws are easily derivable from the sorts of experiments and thoughts that have low complexity.
He then illustrates examples of chaos or other indeterminate interactions that generate dynamics only describable by statistics rather than by deterministic trajectories.
Ilya does this with various examples (that I am too dense to understand), and discusses how this relates to the thinking and findings of other scientists like Poincaré (his resonances and LPS), Gödel, Einstein, and Whitehead.
This book is short but opaque. If you are familiar with thermodynamic equations, and common issues in dynamics, you can probably get more out of this than I did, but nonetheless I was able to follow Ilya’a arguments.
He then illustrates examples of chaos or other indeterminate interactions that generate dynamics only describable by statistics rather than by deterministic trajectories.
Ilya does this with various examples (that I am too dense to understand), and discusses how this relates to the thinking and findings of other scientists like Poincaré (his resonances and LPS), Gödel, Einstein, and Whitehead.
This book is short but opaque. If you are familiar with thermodynamic equations, and common issues in dynamics, you can probably get more out of this than I did, but nonetheless I was able to follow Ilya’a arguments.
March 15, 2023
In a time of madness, where on one end I see the Artificial Intelligence (AI) craze side to side with the falling crypto hype and scepticism about the markets and housing prices and the upcoming elections, I feel that such a read is an absolute must.
Ilya Prigogine, a Russian Belgian physical chemist and the Nobel laureate (1977, chemistry) was long ignored in the agloshpere, until the marvelousness of his work was no longer possible to ignore. This book: " the end of certainty" will be remembered in the future for what is going to be the evolution of human sciences and the mechanical black/white way we see the universe to what the age of quantum physics, quantum computing, and quantum existence will start to look like.
As someone who has an advanced degree in data science and works in machine learning on a daily basis, and seeing marvelous ML/IA work that dwarfs the public-fascinating ChatGPT, I invite you to explore the limits, not of the technology per se, but in our view to the world and the path to future.
AI is still in its infancy. The future will for sure have a lot of it. But we need to understand that this is and will be a tool for weighing possibilities, risk, and navigating uncertainty. The future is uncertain. We need to get comfortable with it.
Ilya Prigogine, a Russian Belgian physical chemist and the Nobel laureate (1977, chemistry) was long ignored in the agloshpere, until the marvelousness of his work was no longer possible to ignore. This book: " the end of certainty" will be remembered in the future for what is going to be the evolution of human sciences and the mechanical black/white way we see the universe to what the age of quantum physics, quantum computing, and quantum existence will start to look like.
As someone who has an advanced degree in data science and works in machine learning on a daily basis, and seeing marvelous ML/IA work that dwarfs the public-fascinating ChatGPT, I invite you to explore the limits, not of the technology per se, but in our view to the world and the path to future.
AI is still in its infancy. The future will for sure have a lot of it. But we need to understand that this is and will be a tool for weighing possibilities, risk, and navigating uncertainty. The future is uncertain. We need to get comfortable with it.
June 5, 2019
This is the book by Ilya Prigogine that I will send people to. It's genuinely for a general audience and seems to have been influenced by the success of A Brief History of Time. I actually think this book is more interesting than Hawking's, but I'm a chemist, so of course I would. Even here, fascinating connections are made and not fleshed out: I'm particularly intrigued by connections to music, and his frequent insistence that non-equilibrium dissipative systems allow matter to "see." Most of his argument from On Being and Becoming is recapitulated here, and its later publication date allows for more interaction with the scientific community (although he doesn't really engage with critics significantly, I guess when you've got a Nobel prize you don't worry about that so much?). This is a book with an argument that catches fire and makes connections you never saw coming. Time itself is reformulated. I haven't had time yet to be completely convinced, but I do want to think more about how the cosmos is musical from the description Prigogine gives.
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August 12, 2022Ilya Prigogine's "The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature" is one of the most effective books on the history of physical concepts, categories, laws. Ilya Prigogine prefers to be the physicist who think on the physical laws like Aristoteles, Newton, and Bohr, he wants to produce the new thoughts on the philosophy of physical sciences. Ilya Prigogine's book presents new thesis on the natural sciences because of his observation on the history of physical laws. Ilya Prigogine tests the concept of "certainty" which sources from Aristoteles' thoughts on the categories of natural sciences, he writes clearly: "The End of Certainty". If no "certainty", is there a chaos necessarily, what can we think about all the categories of physical sciences without the concept of "certainty", Ilya Prigogine's book answers - as one of the most strong pages against dogmatism.
