This article highlights the Philosophy of Instability developed by Nobel Laureate Mr. Ilya Prigogine emphasizing its application to complex systems particularly human world [1, 2, 3]

The Philosophy of Instability is a generalization of the qualitative changes that have occurred in modern conceptions of nature, society, and the human being. Within this framework, culture and creativity are perceived as manifestations of the fundamental laws of the universe, and the human is seen as a co-creator of nature. The human is an active participant in global evolution, and the mechanism by which he makes decisions is inseparable from the expression of free will. That expression of free will - precondition for the existence of the human world in which innovation and creativity are possible—without separating humanity from nature, but rather uniting them. To support humanity evolution everything that stands in the way of the free human will expression shall be sweep away.

 This perspective helps explain why humanity evolved successfully over 300,000 years, yet within just the past 225 years has approached the unimaginable brink of self-destruction. The explanation lies in modern science: human society—an open, complex, stochastically fluctuating, unstable, unpredictable, uncontrollable dynamic system—can naturally enter periods of developmental instability due to random fluctuations and unpredictable choices.  At the end of the worldwide Agricultural Revolution, which began 10,000 years ago and marked the prehistory of the modern era, a critical fluctuation emerged — a deviation toward a flawed path characterized by slavery and the suppression by the social structure of core human values. This fluctuation violated the symmetry of human evolution and, as a result, led to a growing chaos of instability that reached a turning point during the Industrial Revolution 225 years ago. At that time was developed increasing chaotic instability and situation began to appear truly threatening.  Fortunately, our society, as demonstrated by scientific research, functions as a self-organizing system that overcomes and restores order from the chaos of instability through inherent human properties. As discussed in this article, these properties are humanity’s intrinsic forces—driving a striving toward more stable development by harnessing based inherent internal humanity’s properties of creativity and spirituality. These properties were bestowed upon humanity by Nature and have developed over 300,000 years of evolution. During the transitional process from the chaotic instability to order, humanity will gain the free choice of paths toward restoring the order with the inherent for process such features as risk and ethical responsibility for making incorrect choices. The free will to make constructive choices is fundamental Natural Law essential for humanity’s existence. Consequently, in the process of transitioning to more stable development, humanity would pass through stages focused on eliminating the suppression of this free will to choose constructively. This aligns with the general  theory of the Universe of creating order out of chaos by leveraging existing constructive elements within the system—elements which, in human society, manifest as inherent internal forces striving for more stable development.

To clarify we would like to mention that transitional processes are not governed by anybody but it is natural scientific pattern of humanity evolution, as for complex dynamic self-organizing system. Professor Ilya Prigogine determined such systems as Dissipative ones.

 As considered in the article, the transitional processes have already begun in order to avoid the global catastrophes and move to more stable development.

  The Philosophy of Instability stands in contrast to the deterministic philosophy of the past centuries, which led humanity to the notion of predictable, controlled and principally permanent stable world and subsequently society development. That is opposite to the Philosophy of instability principles of instability and unpredictability with risk and ethical responsibility for choosing new way of humanity development. The old approach would not show the ways to avoid emerging threats of the global catastrophes and could lead some people to pessimism about the future.

   Based on the brief review and analysis of our history the article discusses how transitional processes toward continues human evolution would reveal to humanity the possibility of selecting courses of action that could prevent global catastrophes and allow to return to more stable development. The article also interprets based scientific foundations underlying this perspective.

        Humanity’s enduring and creative internal forces striving for progress

 First and foremost, history highlights humanity’s enduring inherent internal forces: synergy of reasoning and spiritually inspired drive toward creative advancement, resulting in continuous progress overcoming complexities emerging at natural significantly changing environment.  These creative cultural qualities evolved during 300,000 years of Homo sapience existence though evidences were found for the periods about 60,000 -70,000 years ago and for humanity’s distant ancestors partially have been described as some adaptive abilities. 

