Rob: Now this gets into your friend Ilya Prigogine.
FC: Yes, Prigogine based his theory off systems far from equilibrium, which are all living systems are from equilibrium because there's a continuous flow of energy and matter through the system. And he called this dissipative structures. And I'm afraid I have to take a break now, can I call you back in a couple of minutes?
Rob: Yeah, we can - I'll keep going and you just put it on hold. I'll talk a little bit and we'll continue this okay?
FC: Okay, okay.
Rob: Alright, so I am going to kind of cover this air time with the discussion, some of my notes of this book; which I have to say, I love this book. This book is an amazing book, it is the combination of Fritjof Capra's life's work I believe, as he said in the first part of the interview and this summary is a unifying vision and it is incredible. If you're going to buy one book this year, buy this book and read it from cover to cover. As I hold Fritjof, there were points when I was reading about the science where I just couldn't wait to get to the next chapter, it was like the anticipation like you might have watching a very exciting movie, but it's science. It's an incredible book, just incredible. So, I - there's some fun stuff in here. I don't think we're even going to get to it, but he goes into evolution and he talks about how there are two violent primates: human and the chimpanzee. But, there's another primate that's just as smart as the chimpanzee that separated on the evolution tree about the same time as humans and it's called the bonobo B-O-N-O-B-O and the difference is they're not violent, they're friendly they're loving. Matter of fact, one of their primary characteristics is they have constant sex. And the book explores the idea that perhaps aggression is a human trait, I hate to think that and maybe I'll talk to him about that.
FC: Okay, I'm back.
Rob: Alright, good, great. I was just raving about your book.
FC: Thank you.
Rob: So you were talking about Ilya Prigogine -
FC: Yeah and I would like to -
Rob: - and about bifurcation points and -
FC: Yeah and I would like to put this into a broader context so that our listeners can relate this with our previous conversation. We have talked a lot about networks and living systems being networks, but that's not all there is to the nature of biological life. In fact, one of the best ways of defining biological life is to say that the central characteristic of a living organism is metabolism. And metabolism is defined as the ceaseless flow of energy and matter through a network of chemical reactions, which allows the system to continually generate itself, maintain itself, and perpetuate itself. And we have talked about the network aspect, autopoiesis or self-generation, self-making, but there's also the flow aspect. So there really these two phenomena that are at the very basis of biological life: flows and networks. And both have been studied extensively over the last thirty years and the study of flows was mainly led by Ilya Prigogine, a Russian born physicist and chemist who worked at the University of Brussels in Belgium. And these studies of metabolic flows led to the very important discovery that first of all, that these constant flows keep the system far from equilibrium; in other words there's always a lot of chemistry going on, the system changes all the time, although the network pattern is maintained, there are continual structural changes. And every now and then the balance of the system is disturbed and a new form of order can emerge spontaneously. So this discovery of this spontaneous emergence of order is one of the key discoveries of Prigogine's and of complexity theory and it has been recognized as the basic dynamic of development, of learning, and of evolution. So -
Rob: And he got a Nobel Prize for this work.
FC: That's right, yes.
Rob: Now I got to say that I learned about Prigogine back in the late 70s early 80s reading Marilyn Ferguson's Brain/Mind Bulletin.
FC: Yes, yes.
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