Ilya Prigogine

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Ilya Prigogine (1977)

Ilya Prigogine ( Russian Илья Романович Пригожин / Ilja Romanowitsch Prigoschin , scientific transliteration Il'ja Romanovič Prigožin ; born January 25, 1917 in Moscow ; † May 28, 2003 in Brussels ) was a Russian-Belgian physical chemist , philosopher and Nobel Prize winner . His work on dissipative structures , self-organization and irreversibility has had a lasting impact.

Life

A few months before the Russian Revolution , Ilya Prigogine was born in Moscow to a Jewish family. His father, Roman Prigogine, was a chemical engineer at the Moscow Polytechnic , his mother Julia Wichman was a pianist. Because the family was critical of the new Soviet system , they left Russia in 1921. First they moved to Germany, in 1929 to Belgium . In 1949 Prigogine took on Belgian citizenship.

Prigogine studied chemistry at the Université libre de Bruxelles Belgium, where he became a professor in 1950. From 1959 he taught at the University of Texas in Austin and as director of the Institut Internationaux de Physiques et de Chimie . In 1960 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 1967 to the National Academy of Sciences . From 1961 to 1966 he was a professor at the University of Chicago . From 1967 he returned to Austin and was director of the Center for Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics .

For his studies on irreversible thermodynamics he received the Rumford Medal in 1976 and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977 . In 1989 he was raised to the Belgian nobility, he was awarded the title Viscount . Ilya Prigogine is the founder of the International Commission on Distance Education , a global accreditation agency for distance learning. In addition, from 1970 he was an elected member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , whose Cothenius Medal he received in 1975, and of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

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Scientific research

Prigogine's research as a chemist was concentrated in the field of thermodynamics . The laws of statistical mechanics of Boltzmann describe the increase of entropy in closed systems (microscopic description of the second law of thermodynamics). This can explain many physical phenomena, but not the formation of more complex, stable structures in non-equilibrium systems such as those observed in the Bénard experiment . In particular, the existence of life seems to contradict the laws of thermodynamics, because organisms receive imbalances such as concentration and temperature differences and can build order instead of falling victim to the increase in entropy. To do this, they have to maintain a constant turnover of energy (a so-called open system as opposed to closed systems of classical thermodynamics).

Based among other things on the work of Lars Onsager , Prigogine applied thermodynamics to systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium for the first time. In the flow of energy that keeps a system out of equilibrium, there are conditions that can create order and stable structures, the so-called dissipative structures . Using the example of chemical clocks in which molecules behave coherently, the glycolysis cycle and other ordered and ordering chemical systems that are characteristic of the chemical level of organisms in various forms, Prigogine was able to mathematically describe the emergence of higher levels of order from simple, chaotic basic states. For this work Prigogine received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977.

From being to becoming

With his autobiography, which he wrote in connection with the Nobel Prize award, Prigogine turned to philosophy . In his books Dialogue with Nature and The Paradox of Time , which he wrote together with the philosopher Isabelle Stengers , he dealt with Aristotle , René Descartes , Immanuel Kant , Martin Heidegger , Alfred North Whitehead and Henri Bergson , among others , always talking about his own scientific research. One concern was to incorporate the results of the natural sciences into the humanities discourse as well as vice versa.

Prigogine understood his scientific results as the basis for a collaboration between these two domains, as he was able to integrate historicity and irreversible events into physics for the first time with the theory of dissipative structure . Physics as being-oriented-static on the one hand and biology, geology and humanities with a focus on origin and development on the other no longer mark two different research areas for Prigogine, but instead move closer together and increasingly reveal points of contact.

The paradox of time

Prigogine's philosophical interest was particularly in the concept of time . In the book “The Paradox of Time”, which he wrote together with Isabelle Stengers, he described three paradoxes that physics has not yet been able to solve, the time paradox , the quantum paradox and the cosmological paradox . The book contains a proposed solution for the time paradox based on the thermodynamics of irreversible processes.

In classical dynamics , beyond Isaac Newton and even with Albert Einstein , time has always been understood as reversible. Likewise, in no physical description does it matter when exactly something takes place. Free fall , impulse transmissions or the Doppler effect , for example, are not tied to specific points in time and each of these describable processes can just as easily take place in reverse. The laws of nature should apply universally, past and future are identical even in the theory of relativity and cannot be differentiated. Their local time as the time of the observer is subjective, but still reversible. This notion of reversible time, however, contradicts not only our everyday experience, but also our knowledge of irreversible processes in the context of other natural sciences such as evolution in biology .

The physics of non-equilibrium processes, with which concepts such as self-organization and dissipative structures are connected, introduces the arrow of time , i.e. the concept of irreversibility. This plays a constructive role: the emergence of life would be unthinkable without it. Against critics who call historicity a mere appearance, Prigogine replies: "We are the children of the arrow of time, of evolution, and not its originators" .