One striking and commonly known  our ancestors’  genetic study published in Science journal on  8/31 of 2023 suggested that around 900,000 years ago, a catastrophic cooling event in southern Africa nearly wiped out 99% of the population. Only 1300 breeding individuals survived laying the foundation for adaptive qualities of humanity development.   Our ancestors came within a hair’s breadth of extinction, and populations remained that low for the long period of time. Here is important to underline that besides of their high adaptation abilities our distant ancestors had also abilities to gather their food with sophisticated stone tools and that is sign of their rather developed reasoning and creativity so we can think of much more very long periods of laying foundation for Homo sapience qualities development [4]

  Homo sapience leveraging its developing internal forces persevered strengthening its intellect and spiritual drive for understanding world, life and streaming to development despite facing glaciations, droughts, volcanic eruptions, pandemics, and food shortages. These challenges shaped human consciousness, reasoning, and a culture of striving for progress. Biologists indicate that emerging of Homo sapience led to tripling of brain size and brain evolved most rapidly during periods of dramatic climate changes especially in the last Ice Age which boost human brain size leading to sharp development of humanity’s creativity and spirituality during followed period of the Agricultural Revolution emerged 10,000 years ago.

 So as soon as humanity during his existence intellectually, creatively and spiritually streaming to development we consider inherent internal humanity’s forces as major influential factor for the expression of free will for transition of the global society from chaotic instability to more stable development . That assumption based on the proven conception of the Philosophy of instability that free constructive will of humanity is precondition for the existence of human world. And that free constructive will expression could be based only on such inherent internal humanity’s properties away of influence of outer social conditions leading to catastrophes.

               Agricultural Revolution and Early Stability

 Around 10,000 years ago, the transition from the Ice Age to the Agricultural Revolution marked a pivotal era in human history. This shift from hunting and gathering to the domestication of animals and cultivation of crops led to the establishment of stable settlements, population growth, and improved well-being. During this period, global conflicts and environmental problems were minimal, and humanity experienced relatively stable development, laying the groundwork for modern civilization.  For the vast majority of human history, our existence was inextricably linked to the environment. Hunter-gatherer societies viewed the environment as both a source of sustenance and a powerful force that demanded respect.  The advent of agriculture marked a pivotal shift in human-environment relations. The transition to a sedentary lifestyle allowed for the development of more complex societies, but it also intensified our impact on the environment. The clearing of forests for farmland and the domestication of animals led to habitat loss and soil degradation. Early agricultural societies still retained a sense of dependence on natural forces – weather, water availability, fertility of soil – often incorporated nature worship into their religious practices. However, the focus on resource extraction for food security increasingly began to supersede the previous emphasis on ecological balance. This shift set the stage for further, more drastic, environmental changes. The Agricultural Revolution finally produced surplus of resources and that led communities to possibility having kings, soldiers, priests. With continuation and intensification of the environment and people exploitation emerged modern social structure. 

So the Agricultural Revolution gave start to random erroneous way of humanity development toward its critical instability.

                             The pre-industrial periods

  With the success of the Agricultural Revolution the ideology of permanent production development and population growth came with the focus on the increasing environment exploitation considering it as an inexhaustible resource. Emerging ruling powers supported the ideology of environment and people exploitation for wealth and force accumulation in their hands in expense of their own and other countries’ resources and that led to emergence of world society structure with aggressive countries’ governance standing on a way of inherent internal humanity’s forces activation and further humanity development stabilization. The ruling powers promoted the idea of their “supernatural” force and led the world to permanent intensification of environment and population exploitation resulting in conflicts with environment and in development of wars. In contrast modern scientific perspectives lead us to the understanding that humanity development must be considered inseparably linked with the state of environment and the level of internal integrity of society. The Philosophy of instability for such systems as the human’s society interprets its inseparable link with the state of environment as inevitable exchange by energy, matter and information Violation of that balancing exchange leads to the drastic global catastrophe. Also low level of internal global society integrity with forcible population exploitation and destructive wars leads to the loss of cooperation which is standing on a way of humanity’s internal forces activation and thus leads to the possible global catastrophes. 

.                          The Industrial Revolution

  Before 18^th century conflict of the world society with environment was not so obvious but the Industrial Revolution emerging led humanity to realizing of that conflict. One of evidences of it was world population growth. By 1804, world population exceeded one billion people, but in our time, it has reached more than 8 billion people thus for around 220 years it grew up much faster than in previous centuries and with growth rate acceleration in the future could bring humanity to overconsumption of the Earth’s resources. But the major evidence of conflict with environment was skyrocketed greenhouse gases emission as a result of extremely intensive industrial growth. Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were 182 times higher in 2022 than were in 1850. That is leading to global warming drastic catastrophe and destruction of environment [5] 

