"Order Out of Chaos", Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Bantam Books, 1984.

"Definitely the most seminal work of our time, in which 1977 Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine brilliantly challenges several comfortable traditional notions of modern science, including, of all things, the academic 'holy cow' of the 2nd law of thermodynamics."

…

"On the first day, the lead talk, "Complexity, Dynamics and Prediction in Global Systems," was by Professor Ilya Prigogine, winner of the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for his work on non-equilibrium thermodynamics and subsequently known for his work on self-organizing systems. He emphasized the need to welcome disequilibrium, change and irreversibility as key aspects of reality, and to move away from a focus on equilibrium. He illustrated this message with examples from disequilibrium thermodynamics."

http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/library/earthmatters/may1997/article3/

"Prigogine (1980) believes that far-from-equilibrium structures are more common. He further suggests that dissipative (far-from-equilibrium) structures are not variations of equilibrium situations. A state of equilibrium is analogous to stagnation. An example which illustrates this point is provided by Prigogine and Stengers (1984, p. 148). They refer to a basin of water with hot and cold running taps. If the taps are turned off, the basin of water will gradually resume a state of equilibrium, or loss of energy. Consequently, stagnation, or death by entropy occurs. If, however, the water is boiled or frozen, reaching the relevant temperature produces a sudden transformation of molecules (steam, ice). The change is a quantum leap. To accomplish this, Prigogine and Stengers (1984) assert that communication among molecules must occur, that is, they must communicate to reorganise. The system, therefore, acts as a whole and self-organises. Prigogine and Sengers (1984) describe this process as order arising out of chaos."