Order out of chaos: the evolutionary paradigm and the physical sciences

Alvin Toffer / Science And Change. Man's New Dialogue With Nature. The Challenge To Science. Book One: The Delusion Of The Universal. Chapter 1: The Triumph Of Reason. -- The New Moses -- A Dehumanized World -- The Newtonian Synthesis -- The Experimental Dialog -- The Myth At The Origin Of Science -- The Limits Of Classical Science. The Identification Of The Real. Newton's Laws. -- Motion And Change -- The Language Of Dynamics -- Laplace's Demon. The Two Cultures. -- Diderot And The Discourse Of Living -- Kant's Critical Ratification -- A Philosophy Of Nature? Hegel And Bergson -- Process And Reality: Whitehead -- Ignoramus, Ignoramibus: The Positivist's Strain -- A New Start. The Science Of Complexity -- Energy And The Industrial Age -- Heat, The Rival Of Gravitation -- The Principle Of The Conservation Of Energy -- Heat Engines And The Arrow Of Time -- From Technology To Cosmology -- The Birth Of Entropy -- Boltzmann's Order Principle -- Carnot And Darwin. The Three Stages Of Thermodynamics. -- Flux And Force -- Linear Thermodynamics -- Far From Equilibrium -- Beyond The Threshold Of Chemical Instability -- The Encounter With Moleular Biology -- Bifurcations And Symmetry-breaking -- Cascading Bifurcations And The Transitions To Chaos -- From Euclid To Aristotle. Order Through Fluctuations. -- Fluctuations And Chemistry -- Fluctuations And Corralations -- The Amplifications Of Fluctuations -- Structural Stability -- Logistic Evolution -- Evolutionary Feedback -- Modelizatitons Of Complexity -- An Open World. From Being To Becoming. Rediscovering Time. -- A Change Of Emphasis -- The End Of Universality -- The Rise Of Quantum Mechanics -- Heisenburg's Uncertainty Relation -- The Temporal Evolution Of Quantum Systems -- A Nonequilibrium Universe -- The Clash Of Doctrines. -- Probability And Irreversibility -- Boltzmann's Breakthrough -- Questioning Boltzmann's Interpretation Ilya Prigogine And Isabelle Stengers ; Foreword By Alvin Toffler. Based On The Authors' La Nouvelle Alliance. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Belgian philosopher Isabelle Stengers and Ilya Prigogine, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1977 for his work on the thermodynamics of non-equilibrium systems, make their ideas accessible to a wide audience in this book, which has engendered massive debate in Europe and America. Stengers and Prigogine show how the two great themes of classic science, order and chaos, which coexisted uneasily for centuries, are being reconciled in a new and unexpected synthesis.