Boss (to the new employee): We are very keen on cleanliness. Did you wipe your feet on the mat as you came in?
New employee: Yes, sir.
Boss: We are also keen on truthfulness. There is no mat.
Ilya PrigogineDied 28 May 2003 at age 86 (born 25 Jan 1917). Russian-born Belgian physical chemist who received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1977 for contributions to nonequilibrium thermodynamics, or how life could continue indefinitely in apparent defiance of the classical laws of physics. The main theme of Prigogine's work was the search for a better understanding of the role of time in the physical sciences and in biology. He attempted to reconcile a tendency in nature for disorder to increase (for statues to crumble or ice cubes to melt, as described in the second law of thermodynamics) with so-called "self-organisation", a countervailing tendency to create order from disorder (as seen in, for example, the formation of the complex proteins in a living creature from a mixture of simple molecules). |
