"When a change of [temperature], [pressure], or [composition] has made a system ripe for change, [nuclei] of a more stable form will not appear everywhere, but only in a few places within the old structure that are for some local reason deformed or strained, or at the interface with an intrusive structure that serves to catalyze the change with a suggestion of a possible new order. In a physical system of crystals, new forms are most likely to appear in the zone of misfit where one phase or crystal impinges upon another. This is where individual freedom is greatest, at places where the units clash. It is where concepts least conform to the tradition of the system.
One cannot overemphasize the fact that everything depends upon the interaction of the thing itself and its environment. The drive for both stability and change is the minimization of free energy. The mechanism of change is by transfer across the interface, each atom making its own choice, and quickly being brought back if not supported by compatible choices of its neighbors."
from Cyril Stanley Smith's Structural Hierarchy in Science
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