I fail to comprehend the vailidity of the quote no matter which point of view I choose to analyze it from. Furthermore, a quote with dual authorship puzzles me.
-rjh

At 01:11 PM 05/02/2000 -0700, Maya Lessov wrote:
>Hm. I agree that an antiscientific philsophy and an alienating science are
>undesireable, but I don't see how a rigid conception of time contributes
>to either. Just because the conception is rigid does not mean its
>application and the systems within which it functions are. Time is the
>way we measure and notice change. Maybe I don't understand where
>Prigogine and Stengers are coming from or what theories they are refuting.
>But I see my definition of time as rigid (law-like, I don't know about
>reversable), and yet I don't think a universe with such a time function
>is incapable of producing living beings. Obviously it isn't. Time is
>just an abstraction, a way we describe changes. What do these writers
>mean?
>
>maya
>
>> "To deny time - that is, to reduce it to a mere deployment of a reversible
>> law - is to abandon the possibility of defining a conception of nature
>> coherent with the hypothesis that nature produced living beings,
>> particularly man. It dooms us to choosing between an antiscientific
>> philosophy and an alienating science."
>>
>> - Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers