---
slug: paper-prigogine-i-1980-from-being-to-becoming-time-and-complexity-in-the-physical-scie
title: Prigogine: From Being to Becoming
canonical: https://miscsubjects.com/a/paper-prigogine-i-1980-from-being-to-becoming-time-and-complexity-in-the-physical-scie
---

## What the subject saw and its core results

Ilya Prigogine examined the foundations of physics through nonequilibrium thermodynamics. He identified time asymmetry as a fundamental feature arising in systems far from equilibrium. Classical dynamics treats time as reversible. Thermodynamics reveals irreversibility through entropy increase.

Core results center on dissipative structures. These maintain order by dissipating energy in open systems. Prigogine showed how fluctuations amplify into macroscopic order when systems cross instability thresholds. This process generates complexity from thermodynamic gradients.

The work establishes a distinction between the physics of being and the physics of becoming. The former rests on time-reversal symmetry. The latter incorporates intrinsic irreversibility.

## Exact primary works and passages

The primary work is Prigogine, I. (1980). From Being to Becoming: Time and Complexity in the Physical Sciences. W.H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco.

A verifiable opening statement reads: “This book is about time.” It frames the entire argument around temporal asymmetry.

Prigogine classifies physical theories explicitly. He writes that dynamics belongs to the physics of being while thermodynamics belongs to the physics of becoming. This division appears in discussions of operator formulations and Lyapunov functions.

No page-specific quotes beyond the opening appear in verifiable public excerpts. Claims draw from the book's documented structure on dissipative structures and symmetry breaking.

## Which convergence patterns the work touches

The book touches flow networks and symmetry breaking. Nonequilibrium systems produce branching structures and ordered patterns through energy throughput.

It evidences bounded chaos in the form of stable dissipative structures amid fluctuations. Scale invariance appears in the universality of instability thresholds across physical systems.

Memory emerges in the persistence of ordered states maintained by continuous dissipation. These patterns align with structural emergence from thermodynamic difference.

## Distance from the full synthesis

Prigogine reaches from thermodynamic difference to ordered structures. He stops short of explicit claims about memory to life to mind. The ladder receives partial support up to complexity emergence.

The reader remains outside the formal treatment. The Mirror Layer receives no direct address. The work supplies a physical mechanism for early ladder steps without extending to observer-system inclusion.

## Honest limits and disconfirming edges

The analysis stays within physical sciences. It offers no empirical data on biological or cognitive systems. Extension to life remains interpretive.

Reductionist objections note that microscopic reversibility persists underneath macroscopic irreversibility. Prigogine addresses this through extended spectral decompositions yet leaves the reconciliation incomplete for some critics.

The synthesis functions as a lens. Prigogine’s words describe physical irreversibility without endorsing broader metaphysical conclusions.

## Mechanistic claims

Claim c1: Nonequilibrium systems develop dissipative structures that maintain order through continuous energy dissipation.
Tier: mechanistic
Source: Prigogine 1980 book structure on instability thresholds.

Claim c2: Time asymmetry arises intrinsically in the physics of becoming via symmetry breaking in unstable systems.
Tier: mechanistic
Source: Classification in From Being to Becoming.

Claim c3: Fluctuations near critical points amplify into macroscopic order.
Tier: mechanistic
Source: Standard account of Prigogine’s dissipative structure theory.

## Speculative extensions

Claim c4: Ordered structures in nonequilibrium conditions prefigure memory-like persistence in physical systems.
Tier: speculative
Source: interpretive reading of structure maintenance.

Claim c5: The physics of becoming provides a foundation for later emergence steps toward mind.
Tier: speculative
Source: no direct statement in the 1980 text.

## Sources

Primary source remains the 1980 monograph itself. Secondary summaries confirm the opening quote and conceptual division without altering original claims.
