Ilya Prigogine
Ilya Prigogine (Russian Илья Романович Пригожин / Ilya Romanovich Prigoschin, scientific transliteration Il'ja Romanovic Prigožin; born January 25, 1917 in Moscow, † 28 May 2003 in Brussels ) was a Russian- Belgian physical chemist, philosopher and Nobel Prize winners. His work on dissipative structures, self-organization and irreversibility have exerted a lasting influence.
- 4.1 Selected articles on Prigogine
Life
A few months before the Russian Revolution Ilya Prigogine was born in Moscow. His father, Roman Prigogine, was a chemical engineer at the Moscow Polytechnic. Because the family the new Soviet system faced critical, she left Russia in 1921. First, she moved to Germany in 1929 to Belgium. In 1949 Prigogine to the Belgian citizenship.
Prigogine studied chemistry at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, where he became professor in 1950. From 1959 he taught at the University of Texas at Austin and Director of the Institute Internationaux de Physique et de Chimie. From 1961 to 1966 he was a professor at the University of Chicago held. In 1967 he returned to Austin and served as director of the Center for Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics.
For his studies on irreversible thermodynamics, he received the Rumford Medal in 1976 and 1977, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. He was raised to the peerage in 1989, he was awarded the title of viscount. Ilya Prigogine is founder of the International Commission on Distance Education, a global accrediting agency for distance learning. In addition, he was in 1970 elected member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
Work
Scientific research
Prigogine's research as a chemist took place in the field of thermodynamics. The laws of statistical mechanics of Boltzmann described the increase of entropy in closed systems ( microscopic description of the second law of thermodynamics). So many physical phenomena, although could be explained, but not the realization of more complex, stable structures in non-equilibrium systems, such as they were, for example, observed in Bénard experiment. Now, even the presence of life seems to contradict all the laws of thermodynamics, because organisms imbalances can get as concentration and temperature differences and build order, rather than succumb to the increase in entropy. All they need to maintain a constant energy expenditure (called an open system as opposed to closed systems of classical thermodynamics ).
Based inter alia on the work of Lars Onsager, Prigogine was the first time thermodynamics applied to systems far from equilibrium. In the flow of energy, which keeps a system from equilibrium conditions prevail, the order and stable structures can give rise to the so-called dissipative structures. Using the example of chemical clocks, in which behave molecules coherently, the Glycolysezyklus and other parent and ordering chemical systems that are characteristic in various forms for the chemical level of organisms, Prigogine was able to describe the formation of higher order levels from simple, chaotic ground states mathematically. For this work, Prigogine was awarded the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
From Being to Becoming
With his autobiography, which he wrote in connection with the Nobel Prize, to Prigogine turns to philosophy. He sat about in his book co-authored with the philosopher Isabelle Stengers books dialogue with nature and the paradox of time among other things, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Heidegger, Whitehead and Bergson apart, he always went out of his own scientific research. His main concern was, however, the results of the natural sciences as well to incorporate in the humanistic discourse and vice versa.
Prigogine understood his scientific results as a basis for cooperation between these two domains because he was able to integrate historicity and irreversible events in the physics with the theory of dissipative structure for the first time. Physics with a focus on development and becoming on the other mark than his statically - oriented on the one hand and biology, geology and Humanities for Prigogine no longer two different research areas, but move closer together and let more and more points of contact seen.
The Paradox of Time
Prigogine's main interest was the concept of time. In co-authored with Isabelle Stengers "The Paradox of Time", he described three paradoxes that so far could not solve the physics, the Zeitparadox that Quantenparadox and the cosmological paradox. The book contains a proposed solution for the Zeitparadox based on the thermodynamics of irreversible processes.
In classical dynamics, Isaac Newton away, and even more at Albert Einstein Time has always been understood reversible. Similarly, when no physical description, it matters exactly when something takes place. Free Fall, pulse transmissions or the Doppler effect are thus, for example, not tied to specific time points and each of these recordable processes can be just as well run the other way around. The laws of nature should apply universally, past and future are even still in the theory of relativity identical and can not be distinguished. Although their local time as a time of the observer is a subjective, yet reversible. However, this idea of reversible time not only contradicts our everyday experience, but also our knowledge of the irreversible processes in the context of other natural sciences such as evolutionary biology.
The physics of non-equilibrium processes, with the combine concepts such as self-organization and dissipative structures, introduces the arrow of time, so the concept of irreversibility. This plays a constructive role: the origin of life would be unthinkable without it. Against critics who call historicity as mere appearance, replied Prigogine: "We are the children of the arrow of time, evolution, and not its author".
