In human thermodynamics, Ilya Romanovich Prigogine (1917-2003) was a Russian-born Belgian chemist and thermodynamicist known for his "far-from-equilibrium" thermodynamic dissipative structure theory, according to which biological life is argued to have self-assembled from inorganic non-life through the non-equilbrium thermodynamic processes of fluctuations and bifurcations. [11] Progogine's theory is seeded with and influenced by philosophy; as such, his theories are often found in writings on philosophical thermodynamics. [1] He has been described, by Time magazine, as the "poet of thermodynamics". [9] In famous publications, Prigogine's most-referenced book, co-written with Gregoire Nicolis, is the 1977 Self-Organization in Non-Equilibrium Systems: from Dissipative Structures to Order through Fluctuations. [10]

Progogine was awarded the 1977 Nobel Prize in chemistry for this theory. [2] He is associated with the Brussels school of thermodynamics, of which his mentor Belgian mathematician and physicist Théophile de Donder was the founder. Students of Prigogine include Grégoire Nicolis, Dilip Kondepudi, and Dick Hammond, among others.

Prigogine's 512-page, 1977 book.

In 1954, Prigogine, together with Raymond Defay, published Treatise on Thermodynamics: Based on the Methods of Gibbs and De Donder. [5] Prigogine's most popular work is the 1984 book Order Out of Chaos, in which he presented his dissipative structures theory in an easy to understand language, stiched with a number of philosophical conjectures and anthropomorphic chemical-molecular analogies and phraseologies. Many currently use Progogine's dissipative structure theory as a cornerstone in theories concerning evolution and human life. In 2004, the Prigogine Medal, a prize give to one senior and one junior scientist in the field of systems ecology, was established in his honour.

Internal entropy

See main: Internal entropy

The splitting of entropy variation dS into two different terms, i.e. the sum of the entropy exchanges (e), deS, with the outside world at the boundary and entropy inside (i), diS, the system referring to irreversible processes:

was first done Prigogine in 1945. [3]

314-page 1984 book

View of classical thermodynamics

See main: Life thermodynamics

Prigogine, curiously, had a dismal view of classical thermodynamics in its applicability to explain the phenomenon of life and evolution? To cite one example, in 1955 Prigogine stated: [6]

“The fact that during growth living organisms actually show a decrease of entropy production during evolution up to the stationary state … also, the fact that their organization generally increases during this evolution [which] corresponds to the decrease of entropy as studied [leads one to puzzle as to why] the behavior of living organisms has always seemed so strange from the point of view of classical thermodynamics; that the applicability of thermodynamics to such systems has often been questioned. One may say that from the point of view of the thermodynamics of open and stationary systems [nonequilibrium thermodynamics] a much better understanding of their principal features is obtained.”

In the opening comments to his 1977 Nobel Lecture “Time, Structure and Fluctuations”, similarly, he again makes a misaligned attempt, i.e. by purposely mentioning Helmholtz free energy which is typically used in isothermal (constant temperature) isochoric (constant volume) experiments such as in explosives research (where explosive reactions by their nature induce pressure changes), verses the Gibbs free energy (common to biological processes), to discredit the validity of standard thermodynamics to explain living order: [2]

“Thermodynamic equilibrium may be characterized by the minimum of the Helmholtz free energy defined usually by: F = E – TS. Are most types of ‘organisations’ around us of this nature? It is enough to ask such a question to see that the answer is negative. Obviously in a town, in a living system, we have a quite different type of functional order. To obtain a thermodynamic theory for this type of structure we have to show that that non-equilibrium may be a source of order. Irreversible processes may lead to a new type of dynamic states of matter which I have called ‘dissipative structures’.”

This view strangely existed, in the mind of Prigogine, in spite of the fact that he was well acquainted with German writer Johann Goethe’s 1809 Elective Affinities (as referenced in the endnotes to his Order Out of Chaos), in which the activities of human life and love were explained via a theory of human chemical reactions quantified by chemical affinities, which, as elaborated on greatly by Prigogine’s mentor de Donder in his 1936 Thermodynamic Theory of Affinity, are described via changes in chemical free energy (Gibbs free energy), a classical thermodynamics conception.

Videos
In the first video (8:30), below left, Prigogine discusses his life-long curiosity about time and irreversibility in nature and physics; in the second video (1:15) center, he discusses his view of chaos as a form of complex order; in the third video (2:49), he discusses his views on the relation between science and religion:


Evolution
Underlying much of Prigogine’s work was his aim to explain evolution by a new version of thermodynamics of his own formulation, a mixture of non-equilibrium or convection flow thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and chaos theory mathematics. The seeds of this drive seem to trace to French philosopher Henri Bergson and his 1907 book L'Évolution Créatrice (Creative Evolution). This publication was said to have “inspired” Ilya Prigogine to reconsider the foundations of thermodynamics work for which he later won the 1977 Nobel Prize in chemistry. [2] In his Nobel lecture, Prigogine recalled: “since my adolescence, I have read many philosophical texts. I still remember the spell L'Évolution Créatrice cast on me. More specifically, I felt that some essential message was embedded, still to be made explicit, in Bergson’s remark: ‘the more deeply we study the nature of time, the better we understand that duration means invention, creation of forms, continuous elaboration of absolutely new.’” [7]

In his 1972 article “Thermodynamics of Evolution”, to elaborate a bit, Prigogine and associates state: [8]

"To their credit, there are a few evolutionists (though apparently very few) who recognize the critical nature of the problem [of the second law] and who are trying to solve it."

