Viscount Ilya Romanovich Prigogine (1917–2003), a Belgian physical chemist of Russian-Jewish origin, is renowned for his groundbreaking work on dissipative structures and their role in thermodynamic systems far from equilibrium, a contribution that earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977.
Prigogine’s theory of dissipative structures offers a framework for understanding how order and complexity can emerge in systems driven by external energy flows. He further elaborated on this concept in the seminal book Order Out of Chaos, co-authored with Isabelle Stengers, which explores the philosophical and scientific implications of self-organization and dynamic processes in nature, critiquing classical science.
“In Prigoginian terms, all systems contain subsystems, which are continually ‘fluctuating.’ At times, a single fluctua tion or a combination of them may become so powerful, as a result of positive feedback, that it shatters the preexisting organization. At this revolutionary moment-the authors call it a ‘singular moment’ or a ‘bifurcation point’-it is inherently impossible to determine in advance which direction change will take: whether the system will disintegrate into “chaos” or leap to a new, more differentiated , higher level of ‘order’ or organization, which they call a ‘dissipative structure.’ (Such physical or chemical structures are termed dissipative because, compared with the simpler structures they replace , they require more energy to sustain them.)” (Prigogine and Stengers, XV).