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Order out of chaos by Prigogine and Stengers in 1984

Introduction: The Challenge to Science

Book One: The delusion of the universal (a critique of the history of science)

I. The triumph of reason

    1. The new Moses
    1. A dehumanized world
    1. The Newtonian synthesis
    1. The experimental dialogue
    1. The myth at the origin of science
    1. The limits of classical science

II. The identification of the real

    1. Newton’s laws
    1. Motion and change
    1. The language of dynamics
    1. Laplace’s demon

III. The two cultures

    1. Diderot and the discourse of the living
    1. Kant’s critical ratification
    1. A philosophy of nature? Hegel and Bergson
    1. Process and reality: Whitehead
    1. “Ignoramus, Ignoramibus”: the positivist’s strain
    1. A new start

Book Two: The science of complexity (the history of thermodynamics)

IV. Energy and the industrial age

    1. Heat, the rival of gravitation
    1. The principle of the conservation of energy
    1. Heat engines and the arrow of time
    1. From technology to cosmology
    1. The birth of entropy
    1. Boltzmann’s order principle
    1. Carnot and Darwin

V. The three stages of thermodynamics

    1. Flux and force
    1. Linear thermodynamics
    1. Far from equilibrium
    1. Beyond the threshold of chemical instability
    1. The encounter with molecular biology
    1. Bifurcations and symmetry-breaking
    1. Cascading bifurcations and the transitions to chaos
    1. From Euclid to Aristotle

VI. Order through fluctuations

    1. Fluctuations and chemistry
    1. Fluctuations and correlations
    1. The amplification of fluctuations
    1. Logistic evolution
    1. Evolutionary feedback
    1. Modelizations of complexity
    1. An open world

Book Three: From being to becoming (nonequilibrium dynamics)

VII: Rediscovering time

    1. A change of emphasis
    1. The end of universality
    1. The rise of quantum mechanics
    1. Heisenberg’s uncertainty relation
    1. The temporal evolution of quantum systems
    1. A nonequilibrium universe

VIII: The clash of doctrines

    1. Probability and irreversibility
    1. Boltzmann’s breakthrough
    1. Questioning Boltzmann’s interpretation
    1. Dynamics and thermodynamics: two separate worlds
    1. Boltzmann and the arrow of time

IX: Irreversibility–the entropy barrier

    1. Entropy and the arrow of time
    1. Irreversibility as a symmetry-breaking process
    1. The limits of classical concepts
    1. The renewal of dynamics
    1. From randomness to irreversibility
    1. The entropy barrier
    1. The dynamics of correlations
    1. Entropy as a selection principle
    1. Active matter

Conclusions: From earth to heaven–the reenchantment of nature

1. An open science

2. Time and times

3. The entropy barrier

4. The evolutionary paradigm

5. Actors and spectators

6. A whirlwind in a turbulent nature

7. Beyond tautology

8. The creative course of time

9. The human condition

10. The renewal of nature

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