In the years to follow, Prigogine attempted to explain evolution in terms of the abstract conceptions of dissipative structures, such as Bénard cells, bifurcations, and fluctuations.

Gladyshev's hierarchical thermodynamics
A competing classical thermodynamics biological evolution theory is the hierarchical thermodynamics theory, developed in 1977 by Russian physical chemist Georgi Gladyshev. Gladyshev's theory was stimulated into development (the year Prigogine won the Nobel prize) owing to personal convictions that Progogine's theory was illogical when applied to the process of biological evolution. Gladyshev sent Prigogine a copy of his theory but Prigogine rejected it. [4]

References
1. Earley, Joseph E. (2006). "Philosophy and the Statistical Mechanics of Ilya Prigogine" (PDF), Foundations of Chemistry. 8, 271-283.
2. Prigogine, Ilya. (1977). “Time, Structure and Fluctuations”, Nobel Lecture, Dec. 08.
3. Prigogine, Ilya. (1945). Etude Thermodynamics des Phenomenes Irreversibles (Study of the Thermodynamics of Irreversible Phenomenon). Presented to the science faculty at the Free University of Brussels (1945); Paris: Dunod, 1947.
4. Gladyshev, Georgi, P. (1978). "On the Thermodynamics of Biological Evolution", Journal of Theoretical Biology, Vol. 75, Issue 4, Dec 21, pp. 425-441 (Preprint, Chernogolovka, Institute of Chem. Phys. Academy of Science of USSR, May, 1977, p. 46).
5. Prigogine, Ilya and Defay, Raymond. (1954). Treatise on Thermodynamics: Based on the Methods of Gibbs and De Donder. Longmans, Green.
6. Prigogine, Ilya. (1955). Introduction to Thermodynamics of Irreversible Processes, (pg. 92). New York: Interscience Publishers.
7. (a) Prigogine, Ilya. (1977). “Autobiography”, Nobel Prize Orgnaization.
(b) Ilya Prigogine (1917-2003), biographical overview by Josephy E. Early, Department of Chemistry, Georgetown University.
8. (a) Prigogine, Ilya, Nicolis, Gregoire, and Babloyants, Agnes. (1972). "Thermodynamics of Evolution," (part I). Physics Today (pgs. 23-28), Vol. 25, November.
(b) Prigogine, Ilya, Nicolis, Gregoire, and Babloyants, Agnes. (1972). "Thermodynamics of Evolution," (part II). Physics Today (pgs. 38-44), Vol. 25, December.
9. Weil, Martin. (2003). “Ilya Prigogine Dies; Nobel Winner, ‘Poet of Thermodynamics’”, The Washington Post, May 31.
10. Nicolis, Gregoire and Prigogine, Ilya. (1977). Self-Organization in Non-Equilibrium Systems: From Dissipative Structures to Order Through Fluctuations. Wiley.
11. Goldbeter, Albert. (2003). “Ilya Prigogine (1917-2003)” (ref), Journal of Biosciences, Vol. 28, No. 6,pgs 657-59.

Further reading
● Prigogine, Ilya and Dufay, Raymond. (1954). Chemical Thermodynamics. Longmans, Green. (Originally published in French in two volumes, 1944, 1946; revised English translation from second 1950 and 1952 editions).
● Prigogine, Ilya. (1962). Non-equilibrium Statistical Mechanics. New York: Interscience Publishers.
● Glansdorff, P. and Prigogine, Ilya. (1971). Thermodynamic Theory of Structure, Stability and Fluctuations. John Wiley and Sons.
● Prigogine, Ilya and Herman, Robert. (1971). Kinetic Theory of Vehicular Traffic, (100-pages). Elsevier.
● Prigogine, Ilya. (1973). "Can Thermodynamics Explain Biological Order", Impact of Science on Society, Vol. XXIII, No. 3, pg. 169.
● Lipkowski, Mil. (1979). "The Social Thermodynamics of Ilya Prigogine." Chemical and Engineering News, April 16.
● Prigogine, Ilya. (1980). From Being to Becoming – Time and Complexity in the Physical Sciences. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Co.
● Prigogine, Ilya. (1984). Order Out of Chaos – Man’s New Dialogue with Nature. New York: Bantam Books.
● Gregoire, Nicolis and Prigogine, Illya. (1989). Exploring Complexity - an Introduction. New York: Freeman and Co.
● Prigogine, Illya. (1996). The End of Certainty - Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature. New York: The Free Press.
● Kondepudi, Dilip and Prigogine, Ilya. (1998). Modern Thermodynamics – from Heat Engines to Dissipative Structures. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
● Hall, Nina. (2000). The New Chemistry: a Showcase for Modern Chemistry and its Applications (ch. 16: Chemistry Far from Equilibrium: Thermodynamics, Order and Chaos, pgs. 440-64, by Guy Dewel, Dilip Kondepudi, and Ilya Prigogine). Cambridge University Press.
● Prigogine, Ilya. (2003). Is the Future Given? World Scientific Publishing Co.
● Rice, Stuart A. (2007). Special Volume in Memory of Ilya Prigogine (ch. 1: Ilya Prigogine: His Life, His Work, pgs. 1-82, by Radu Balescu). John Wiley & Sons.

External links
● Ilya Prigogine – Wikipedia.
● Ilya Prigogine – Cosma Shalizi, self-organization researcher, Carnegie Mellon University.
● Self- organization - Cosma Shalizi, self-organization researcher, Carnegie Mellon University.