The concept of chaos in contemporary science: on jean bricmont's critique of ilya prigogine's ideas

Nonclarity around the understanding of the concept of chaos has caused some confusion in the contemporary natural science. For instance, not making a clear distinction between the deterministic and quantum chaos has made it impossible to evaluate the approach of Ilya Prigogine in an appropriate way. It is shown that Jean Bricmont has missed the target in his critique of I. Prigogine's ideas, as the latter has concentrated his interest on systems consisting of infinite (arbitrarily large) number of particles in incessant mutual impact, the former on systems that have a finite (not necessarily large, although sometimes very large) number of particles, which move freely of any mutual impact or participate only in transient interaction. The difference may sometimes be quite crucial. It is also suggested that if we consider the irreversibility as the basic element of description of physical world, the world of trajectories and wave functions cannot be researched apart from this real irreversibility. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers.