The concept of Nature: between Heraclitus and Prigogine

Mariano Bizzarri

The development of physics-chemistry of the last thirty years - accompanied by a parallel but more recent revolution in biology – has radically changed the view of the world passed down by Newton[1].

The concept  of Nature, as a predictable one, exhaustively described by deterministic laws, has recently been challenged by a probabilistic representation that, including the “arrow of time” between its variables, is tempting to explain how, far from equilibrium, non-linear dynamic processes are the origin of new emerging structures and, eventually, new order’s form. More(pdf)

[1] I. Prigogine e I. Stengers, La Nouvelle Alliance, Metamorphose de La Science, Paris, 1981.