THE MENTAL MAELSTROM
Hunted since youth by the problems of time, Prigogine was
I -I i/,/.led by a seeming contradiction. On the one hand, there uM , the physicist’s belief in entropy—that the universe is run-liiiij’, down and that all organized patterns must eventually de-• .\v. On the other, there was the biologist’s recognition that hir itself is organization and that we are continually giving i lie to higher and higher, more and more complex organization. Entropy pointed in one direction, evolution in another.
This led Prigogine to ask how higher forms of organization mine into being, and to years of research hi chemistry and physics in pursuit of the answer.
Today Prigogine points out that in any complex system, I1 oin the molecules in a liquid to the neurons in a brain or i In- traffic in a city, the parts of the system are always under-roing small-scale change: they are in constant flux. The interior of any system is quivering with fluctuation.
Sometimes, when negative feedback comes into play, these fluctuations are damped out or suppressed and the equilib-nuin of the system maintained. But, where amplifying or positive feedback is at work, some of these fluctuations may In- tremendously magnified—to the point at which the equilibrium of the entire system is threatened. Fluctuations arising in the outside environment may hit at this moment and I ml her amplify the mounting vibration—until the equilibrium «>l the whole is destroyed and the existing structure is tmmshed.*
Whether the result of the runaway internal fluctuations or of r-Hk-rnal forces, or both, this breakup of the old equilibrium iiiicii results not in chaos or breakdown, but in the creation nl” ;t wholly new structure at a higher level. This new strue-IMH- may be more differentiated, internally interactive, and «oni pi ex than the old one, and needs more energy and matter ( UK! perhaps information and other resources) to sustainit-xi II. Speaking mainly about physical and chemical reactions, lint occasionally calling attention to social analogues, Prigo-I’Mic calls these new, more complex systems “dissipative •iiuctures.”
* H is illuminating to think of the economy in these terms. Supply and !• in.UK! are maintained in equilibrium by various feedback processes. Unemployment, if intensified by positive feedback and not offset by ii. i iiivo feedback elsewhere in the system, can threaten the stability of i tin Outside fluctuations—such as oil price hikes—may converge i” in:ike the internal swings and fluctuations wilder, until the equi-III.IHUU of the whole system is shattered.
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