Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology PDF
Preview Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology
$1.95/V-825 A philosophy for a universe without causality—by the Nobel Prize-winning French biologist CHANCE and NECESSITY CHANCE AND NECESSITY An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology by JACQUES MONOD translated from the French by Austryn Wainhouse VINTAGE BOOKS A Division of Random House New York FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, October, 1972 Copyright © 1971 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan- American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in 1971. Originally published in France as LE HASARD ET LA NECESSITE by Editions du Seuil, Paris. Copyright © Editions du Seuil, 1970. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Monod, Jacques Chance and necessity. Translation of Le hasard et la necessite. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Biology—Philosophy. I. Title. [QH331.M55313 1972] 574'.01 72-1789 ISBN 0-394-71825-9 Manufactured in the United States of America Everything existing in the Universe is the fruit o f chance and o f necessity. -DEMOCRITUS At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which becomes his fate, created by him, com bined under his memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling. I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe hence forth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. — albert camus, The Myth of Sisyphus Contents PREFACE XI 3 OF STRANGE OBJECTS the natural and the artificial . . . difficulties of a space program . . . objects endowed with a purpose . . . self-constructing machines . . . self-reproduc ing machines . . . strange properties: invariance and teleonomy . . . the “paradox” of invariance . . . teleonomy and the principle of objectivity 11 VITALISMS and ANIMISMS 23 the priority relationship between invariance and teleonomy: a fundamental dilemma . . . metaphys ical vitalism . . . scientistic vitalism . . . the animist projection and the “old covenant” . . . scientistic progressism . . . the animist projection in dialectical materialism . . . the need for a critical epistemology . . . the epistemological bankruptcy of dialectical materialism . . . the anthropocentric illusion . . . the biosphere a unique occurrence nondeducible from first principles vu
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