DissipationThis is a featured page

In thermodynamics, dissipation refers to the process of the loss of mechanical energy. The term "dissipation" was introduced, significantly, in 1852 by British physicist and mathematician William Thomson; a phraseology later to be interpreted as the "law of dissipation of energy" [1] In Thomson's view, according to “known facts with reference to the mechanics of animal and vegetable bodies” there is “at present in the material world a universal tendency to the dissipation of mechanical energy” and that “any restoration of mechanical energy, without more than an equivalent of dissipation, is impossible in inanimate material processes, and is probably never effected by means of organized matter, either endowed with vegetable life or subject to the will of an animated creature”. This terminology was later employed by Belgian thermodynamicist Ilya Prigogine in his theory of "dissipative structures". [2]

References
1. Thomson, William (Lord Kelvin), "On a Universal Tendency in Nature to the Dissipation of Mechanical Energy" (Google Books) (URL), Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for April 19, 1852, also Philosophical Magazine, Oct. 1852, also Mathematical and Physical Papers, vol. i, art. 59, pp. 511.
2. Perrot, Pierre. (1998). A to Z of Thermodynamics, (pg. 68). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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On a Universal Tendency in Nature to the Dissipation of Mechanical Energy