Physicist Ilya Prigogine developed his famous theory of dissipative systems which was expected to explain a lot of things from thermodynamics of living systems to the nature of the arrow of time. It is a very well-developed and deep theory. Yet, in my scientific life, I have never seen an actual numerical calculation of a measurable quantity utilizing any of Prigogine’s concepts such as “rate of entropy production”. Looks definitely like a missing spinoff!
That’s the point: what people use is normal equilibrium or close-to-equilibrium thermodynamics. Even in situations that seem far out of the scope of equilibrium thermodynamics and where one would normally expect Prigogine physics to be the perfect candidate—one example being CVD or VLS growth of various nanotubes/nanowires/etc. - I have never seen the latter applied. Everybody just goes with good old (near-)equilibrium chemical thermodynamics. Now this might be just a manifestation of Maslow’s hammer, and Prigogine physics is hard, but for what it’s worth, here’s one example of a big hole that should be covered by the theory but is, in fact, not.
Physicist Ilya Prigogine developed his famous theory of dissipative systems which was expected to explain a lot of things from thermodynamics of living systems to the nature of the arrow of time. It is a very well-developed and deep theory. Yet, in my scientific life, I have never seen an actual numerical calculation of a measurable quantity utilizing any of Prigogine’s concepts such as “rate of entropy production”. Looks definitely like a missing spinoff!
People do use thermodynamics. Are you in a position to say whether Priogine’s work is ever relevant to professional chemical engineers?
That’s the point: what people use is normal equilibrium or close-to-equilibrium thermodynamics. Even in situations that seem far out of the scope of equilibrium thermodynamics and where one would normally expect Prigogine physics to be the perfect candidate—one example being CVD or VLS growth of various nanotubes/nanowires/etc. - I have never seen the latter applied. Everybody just goes with good old (near-)equilibrium chemical thermodynamics. Now this might be just a manifestation of Maslow’s hammer, and Prigogine physics is hard, but for what it’s worth, here’s one example of a big hole that should be covered by the theory but is, in fact, not.