  In the recent scientific research was discussed that environment degradation with climate change would pose severe threats, with predictions suggesting that 80% of species could be lost under current rates of human activity. The Earth's warming threshold scientifically considers as 1.25°C above pre-industrial levels, however prediction of continuing temperature elevation threatens not only habitability but also emergency of new viral diseases allowing to grow viruses inside human’s organism weakening immune system and leading to humanity degradation and that’s why the author of the research biochemist Mr. Eleftherios Diamandis gave to his article the following title: “The mother of all battles” [6]  

The global warming is already creating many climate problems and the critical state of the global warming, as estimated, could happen in the range of 25 - 100 years depends on human activity.    Recently at the forum of the Center for Sustainable development of the Columbus University Professor Mr. Jeffry D. Sachs indicated that the most recent predictions by scientists of global warming threshold –beyond which life would become very difficult – may be reached over 20 years. From the perspective of the Philosophy of instability, this is seen as a sign of an approaching critical transition from instability to more stable development. That estimate probably caused by current situation with the threats of global catastrophes in connection to the concurrently speeding up harmful production volume leading to environment degradation and also in connection to the process of emerging powerful aggressive authoritarian regimes speeding up development of mass destruction weaponry and wars disregarding necessary cooperation of countries for environment protection.   All the indicated threats to society development stabilization are the signs of its global chaotic instability coming to its peak.

 So humanity now close to facing multiple threats of global catastrophes. Yet, the dominant societal structures are leading society development down that dangerous path, driven by desire to maintain power—often with imperial ambitions - in pursuit of their goal of increasing harmful for environment industrial production volumes which could bring humanity, as indicated by biochemist Mr. Eleftherios  Diamandis, to humanity degradation. [6]      

               Dominance of the global society structure

  Before discussing the structure of our global society, it is essential to remind of the primary reason for its formation. After the Agricultural Revolution ruling powers had chosen a path of constant intensification and unlimited growth in production volumes and population with exploitation of environment and population.   However, this has ultimately led us to living conditions that could bring humanity to demise. We are referring to the looming global catastrophes. This indicates that humanity for the last two millennia is developing in a direction opposite to the original way of development during almost 300,000 years. Humanity is aware of that but the chosen after the Agricultural Revolution path remains fundamentally unchanged. How to explain this relentless self-destructive course of society movement? The answer is obvious. As mentioned earlier, at the origins of this path was established a divided, competing, and aggressive state structure. It was led by individuals who had granted themselves the right to ruthlessly exploit natural resources and people, as well as to seize resources and enslave people in other countries in order to keep power and accumulate wealth for ruling structure. Over time, this structure evolved, incorporating new methods and classes that further propelled society toward intensified production growth and ruler’s support.  This trend became particularly pronounced during the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the capitalist system, with its fierce and ruthless competition and Industry critical development resulting in a massive leap in environmental destruction.

  During these hard times part of creative and spiritual humanity developed movement to oppose the dangerous way established by rulers and to activate humanity’s inherent internal forces. This resulted in the creation of democracy which contributed to the cessation of wars, the nationwide election of candidates for participation in state governance and oversight of their activities, and, subsequently, the gradual protection of the environment and development of international cooperation. Human values are considered as one of major principles of democracy. The democratic movement involved North American countries, European nations, and gradually many others. Countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom achieved great power and were able to stop and prevent wars initiated by dictators while actively combating terrorism. However, the widespread and expanding capitalist structure of states and the emergence of new powerful aggressive dictatorships did not allow sufficiently slow down approaching the global catastrophes. Moreover, the process of democratic development remains unstable, with some democratic countries drifting away from the core principles of democracy. It should be noted that in the societal structure under discussion, there is always a possibility for persons coming to power to use it for their personal or narrow party/group’s interests, which is often opposed by true democracy. Another issue with the social structure is its pyramidal form typical for army. And that could lead to making decisions only by a person on the top of pyramid even not for military purposes. For democratic countries it is a way of drifting away from the core principles of democracy including environment protection 

 In such situation, humanity recognizes the approach of looming catastrophes and seeks a possible way to fully activate its inherent internal forces strengthening throughout its existence.  In search of that way humanity would realize, as we hope, that such process as humanity development is not under some persons or groups’ control but is natural scientific pattern of transitional processes from instability to more stable development.  These processes would allow to activate full power of inherent for humanity internal forces and prevent global catastrophes.

