All right, so I'm guilty of choosing the quote in question. It's from a book by Prigogine and Stengers, called "Order Out of Chaos" (p. 96 in case anyone wants to look at the context). I found it somewhat puzzling, too, so I thought it might stir up some interesting discussion (which it certainly did!:-).

My interest in the passage arose from discussions with people who perceive science as alienating. As a result, they may reject science in favor of ways of thinking within which they feel more comfortable or at home. The statement that the direction of time is somehow an "illusion" is one such comment from science that is sometimes pointed out as alienating.
I saw the quote as a recognition that if we force people to choose between scientific ideas that they see as alienating, and nonscientific ideas that are comfortable, most people will understandably choose comfort. This raises an obvious question: Is it necessary for these folks to see scientific ideas as alienating? Is there a missing interpretation step that could allow them to see the scientific ideas in a way they'd feel more at home in?

Todd
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* Todd Duncan *
* Science Integration Institute *
* duncan@scienceintegration.org *
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>> "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