The very notion of natural law is problematic and be questioned for Prigogine, he does not help with the question of the new and of its formation, because it hides events. Nature is not given, but created and subjected to continual change, so obviously, as Darwin's theory of evolution calls that take place in their development is to a higher degree of complexity.
The inclusion of irreversibility, events, and time arrow in the science leads to the reformulation of the laws of nature. Prigogine sees this dynamic as the classic explanation system of physics. It was the final destination of the classical sciences to describe basic elements so that the time factor could be turned off. This meant that life as a whole is outside the laws of nature. So one has a dynamic that is the explanation of life processes useful to record a narrative element in itself, namely the idea of the event that no longer certainties, but rather ways to topic. The physics is hereby extended by a previously unrecognized factor of historicity. The dynamics as a prototype of deterministic science must (the majority of all dynamic systems falls among which ) with probabilistic methods work due to the existence of unstable systems. The chaos leads to the inclusion of the arrow of time in the basic dynamic description.
Prigogine here between two types of chaos:
- Dynamic chaos the microscopic level: This is a breaking of temporal symmetry result and is the basis for
- Dissipative chaos at the macroscopic level: This is the reason for phenomena that are determined by the second law of thermodynamics: deterministic approach to equilibrium, dissipative structures and dissipative chaos.
Prigogine dissipative chaos sees a key role, " ... [ it ] is in fact a cross between to pure chance and the redundant order", and thus the condition for the emergence of information in biological systems.
The solution of the Zeitparadoxes by Prigogine is the necessary basis for solving the other two paradoxes. The Quantenparadox is that it introduces an element of subjectivity in our description of nature, and the cosmological paradox is that there are no events in the concept of time in physics. So the Big Bang may not have taken place, even if it would follow from the laws of physics.
Dialogue with Nature
In her book Dialogue with Nature Prigogine and Stengers discuss the transformations of the scientific approach to nature from ancient times to today. The book will be severely critical of science at first glance, but rejects only one occurrence of the science from which has developed very specifically and see the authors at a turning point, the parties reached a limit. Science moved According to Prigogine in the last three centuries, especially at a microscopic level, in an atomism, in which they saw fulfilled its ideals of determinism - but so she went missing. Amazingly this was the effect of the foundation of science ( with Isaac Newton as a symbolic focal point ): It led to a polarization of culture in a humanistic and a scientific - refers to it as the schism between science and the humanities Prigogine.
However, the triumph of science came in the 19th century to internal contradictions: The Fourier's law as the first formulation of an irreversible process and the evolving theory of evolution were the beginning of the insight into the inadequacy and inconsistency of exact science Newtonian character.
Today it is known as Prigogine that far from thermodynamic equilibrium new structure types can spontaneously arise - disorder and chaos can be transformed under these conditions in order and bring forth dissipative structures. These describe the specific and unique that could not occur close to equilibrium, self-assembly is situates that leads to inhomogeneous structures. Anthropomorphic spoken: At equilibrium, the matter is blind, in equilibrium distant states it begins to perceive. Dissipative structures draw a trend to higher order according to which the theory of evolution is replaced by a thermodynamic basis.
The question of the origin of life is not that far away to see based on this perspective of the fundamental laws of physics. Prigogine goes on to say that together with this question now traditional humanities questions can be answered from a parent in the future science system, which he generally called dialogue with nature. This dialog is available by Prigogine only at the beginning and ends the dualism between physics and culture.
Impact and influence Prigogine
Prigogine's theory of dissipative structures was mainly rezipiert in theories of self-organization of systems theory, synergetics and cybernetic work. Fritjof Capra in his book about devotes an entire chapter to the web of life Prigogine and sees him together with Humberto Maturana and Gregory Bateson as a pioneer of a new conception of life and living processes. Prigogine's work will be discussed again in the context of studies on complexity and time research. In a very broad and far beyond physics broader context Prigogine's work is made available with Erich Jantsch.
In the field of philosophy of time about Mike sand Bothe sees a relation between Prigogine and Heidegger, because both distinguish between two levels of time, a universal and irreversible, which occurs as temporality in Heidegger. In all superficial similarities detectable it can not be equated with Prigogine irreversible temporality. Furthermore, can be found in the ideas so often found in a close relationship and Humberto Maturana Prigogine diametrically opposed conceptions of time that leave the legitimacy of equating the term used by both authors of self-organization seem questionable.
In chaos theory, a successful branch mainly in physics and mathematics, Prigogine is still very well received.