November 12, 2017
Pas convaincu, à plusieurs niveaux.
par la composition et l'échec de la tentative de vulgarisation, si elle existe (et je suis un ingénieur plutôt bien éduqué...)
par certaines affirmations, comme par exemple que deux molécules d'eau qui sont entrées en collision sont ensuite liées , car ou L'auteur utilise implicitement la liaison hydrogène, et alors son raisonnement n'est pas généralisable si même il est correct, ou alors il introduit en quelque sorte une force nouvelle liée à la causalité qui vient opportunément soutenir sa flèche du temps.
donc à réserver aux experts et / ou aux zélateurs de YP.
par la composition et l'échec de la tentative de vulgarisation, si elle existe (et je suis un ingénieur plutôt bien éduqué...)
par certaines affirmations, comme par exemple que deux molécules d'eau qui sont entrées en collision sont ensuite liées , car ou L'auteur utilise implicitement la liaison hydrogène, et alors son raisonnement n'est pas généralisable si même il est correct, ou alors il introduit en quelque sorte une force nouvelle liée à la causalité qui vient opportunément soutenir sa flèche du temps.
donc à réserver aux experts et / ou aux zélateurs de YP.
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August 11, 2019The End of Certainty, by Ilya Prigogine
A wonderful book about the role of probability and its relationship to the deterministic laws of matter in motion elaborated by Newton. The underlying material processes of the universe all have a probabilistic, statistical quality, such that on the scale of molecular interactions, there is no certain relationship between cause and effect. Quantum physics recognizes aspects of this. There is considerable discussion of thermodynamics and the necessity for the unidirectional character of natural events. This helps us understand how the universe in its present form of existence cannot go backward, but rather advances toward universal heat death.
A wonderful book about the role of probability and its relationship to the deterministic laws of matter in motion elaborated by Newton. The underlying material processes of the universe all have a probabilistic, statistical quality, such that on the scale of molecular interactions, there is no certain relationship between cause and effect. Quantum physics recognizes aspects of this. There is considerable discussion of thermodynamics and the necessity for the unidirectional character of natural events. This helps us understand how the universe in its present form of existence cannot go backward, but rather advances toward universal heat death.
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September 14, 2023Time, the fundamental dimension of our existence, has fascinated artists, philosophers, and scientists of every culture and every century. All of us can remember a moment as a child when time became a personal reality, when we realized what a "year" was, or asked ourselves when "now" happened. Common sense says time moves forward, never backward, from cradle to grave. Nevertheless, Einstein said that time is an illusion. Nature's laws, as he and Newton defined them, describe a timeless, deterministic universe within which we can make predictions with complete certainty. In effect, these great physicists contended that time is reversible and thus meaningless.
June 3, 2025
Before reading this I was convinced of determinism in our universe. However, this book makes a very good case against it and it feels unsettling to actually agree with some of the authors’ points. I think it’s not clear in the science community who’s in the right as there’s no convincing evidence yet. Still more on the deterministic side of things though.
I really enjoyed the elaborative written parts while the mathematical parts were too hard to follow for me.
I really enjoyed the elaborative written parts while the mathematical parts were too hard to follow for me.
April 11, 2023
Time is a population-level phenomenon, physics that has focused on integrable time-reversible solutions has discounted the aspects of dynamics that help us understand self-organization, creativity, and life, all bound up with the chaotic entropic uncertainty that time's arrow creates. As expected even in this "pop" treatment there's a lot of math I'm ill-suited to evaluate.
March 19, 2019
Un libro de dificultad media. Está claramente dirigido a personas con un conocimiento general sólido en física y matemáticas teóricas. Prigogine aporta datos interesantes a la siempre vigente discusión sobre los límites de nuestra comprensión física del mundo.
October 3, 2019
I had to take away a star because this book was marketed for the layman, but had a host of technical language that went over my head. Regardless, the book was interesting and discussed ideas that I'd never heard before!
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