Quotes About Far from equilibrium

One of the key controversies surrounding this concept has to do with Prigogine's insistence that order and organization can actually arise "spontaneously" out of disorder and chaos through a process of "self-organization." To grasp this extremely powerful idea, we first need to make a distinction between systems that are in "equilibrium," systems that are "near equilibrium," and systems that are "far from equilibrium.

Emergence is when micro-level complex systems that are far from equilibrium (thus allowing for the amplification of random events) self-organize (creative, self-generated, adaptability-seeking behavior) into new structures, with new properties that previously did not exist, to form a new level of organization on the macro level.