  It is especially important to take into consideration fast approaching process of the Artificial Intellect development.   There, as many think, is threat of the Artificial Intellect’s destructive actions. But initial idea of creating the Artificial Intellect was reaching humanity’s thriving and stabilization of development. The core of the problem is our relationships with the state of environment. To move toward stabilization humanity needs to get rid of the harmful for the environment industrial production, restore environment and stop wars. The Artificial Intellect was created to diminish harmful industrial production So released during transitional processes humanity’s inherent internal forces would act accordingly to correctly direct the Artificial Intellect’s development. The transitional processes are under way and release in full of humanity’s internal forces is emerging and that will improve humanity and the environment mutual balancing and slow down and finally stop development of new weaponry of mass destruction including the Artificial Intellect now used for this purpose. Here we have to consider the scientifically proved inevitable humanity’s free constructive choice under high risk and ethical responsibility for overcoming all the obstacles on its way to stabilization. Artificial Intellect could be very helpful in the future after the end of transitional processes as a tool for creating new technologically networking global society. But with the existing outdated structure it could be used for society organization only in opposite direction. So to simplify we can say that development and application of the Artificial Intellect depends on the state of organization of the global society structure. Even nowadays it is helpful for reducing carbon dioxide effect on the global warming with technological robots. 

           The scientific foundations of the Philosophy of instability [1, 2, 3]

   This philosophy is based on many discoveries in physics. The first is discovery of non-equilibrium structures, which was accompanied by a revolution in the study of trajectories. This theory demonstrates that we can only study short segments of trajectories that are close to us, while further movements remain inaccessible for examination. This leads to rejection of past views of the fundamental possibility of long time predicting and achieving absolute control. We must now recognize and accept the proven instability of the world and the inevitable versatility of its movements. 

  In the list of discoveries it is necessary to mention discoveries in the field of elementary particles, which demonstrated the fundamental instability of matter. Another important for humanity discovery was the existence of a large number of complex open dynamic stochastic unstable self-organizing systems containing both destructive and constructive elements. Professor Ilya Prigogine intensively researched them and determined them as Dissipative systems.  These systems during their functioning create order out of chaotic instability and in other words they create order out of chaos. The constructive elements prevent chaos from developing further and instead lead to the constructive evolution of systems—that is, they generate order from chaos. The new Cosmological Theory demonstrates that small amount of elementary particles as a constructive elements within the chaotic movement of photons create the matter.

   In such self-organizing systems, as chaos of instability develops, arise need for choice of ways toward stabilization of further development. This choice is due to inherent properties of the systems that could promote constructiveness and the stabilization of movement. For human society that properties are inherent internal humanity’s forces fully activated with understanding of high risk and ethical responsibility during transition from chaotic instability to stabilization. 

                        Some theory’s applications for the humanity’s development.

 For historical example of transitional processes we can remind that at the end of the chaos of instability during the brutal wars of the 20th century, the Cold War between the USSR and the USA created a threat of mass destruction through nuclear warfare. The catastrophe was almost inevitable. But all of the sudden the conflict ultimately ended due to the newly created Soviet government’s recognition of the high risk and responsibility involved. Unlike its predecessors—cruel and uneducated dictators who had initiated the war—this new government had a higher cultural level of development and were able activate population’s inherent internal forces and, as a result, so called “communistic” totalitarian regime failed. This significant historical event of transition from instability to the period of stabilization confirms the conclusions of the Philosophy of instability as applied to our society. We have to note here that according to that Philosophy it was one of events of transition from instability to short period of world more stable development and coming subsequent chain of transitioning events will have prolongation.  During described non-global transition the structure of the USSR was partially temporary changed. But at the coming global transition the global society structure would be critically changed as soon as Professor Ilya Prigogine indicated that the humanity development symmetry was violated during two millennia and critical violation happened during the Industrial Revolution. This is one of inherent process of transition.

 Furthermore, Professor Ilya Prigogine came out with hypothesis that, in the coming instability chaos would emerge creative leaders with high cultural level of development and spirituality —leaders capable of guiding the global community toward  more stable development activating constructive factors which, as discussed in the article, are humanity’s inherent internal forces. 

   It should be noted that internal humanity’ forces have begun to be activated, as people are increasingly becoming aware of the high risk to survival posed by the existing structure of society that stands in the way of progress. The great potential of societal energy is accumulating for a transition to more advanced structure and arising obstacles inevitably shall be swiped away.

