Chance and Necessity

Chance And Necessity


Chance and Necessity: Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology (French: Le Hasard et la Nécessité: Essai sur la philosophie naturelle de la biologie moderne) is a 1970 book by Nobel Prize winner Jacques Monod, interpreting the processes of evolution to show that life is only the result of natural processes by "pure chance". It has been described as a "manifesto of materialist biology in the most reductivist sense". The basic tenet of this book is that systems in nature with molecular biology, such as enzymatic biofeedback loops can be explained without having to invoke final causality.

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Famous quotes containing the words chance and, chance and/or necessity:

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    —Frances Burney (1752–1840)

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    —Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    “If necessity is the mother of invention, then resourcefulness is the father.”
    —Beulah Louise Henry, U.S. inventor. As quoted in Feminine Ingenuity, ch. 13, by Anne L. MacDonald (1992)