Minimum entropy production principle

Jaynes E.T.

It seems intuitively reasonable that Gibbs’ variational principle determining the conditions of heterogeneous equilibrium can be generalized to nonequilibrium conditions. That is, a nonequilibrium steady state should be the one that makes some kind of generalized entropy production stationary; and even in the presence of irreversible fluxes, the condition for migrational equilibrium should still be the equality of some generalized chemical potentials.