Table of Contents
Foreword: Science and Change Alvin Toffler xi
Preface: Man's New Dialogue with Nature xxvii
Introduction: The Challenge to Science 1
Book 1 The Delusion of the Universal
Chapter I The Triumph of Reason 27
1 The New Moses 27
2 A Dehumanized World 30
3 The Newtonian Synthesis 37
4 The Experimental Dialogue 41
5 The Myth at the Origin of Science 44
6 The Limits of Classical Science 51
Chapter II The Identification of the Real 57
1 Newton's Laws 57
2 Motion and Change 62
3 The Language of Dynamics 68
4 Laplace's Demon 75
Chapter III The Two Cultures 79
1 Diderot and the Discourse of the Living 79
2 Kant's Critical Ratification 86
3 A Philosophy of Nature? Hegel and Bergson 89
4 Process and Reality: Whitehead 93
5 "Ignoramus, Ignoramibus": The Positivist's Strain 96
6 A New Start 98
Book 2 The Science of Complexity
Chapter IV Energy and the Industrial Age 103
1 Heat, the Rival of Gravitation 103
2 The Principle of the Conservation of Energy 107
3 Heat Engines and the Arrow of Time 111
4 From Technology to Cosmology 115
5 The Birth of Entropy 117
6 Boltzmann's Order Principle 122
7 Carnot and Darwin 127
Chapter V The Three Stages of Thermodynamics 131
1 Flux and Force 131
2 Linear Thermodynamics 137
3 Far from Equilibrium 140
4 Beyond the Threshold of Chemical Instability 146
5 The Encounter with Molecular Biology 153
6 Bifurcations and Symmetry-Breaking 160
7 Cascading Bifurcations and the Transitions to Chaos 167
8 From Euclid to Aristotle 171
Chapter VI Order Through Fluctuations 177
1 Fluctuations and Chemistry 177
2 Fluctuations and Correlations 179
3 The Amplification of Fluctuations 181
4 Structural Stability 189
5 Logistic Evolution 192
6 Evolutionary Feedback 196
7 Modelizations of Complexity 203
8 An Open World 207
Book 3 From Being to Becoming
Chapter VII Rediscovering Time 213
1 A Change of Emphasis 213
2 The End of Universality 217
3 The Rise of Quantum Mechanics 218
4 Heisenberg's Uncertainty Relation 222
5 The Temporal Evolution of Quantum Systems 226
6 A Nonequilibrium Universe 229
Chapter VIII The Clash of Doctrines 233
1 Probability and Irreversibility 233
2 Boltzmann's Breakthrough 240
3 Questioning Boltzamann's Interpretation 243
4 Dynamics and Thermodynamics: Two Separate Worlds 247
5 Boltzmann and the Arrow of Time 253
Chapter IX Irreversibility-the Entropy Barrier 257
1 Entropy and the Arrow of Time 257
2 Irreversibility as a Symmetry-Breaking Process 260
3 The Limits of Classical Concepts 261
4 The Renewal of Dynamics 264
5 From Randomness to Irrevrsibility 272
6 The Entropy Barrier 277
7 The Dynamics of Correlations 280
8 Entropy as a Selection Principle 285
9 Active Matter 286
Conclusions: From Earth to Heaven-the Reenchantment of Nature 291
1 An Open Science 291
2 Time and Times 293
3 The Entropy Barrier 295
4 The Evolutionary Paradigm 297
5 Actors and Spectators 298
6 A Whirlwind in a Turbulent Nature 301
7 Beyond Tautology 305
8 The Creative Course of Time 307
9 The Human Condition 311
10 The Renewal of Nature 312
Notes 315
Index 335
