Chaos, order and complexity in today's physics / F.T. Arecchi.
Abstract:
Recent investigations on the physics of macroscopic nonequilibrium systems have shown a collective behaviour not deducible from two-body elementary interactions (as in Newton mechanics). This behaviour has a character of complexity, that is, it differs both from the order of elementary systems as the pendulum or the two-body interaction, and from the chaos of the thermodynamic equilibrium state where maximum entropy has been reached. The implications are numerous, from fluid turbulence to cosmology, to biophysics, to the same foundations of physics. Indeed the physics of complexity has led to reconsiderations of the time irreversibility and of the current formulation of quantum mechanics. Here we give a critical analysis of this problem, including many examples taken from the current investigation
Annali dell'Istituto e Museo di storia della scienza di Firenze A. 6, fasc. 2 (1981), p. 127-143