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Index
Cover Page
Halftitle Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Foreword: Science and Change
Preface: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature
Introduction: The Challenge to Science
Book One: The Delusion of the Universal
Chapter I: The Triumph of Reason
The New Moses
A Dehumanized World
The Newtonian Synthesis
The Experimental Dialogue
The Myth at the Origin of Science
The Limits of Classical Science
Chapter II: The Identification of the Real
Newton’s Laws
Motion and Change
The Language of Dynamics
Laplace’s Demon
Chapter III: The Two Cultures
Diderot and the Discourse of the Living
Kant’s Critical Ratification
A Philosophy of Nature? Hegel and Bergson
Process and Reality: Whitehead
“Ignoramus, Ignoramibus”: The Positivist’s Strain
A New Start
Book Two: The Science of Complexity
Chapter IV: Energy and the Industrial Age
Heat, the Rival of Gravitation
The Principle of the Conservation of Energy
Heat Engines and the Arrow of Time
From Technology to Cosmology
The Birth of Entropy
Boltzmann’s Order Principle
Carnot and Darwin
Chapter V: The Three Stages of Thermodynamics
Flux and Force
Linear Thermodynamics
Far from Equilibrium
Beyond the Threshold of Chemical Instability
The Encounter with Molecular Biology
Bifurcations and Symmetry-Breaking
Cascading Bifurcations and the Transitions to Chaos
From Euclid to Aristotle
Chapter VI: Order Through Fluctuations
Fluctuations and Chemistry
Fluctuations and Correlations
The Amplification of Fluctuations
Structural Stability
Logistic Evolution
Evolutionary Feedback
Modelizations of Complexity
An Open World
Book Three: From Being to Becoming
Chapter VII: Rediscovering Time
A Change of Emphasis
The End of Universality
The Rise of Quantum Mechanics
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Relation
The Temporal Evolution of Quantum Systems
A Nonequilibrium Universe
Chapter VIII: The Clash of Doctrines
Probability and Irreversibility
Boltzmann’s Breakthrough
Questioning Boltzmann’s Interpretation
Dynamics and Thermodynamics: Two Separate Worlds
Boltzmann and the Arrow of Time
Chapter IX: Irreversibility—the Entropy Barrier
Entropy and the Arrow of Time
Irreversibility as a Symmetry-Breaking Process
The Limits of Classical Concepts
The Renewal of Dynamics
From Randomness to Irreversibility
The Entropy Barrier
The Dynamics of Correlations
Entropy as a Selection Principle
Active Matter
Conclusions: From Earth to Heaven—the Reenchantment of Nature
An Open Science
Time and Times
The Entropy Barrier
The Evolutionary Paradigm
Actors and Spectators
A Whirlwind in a Turbulent Nature
Beyond Tautology
The Creative Course of Time
The Human Condition
The Renewal of Nature
Notes
Index
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