entropy CAN be overcome

I feel like such an idiot. I’ve been reading Steven Johnson’s book Emergence.

At the Free University of Brussels in the fifties, llya Prigogine was making steady advances in his understanding of nonequilibrium thermodynamics, environments where the laws of entropy are temporarily overcome, and higher-level order may spontaneously emerge out of underlying chaos.

Why didn’t I learn this in high school?! This is the kind of thing that completely alters ones perception of the universe. Why isn’t emergence theory part of the basic curriculum of American public education? I’m not saying one has to understand the science (I certainly don’t), but the philosophical ramifications of emergence theory have radically altered how I see government, economics, art, music, biology, physics and my own interpersonal relations.