测量是我们和物质世界之间的唯一联系。
热力学第二定律肯定了变化的实在性并引入了一个物理量（即熵），它赋予时间一个优惠方向，用爱丁顿的话来说，即“时间之矢”。熵区分过去与将来。
当我们看一个城镇的结构时，或一个风景时，我们看到的是一些不同时代的因素共存且相互作用着。巴西利亚或庞贝对应着某个完全确定的内部年龄，有点像面包师变换中的一个基本划分。相反，现代罗马的建筑物建于完全不同的时代，现代罗马对应着一个平均年龄，恰像一个任意的划分可以分解成对应于不同内部时间的一些划分那样。
Overview
The book is about entropy, Life, and
Chaos Theory. Being is classically modelled by a state within a
landscape, subject to a fixed ‘master equation’ describing changes with
time. Becoming refers to more fundamental, irreversible, change, typical
of ‘complex systems’. Prigogine shows how
in some cases 'being' can give rise to ‘becoming’.
About Ilya Prigogine
Born: Jan. 25, 1917
Died: May 28, 2003
Russian-born Belgian physical
chemist known for his "far-from-equilibrium" thermodynamic
dissipative structure theory. He received the Nobel Prize for
Chemistry in 1977.
