In thermodynamics, entropy measures a system’s degree of disorder and tends to increase in a closed system. Without an input of energy or information, every physical or living system gradually falls out of order: this is the arrow of time towards chaos.

Conversely, negentropy — negative entropy — characterises the order, organisation and information present in a system. Schrödinger popularised the term by observing that living beings maintain their internal organisation by consuming order available in their environment: “life feeds on negative entropy”.

An organism draws usable energy and information from its milieu to offset its own entropic tendency to degrade. The principle holds from the cell to the ecosystem: living systems are open, they import energy — food, sunlight — and export disorder — heat, waste — in order to remain organised.

Biology and information theory show the same opposition. A flow of information can be seen as negentropy, since it reduces uncertainty within a system. Conversely, loss of information or homogenisation impoverishes a system.

The biophysicist Henri Atlan studied the organisation of the living as a play between order and disorder, speaking of “complexity from noise” to describe how a biological system uses disordered fluctuations to generate new structures.

Our human systems — individuals, families, organisations — are open dynamic systems that exchange information and energy and evolve over time. Entropy shows up in them as gradual disorganisation, loss of diversity or flexibility, and a drift towards rigidity.

A family or a team folded in on frozen habits, no longer receiving new ideas from outside, can enter a form of entropic stagnation: exchanges grow thin, roles harden, unspoken matters pile up. Likewise, an individual facing constant stress with no new resources may find their functioning derailed — exhaustion, mental confusion — a sign of rising entropy in their psychic system.

In organisations, rising entropy translates into the disintegration of processes: loss of know-how, deficient communication, and sometimes a slow heat death. Creativity dries up, everyone stays in their silo, and the system withers. Edgar Morin notes that a closed system, with no exchange with the outside, tends towards inert equilibrium.

Conversely, negentropy in human systems corresponds to the creation of order, differentiation and complexity: innovation in a company, learning and development in an individual, the regeneration of bonds in a family. The more complex an organisation is and the richer in exchange, the more disorder it can absorb without breaking — and even use to innovate.

A degree of occasional chaos may therefore be necessary to avoid the slow entropy of an over-rigid system.

Several thinkers of complexity have overturned our view of chaos. Far from being absolute disorder, chaos can hold a hidden order and generate novelty.

The physicist Ilya Prigogine, Nobel laureate in chemistry, studied systems far from equilibrium and introduced the notion of dissipative structures: ordered structures that emerge from chaos when a system receives a flow of energy. Prigogine speaks of “order through fluctuations”: small chaotic variations can, once a critical threshold is reached, amplify and drive the system’s reconfiguration into a new order. Chaos is not futile; it prepares the bifurcation towards a new organisation.

Deterministic chaos theory showed mathematically that apparently simple systems can produce unpredictable behaviour. Yet, as Fritjof Capra points out, underlying organised patterns often appear within that chaos: “the behaviour of chaotic systems is not merely random but shows a deeper level of structured order”. Figures such as the Lorenz attractor illustrate structured chaos: disorder on the surface, regularities in the depths. Complexity science speaks of islands of order in an ocean of chaos.

Edgar Morin moves in the same direction, inviting us to go beyond the binary order/disorder opposition: for him disorder is constitutive of life and of systems, and organised complexity is born of the interaction between order and disorder.

Gilbert Simondon, for his part, conceptualised individuation as a creative resolution of chaos. He describes any system in gestation — physical, living or psychosocial — as a metastable state rich in potentials, where internal tensions resolve into a new coherent form. The emergence of a new structure passes through a phase of fertile disorder in which elements rearrange themselves until they find an unprecedented stable configuration.

Consider a family crisis: a child’s adolescence, a bereavement, an abrupt disclosure. Every family crisis amounts to a rupture of homeostasis and calls for a reorganisation of the system’s interactions and rules. For a time there is chaos: tension, conflict, blurred roles. It can be painful, but it is the sign that the system is attempting to reconfigure itself.

Crises often arise at life-cycle transitions — a birth, adolescence, children leaving home — which demand that relationships evolve. If the family adapts, for instance by redefining parental authority with a teenager who has become a young adult, a new family order emerges from the turmoil. If it clings rigidly to the old order, the crisis can fester into chronic conflict and assorted symptoms.

A family therapist’s intervention at such moments aims to facilitate the restructuring. Well supported, the crisis becomes a fruitful moment for changing obsolete ways of functioning. Rather than putting out the fire at all costs, the therapist helps the family cross the chaos by exploring new ways of communicating and bringing unspoken matters to light.

In therapy, certain paradoxical interventions can provoke an evolutionary leap: by confronting the client with a disconcerting situation, they short-circuit habitual patterns and open the way to cognitive and emotional restructuring. Chaos is not the end of the journey but a passage: sometimes one must touch the bottom of the chaos to rebuild a new order within.

A similar pattern appears in organisational settings. Theories of evolutionary management, such as Dee Hock’s chaordic organizations, encourage accepting a share of chaos to let a more creative order emerge. Fritjof Capra sees the company as a living system: trying to control everything stifles the potential for evolution, whereas introducing diversity and play allows self-organisation and continuous adaptation. A wise leader will distinguish destructive chaos — total loss of meaning — from the constructive chaos that precedes major adaptations.

Faced with these dynamics, the practitioner gains from a complex stance made of observation, patience and strategic intervention. Concretely, that means being able to tolerate temporary uncertainty and instability without panicking or over-reacting. They help the system make sense of the chaos, and express its tensions so they become material for transformation.

The practitioner’s stance also means knowing how to dose the imbalance they induce. Too much chaos can overwhelm a fragile system, while too little change leaves it stuck in its problems. They can introduce a constructive perturbation — a bracing question, a shift of viewpoint, a new emotional experience — then offer a secure frame for working with what emerges.

It is a delicate art requiring intuition and prudence. Maurizio Andolfi recommended using provocation in a controlled way: answering a family’s paradoxical messages with a therapeutic counter-provocation, to reveal what goes unsaid and redistribute the relational cards, while respecting the system and its level of resilience. One does not set off a bomb in a family already in grave danger.

Accompanying chaos calls, finally, for a particular ethic. Heinz von Foerster formulated a valuable imperative: “Always act so as to increase the number of choices.” This humble stance — facilitator of the process rather than master of the content — is central to supporting transitions. It requires trust in the self-regulating capacities of the human system: like a gardener, the practitioner tends the ground — context, relationships, a secure frame — while the system carries out its own inner transformation.