From the Termite Mound to the Stars: Meditations on Discussions With Ilya Prigogine

Abstract

This paper summarizes and re-evaluates Prigogine's evolution of thought, from a more classical view of thermodynamics with negative implications for the evolution and persistence of life, through to a far more general and open formulation of thermodynamics, which does not require assumption of a Big Bang. The paper also proposes an encoding scheme for the statistics of Lorentzian systems into mixed Fermi-Bose density matrices, to complete the program given in quant-ph/0309087, which forcibly points towards symmetry in time at the microscopic level. The paper suggests future directions to reconcile microscopic time symmetry and macroscopic asymmetry and evolution, and concludes that the space-time continuum may be larger and more interesting than we are able yet to pin down.