CvdB

    el concepto de organización está bien enraizado en el universo físico


    Prigogine Ilya & Stengers Isabelle: ORDER OUT OF CHAOS (Bantham, 1984)

    This is the english edition of "La Nouvelle Alliance" (1979). Prigogine analyzes the history of science and scientific thought and derives a new vision of the world.

    Classical science (and quantum mechanics) describes a world as a static and reversible system that undergoes no evolution, whose information is constant in time. On the other hand the second law of thermodynamics describes the world as evolving from order to disorder, while biological evolution is about the complex emerging from the simple (structure, i.e. order, arises from disorder).

    Irreversible processes are an essential part of the universe. Conditions far from equilibrium foster phenomena such as life that classical physics does not cover.

    Prigogine focuses on the peculiar properties exhibited by systems far from equilibrium.

    Non-equilibrium conditions favor the spontaneous development of self-organizing systems (i.e., dissipative structures), which maintain their internal organization, regardless of the general increase in entropy, by expelling matter and energy in the environment. Most of Nature is made of dissipative systems, of systems subject to fluxes of energy and/or matter. Dissipative systems conserve their identity thanks to the interaction with the external world.

    The concept of organization is deeply rooted in the physical universe.

    Prigogine considers living organisms as dissipative structures in states of non-equilibrium. A system that is not in equilibrium exhibits a variation of entropy which is the sum of the variations of entropy due to the internal source of entropy plus the variation of entropy due to the interaction with the external world. The former is positive, but the latter can equally be negative. Therefore total entropy can decrease.

    An organism "lives" because it absorbs energy from the external world and processes it to generate an internal state of lower entropy. An organism "lives" as long as it can avoid falling in the equilibrium state.

    Probability and irreversibility are closely related. Boltzman had already proved that entropy grows because probability grows.

    • estructuras disipativas

    • estructuras ordenadas de Prigogine

    • estructuras disipativas

    • sistemas vivientes como disipadores de gradientes

    • introducción a la termodinámica de los procesos irreversibles

    29.mar.2000

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    Glosario de Carlos von der Becke.