Nobel Prize-winning chemist and physicist Ilya Prigogine challenges the classical understanding of a predictable, reversible universe, arguing that instability, probability and the irreversible passage of time are fundamental to the natural world.

Drawing on thermodynamics, chaos theory and developments in quantum mechanics, Prigogine examines how complex systems evolve, why equilibrium is the exception rather than the rule, and how genuinely new forms of organisation can emerge from physical processes. Moving between mathematical arguments and broader philosophical questions, he considers the implications of a universe in which the future is not simply the inevitable consequence of its past.

The volume includes Prigogine's lecture Is Future Given? Changes in Our Description of Nature, alongside scientific discussion, illustrations and historical material, including a photograph of the 1927 Solvay Conference. 

World Scientific Publishing, 2003. Paperback. Good condition, with light surface wear, minor marks to the covers and mild edge wear.