Book One: The Delusion of the Universal
-
CHAPTER I: The Triumph of Reason
- The New Moses
- 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