Dissipative Structure Theory

The theory of dissipative structures is a self-organized theory of non-equilibrium systems developed by the Belgian Russian scientist Ilya Prigogine. A nonlinear open system far from equilibrium state may exchange matter and energy with the outside world, when some parameter changes within the system reaches a certain threshold, there will be some self-organizing phenomenon through the effect of internal fluctuation and mutation. The self-organizing phenomenon makes the system transformed spontaneously from chaos state into ordered state of time, space or function,  and the new ordered structure in non-equilibrium state is a dissipative structure.  Based on the study of chemical thermodynamics, Prigogine's theory of dissipative structures uses the concept of ‘self-organization’to describe the processes of appearing spontaneously or forming ordered structures, which forms a scientific bridge between ‘existence’ and ‘evolution’.  Dissipative structure theory has exerted great influences in many fields including urban planning.

Edited and translated by Zhang Yifei