Why is evolution in living systems related to progress and
complexification, not to deterioration and disintegration? In a
dissipative structure, things in the environment that disturb the system’s
equilibrium play a crucial role in creating new forms of order. As the
environment becomes more complex, generating new and different information,
it provokes the system into a response. New information enters the system
as a small fluctuation that varies from the norm. If the system pays
attention to this fluctuation, the information grows in strength as it
interacts with the system and is fed back on itself (a process of
autocatalysis). Finally, the information grows to such a level of
disturbance that the system can no longer ignore it. At this point, jarred
by so much internal disturbance and far from equilibrium, the system in its
current form falls apart. But this disintegration does not signal the
death of the system. In most cases the system can reconfigure itself at a
higher level of complexity, one better able to deal with the new
environment. Dissipative structures demonstrate that disorder can be a
source of order, and that growth is found in disequilbrium, not in
balance.

–Margaret Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science