Even the term natural law is problematic and questionable for Prigogine, if it does not help with the question of the new and its creation, because it ignores events. Nature is not given, but has arisen and is subject to constant change, yes, apparently, as Darwin's theory of evolution demands, the development taking place in it is too complex.

The inclusion of irreversibility, events and the arrow of time in natural science leads to the reformulation of the laws of nature. Prigogine sees dynamics as the classic explanatory system in physics. The ultimate goal of classical science was to describe basic elements in such a way that the time factor could be eliminated. As a result, life as a whole is outside the laws of nature. A dynamic that helps explain life processes must incorporate a narrative element, namely the idea of ​​the event, which no longer has certainties, but rather possibilities on the topic. Here, physics is expanded to include a previously neglected factor of historicity . Dynamics as a prototype of deterministic science must work with probabilistic methods due to the existence of unstable systems (which includes the majority of all dynamic systems). The chaos leads to the inclusion of the arrow of time in the basic dynamic description.

Prigogine distinguishes between two types of chaos:

  • Dynamic chaos of the microscopic level: This breaks the temporal symmetry and is the basis for
  • Dissipative chaos on the macroscopic level: This is the reason for phenomena that are determined by the 2nd law of thermodynamics : deterministic approach to equilibrium, dissipative structures and dissipative chaos.

Prigogine sees a key role in dissipative chaos, "... [it] is namely something in the middle between pure chance and the redundant order" , and thus the condition for the creation of information in biological systems.

According to Prigogine, the solution of the time paradox is the necessary basis for the solution of the other two paradoxes. The quantum paradox is that it introduces a subjective element into our description of nature, and the cosmological paradox is that there are no events in the time conception of physics. So the Big Bang cannot have taken place, even if it were based on physical laws.

The dialogue with nature

In their book Dialog mit der Natur , Prigogine and Stengers discuss the changes in scientific access to nature from antiquity to the present day. At first glance, the book appears to be very critical of science, but only questions that form of modern natural science that has developed in Europe since the 17th century. According to the authors, modern science has reached a limit and needs to be revised. According to the authors, it was mainly on the microscopic level of atomism , in which it saw its ideals of determinacy fulfilled - but in doing so it failed.

The foundation of modern natural science (with Isaac Newton as the symbolic pivot) led to a polarization of culture into a humanistic and a scientific one - Prigogine describes it as the schism between the natural sciences and the humanities .

The triumphant advance of the natural sciences , however, encountered internal contradictions as early as the 19th century: 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 modern science with Newtonian influences.

Today it is known, according to Prigogine and Stengers, that far from thermodynamic equilibrium, new structure types can arise spontaneously - under these conditions disorder and chaos can transform into order and produce dissipative structures . These describe the specific and unique that could not occur in the vicinity of equilibrium; this is where self-organization is located, which leads to inhomogeneous structures. In anthropomorphic terms, matter is blind in equilibrium, but begins to perceive in non-equilibrium states . Dissipative structures lead to a development to a higher order, which gives the theory of evolution a thermodynamic basis.

On the basis of this perspective, the question of the origin of life can no longer be seen so far from the fundamental laws of physics. Prigogine also believes that, together with this question, traditional humanities questions can now be answered from a higher-level scientific system that he generally calls dialogue with nature . According to Prigogine, this dialogue is only at the beginning and ends the dualism between physics and culture .

Effect and influence of Prigogines

Prigogine's theory of dissipative structures was mainly received in theories of self-organization, systems theory , synergetics and in cybernetic work. Fritjof Capra, for example, dedicates an entire chapter in his book Life Network to 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 is repeatedly discussed in the context of studies on complexity and time research. Prigogine's work by Erich Jantsch was placed in a very broad context that goes far beyond physics .

In the field of time philosophy, Mike Sandbothe , for example, sees a relationship between Prigogine and Heidegger, because both differentiate between two levels of time, one universal and one irreversible, which Heidegger uses as temporality . With all the superficially ascertainable similarities, this cannot be equated with Prigogine's irreversible temporality.

In the case of Prigogine's ideas, which are in part closely related to Humberto Maturanas , there are again diametrically opposed conceptions of time, which make the legitimacy of equating the concept of self-organization used by both authors appear questionable.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Member entry by Ilya Prigogine at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on October 12, 2012.
  2. ^ List of members . In: Yearbook of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . tape 2003 , no. 1 , 2004, p. 300 .
  3. ↑ The Paradox of Time. 1993, p. 10.
  4. ↑ The Paradox of Time. 1993, p. 123.
  5. ↑ Dialogue with nature. 1993, p. 23.
  6. ↑ Sandbothe

literature

Selected articles on Prigogine

Web links

Commons : Ilya Prigogine  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Prigogine, Ilya
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Prigozhin, Ilya Romanovich; Пригожин, Илья Романович (Russian); Prigožin, Il'ja Romanovič (scientific transcription)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian-Belgian physical chemist
DATE OF BIRTH January 25, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Moscow
DATE OF DEATH May 28, 2003
Place of death Brussels