Preface: Temporalizing Physics: Bergson, Prigogine, and the Spectral Dynamics of Irreversibility

The directionality of time-the undeniable yet physically elusive "arrow of time"-remains one of the most profound challenges at the intersection of physics and philosophy.Although the fundamental laws of mechanics, from Newton to Schrdinger, are in the main invariant under time reversal, our macroscopic world is overwhelmingly characterized by irreversible processes: heat flows from hot to cold, ink disperses in water, and we remember the past, not the future.Standard physical accounts have long rested on two pillars: special low-entropy initial conditions for the universe and the introduction of statistical coarse-graining-approaches that impose asymmetry on the dynamics rather than deriving it from within them.However, this orthodox view was consistently challenged by Ilya Prigogine, a pioneer of non-equilibrium physics.While his early, Nobel Prize-winning work on "dissipative structures" is widely celebrated, his project did not end there.His later, though relatively less well known, work on complex spectral theory represents a deeper and more fundamental investigation into the origins of time itself.The roots of this later philosophical turn can be traced to the profound influence, received in his youth, of the French philosopher and fellow Nobel laureate Henri Bergson-an influence Prigogine himself acknowledged as foundational [1,2,3].Prigogine argued that the "physics of being"-the static, deterministic, and reversible worldview of classical dynamics-must give way to a "physics of becoming," in which irreversibility, complexity, and novelty are intrinsic features of reality itself.His life's work was dedicated to a radical project: to "temporalize" physics by showing that irreversibility arises directly from the fundamental laws of dynamics, without recourse to subjective or artificial operations.This special issue revisits and extends Prigogine's audacious vision.While the