You never know where Google will take you.
I was checking SiteMeter to see who had hit my blog lately (and, more importantly, why they had hit my blog), and I saw that someone had hit my blog while using Google to search for "dissipative structures and surfactant." It turns out that my blog discusses each concept, but in different entries. Since I was curious as to any possible connection that I hadn't made before, I did the same Google search.
I didn't find anything that I understood well enough to see any definitive connection, but I did discover two fascinating things in looking.
I read this as saying that order (stability) can arise spontaneously from disorder (chaos) through "coherence." Random fluctuations cancel one another out. Coherent fluctuations amplify one another into a stable "dissipative structure." This reminded me of a passage in "Entanglement" by Amir D. Aczel (a gift from my brother-in-law Clement Wang) about how laser light is coherent light and how a Bose-Einstein condensate is an ensemble of atoms "in a coherent state, just like laser light." (p. 53). This suggests how stasis (stability, structure, fixed points) and change are a duality: statis is coherent change.
Now what does "coherent" mean in all this (e.g., "coherently amplified")? Well certainly, "coherent" means "coordinated," "synchronized," etc. Aczel uses the term "in phase" when describing coherent (laser) light. So coherent suggests a time dimension to the coordination, i.e., coherence is coordinated in time, synchronized. Note also that laser light and Bose-Einstein condensate are both formed from homogeneous coherent fluctuations (e.g., photons in the case of laser). So perhaps matter is composed of coherent heterogeneous fluctuations? For example, a hydrogen atom is composed of two heterogeneous fluctuations (a proton and an electron) that coordinate to form an atom. To extend the example, two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom coordinate to form a water molecule. This molecule is itself a fluctuation.
Food for further thought.
3:34:35 PM 
