The End of Certainty

This is the book that all of today's physicists should read. The more I learn about the impressive edifice of modern physics the more I learn that it's built on quick sand due to the many inconsistencies between theories, a strangely anti-empirical stance when it comes to the nature of time, and a willingness to accept paradox as an interesting feature of a theory when this should be an obvious hint of major problems. I can't comment on whether Prigogine's work is the necessary antidote but I do feel that his re-injection of asymmetrical time into the equations of physics is a very important first step. I also appreciate his appreciation for a broader view than most physicists are capable of today. It seems that the way to solve the many impasses of today's physics will require a broad interdisciplinary approach to knowledge. And key to that approach is the realization that Heraclitus was right: all things flow.

Not an easy read for those of us who are not in the field of nonlinear therodynamics, but clearly the work of creative genius. Clearly a breakthrough in the way we think about the world around us.

This book is really interesting, but not for those with minimal mathematical literacy. It is written for a "lay" audience, but gets pretty deep into the mathematical argument that physics, including quantum dynamics is not quite right without a foundation that gives time an arrow. He basically explains an integration of thermodynamics and quantum dynamics.

All I can say is this chemistry Nobel Laureate's work was novel and illuminating, looking at chemistry (relative to life, in particular) from a highly unique yet appropriate perspective. It should be on the reading list of anyone who is curious about the universe, and our place within it.

As someone with a fair amount of scientific background I must say that this book, which purports to be aimed at a general audience, contains a considerable amount of material that is less than clear. The author suddenly transitions from prose to mathematics on a number of occasions and often leaves it to the reader to construct understanding. Scientists often fail to take account of their audience and are, in effect, trained by example in both written and verbal communication to make little effort to construct clear explanations. As an effort to communicate clearly with non-scientists, this book is quite a bit less than successful although it contains material of substantial interest. Not recommended for the general reader.

i LOVED this book, even though for large sections i didn't know what the hell he was talking about. he's a math wizard and has an amazing mind, but the clarity of his reasoning is superb and if you skim through what you don't understand, you'll find pages and pages of amazing conclusions and well thought out points. A CLASSIC.

Found this book from another one talking about Santa Fe. This one is very interesting but due to my poor background in Math and Physics, can't fully understand the whole book, but get the big picture.

Interesting but the book offer little alternatives to think out of the logic that create the unsustainable problem we are facing as a society

Ilya Prigogine was certainly a brilliant mind and presents and interesting theory in this book. But he fails at the task he sets himself, to make this book accessible to general readers. He not only reviews the basics of mechanics, thermodynamics, and quantum mechanics with a brief excursion to relativity, he aims to substantially extend these subjects to account for the irreversibility of nature. Even for a reader with an advanced knowledge of physics like university degree level this is quite something to digest. Long passages are very well written, and I have enjoyed them, but it was helpful to have previously read other books of the author. Be warned, the text is full of equations!When it comes to the interesting new parts, I think the book falls short and I wonder if anyone who is not working in the field of chaos theory will be able to follow.

Needs reading twice and maybe a third time. Poincare resonances are obviously more important that I thought!

mind provoking

This book did confront me with one of the most important perceptions in my life: that all physical elements can decay ( i would prefer to say transform or transmute) under certain circumstances - in one of about 10 high 22 sun systems in our universe - from an Excited State (at high temperature) into 1st) a Photon, quantum wave state with a corresponding frequency (which mutates later at a lower temperature from Bright Energy into Bright Matter) and into 2nd) a Ground State Particle (like Dark Matter with Dark Energy, Black Holes, rotating with Gravitation).This knowledge leads us to understand why our universe includes more than 90 % of Dark Matter and Dark Energy.Considering Cosmic Microwave Background Temperature and Ludwig Boltzmann, s Constant, we can also understand that our universe shall reach the next cosmic cycle in about 14 billion years, to follow the eternal cycles of space-time in Cosmos, in harmony with bruno.espinosas panidism.

I found it to ramble on and on at times. I would say 3.5 stars out of 5. Could hit the point more.