  It should be emphasized once again that, according to modern science, the development of humanity cannot, in principle, be under anybody’s control and also cannot fundamentally be predictable. The course of humanity development is determined by the natural pattern of emerging events of transitions from instability to more stable development as revealed for us by The Philosophy of instability.

  However, there is certainty in two of the most important conditions for our society stabilization:

             -   balancing humanity’s interaction with the environment otherwise followed violation of that balancing would lead to loss of humanity’s internal forces strength as result of humans degradation,

              -  releasing of humanity’s inherent internal forces activation in full to creatively and spiritually move to the right way of stabilization with the risk and high ethical responsibility 

In the already emerging chaos of instability, with its threats of global catastrophes, our interactions with the environment must inevitably be fundamentally balanced.
This may not happen immediately but rather in stages — yet we have no other choice. Modern science of instability suggest existence of transitional events chain to reach the final goal of humanity development. For coming now transitional event the final goal for stabilization is balancing humanity’s interactions with environment and also critical move to global cooperation. 
In particular, it is possible that the following transitional event may arise within the next hundred years, depending on the rate of environmental restore and lowering level of conflicts and wars. Professor Ilya Prigogine considered that for such systems as our global society typical to have global statistical evolution with the chain of transitions from instability to stabilization events. He underlined that each transition inevitably leads to the societal structure change and indicated that coming global transitions will bring critical structural changes.

                  Humanity first move from chaos to more stable development

 Discussing possibility to prevent global catastrophes we could consider the first humanity’s internal forces’ victory as pivotal turn from chaos to more stable development– critical move to the prevention of the overpopulation catastrophe. The United Nation’s world population growth projections predicted continuation of the population growth up to about 2080s followed by decline toward the population growth stabilization. That process could be explained by the further activation of humanity internal forces with emerged recently women’s empowerment manifesting significant changes in our world situation. The global decline in population growth, driven by reduced birth rates due to education and workforce participation of women, is an unprecedented natural phenomenon which we consider as the first stage of navigation away from impending global catastrophes.

 By embracing The Philosophy of Instability and leveraging humanity's internal strength, we can chart a course toward a future that prioritizes sustainable development, environmental stewardship, and global cooperation.  Many various theories, suggestions and actions exists now for environment stewardships [7]. But major direction is critical change of dominated global society structure which is main obstacle in the way to changing wrong path of humanity development during modern civilization. For future cooperation Professor Ilya Prigogine considered possible effectiveness of global technological network society development. [8]. Actually many other opportunities could be possible during event of instability chaos when humanity would face high risk of demise and would completely release inherent to humanity’s internal forces for replacing outdated society structure and critically changing relationships with environment. The solutions depends on possible coming situations and choices. The major advantage of going through instability chaos is humanity freedom of choice which should be made by fully activated inherent internal humanity’s forces leading to progress. The coming global transitional events, according to The Philosophy of instability, will critically change the further way of the global society development going step by step exponentially to final positive solution.

Many scientists envision that in not so far future would be greater harmony between man and environment and amongst humans.

References.

[1] Science Direct. Elsevier. Futures. Article. Volume 21, Issue 4, August 1989, Pages 396-400. https:/doi.org/10.1016/S0016-3287(89)80009-i

[2] Order Out of Chaos. Man’s New Dialogue with Nature by Ilya Prigogine, Isabelle Stengers, 1984

[3] Prigogine I., Stengers I., The End of certainty, Time , Chaos and the New Laws of Nature, The Free Press, New York, 1997

[4]  Elizabeth Pennisi, Human ancestors may have survived a brush with extinction 900,000 years ago, Science| AAAS journal,  Aug.31, 2023  https://science.org >content>article

[5] Nature. “ 5 Causes of Global Warming”. Article by Deriel Chris https/www.sciences.com/5causes-global-warming-8232444. Updated March 2022

[6]  Open Life Sciences 2022; 17:32-37. Review Article. Eleftherios P. Diamandis. The mother of all battles: Viruses vs humans. Can humans avoid extinction in 50-100 years? https//doi.org/10.1515/bio1-2022-005 received December 02,2021; accepted January 10, 2022

[7]  Climate.gov  Science and information for climate-smart nation. Article. Can we slow down or even reverse global warming?   By David Herring and Rebecca Lindsey. Published October 12, 2022

[8]  Article. The Networked Society.  November 2000. Journal of World-Systems. Research VI (3)892-898. DOI: 10,5195/jws1 2000.203. License CC by 4,0.   Author: Ilya Prigogine