Dissipative Structures

Wikipedia has a fairly useless page at Wikipedia:Dissipative_structures which focuses solely on the thermodynamic aspects of the theory - unfortunately this entire area of science is contentious and therefore, Wikipedia won't allow the addition of useful material due to the "No Original Research" rule.

Dissipative Structures are currently humankind's best available unified understanding of the processes and structures of the Universe (though note that this term is the structure-centric word for the entity: Autopoesis (Wikipedia:Autopoesis) is the process-centric term for the same entity). Dissipative Structures/Autopoesis govern absolutely everything from the tiniest to the largest, from the beginning of time across to the end, at every scale, part, nook & cranny. What we present here is the really, really short version: consult the following books if you want to know more:

• Jantsch, E., (1980), The Self-Organizing Universe: Scientific and Human Implications of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution, Pergamon Press. This book is very hard to find: see Wikipedia:Erich_Jantsch
• Capra, F., (1997), The Web Of Life, Flamingo Books, London. . This book is dated but is strongly recommended as a readable introduction.
• Ken Wilber's Sex, Ecology and Spirituality (1995), an example of Wikipedia:Integral_Philosophy . We only recommend this if you are an academic philosopher by way of thinking - those of a more engineering and scientific disposition will find it nearly unreadable, whereas others either love or hate this book.

What is a dissipative structure? Dissipative Structures are a "living structure", so they describe both structure and process simultaneously. Dissipative Structures are so commonplace that we have many, many names for them. Whenever someone says ‘more than the sum of its parts’, ‘it took on a life of its own’, ‘organisational culture’, ‘country’, ‘symmetry breaking’ or even more esoterically, ‘time’, ‘solidity’ or even ‘God’. Every solid, gaseous or liquid thing is a dissipative structure, and every alive thing is another (separate) dissipative structure. Protons and electrons are instances of dissipative structures, as is planet Earth, our solar system, our Milky Way galaxy and the entire Universe itself. Put simply, a dissipative structure becomes so through behaving differently due to the interaction of its process upon its structure and vice versa.

This entirely physical formulation is relatively well accepted in scientific though e.g. the concept of Wikipedia:Autopoiesis describes a dissipative structure from its process-centric viewpoint rather than structure-centric viewpoint. They are however precisely the same thing - we chose the structure-centric term as that is Western cultural tradition, however one could equally emphasise the process-centric behaviour instead.

Because of this dual structure and process connotation, one can also describe all cognitive structures as dissipative structures, and all human languages, and an Economy, or the act of making love, or indeed this very Wiki page. Each structure always makes up and is made up of multiple other dissipative structures, so the computer screen you are currently viewing is one, as are the computer networks that transported this Wiki page to you, as are the patterns in your mind through the meaning that reading this page invokes.