Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology
by: Jacques Monod

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 2nd pr., 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth with silver lettering, 199 pages. This radical book by Nobel laureate Monod is an important intellectual event. Chance and Necessity is a philosophical statement whose intention is to sweep away as both false and dangerous the animist conception of man that has dominated virtually all Western worldviews from primitive cultures to those of dialectical materialists. He bases his argument on the evidence of modern biology, which indisputably shows, that man is the product of chance genetic mutation. With the unrelenting logic of the scientist, he draws upon what we now know (and can theorize) of genetic structure to suggest an new way of looking at ourselves. He argues that objective scientific knowledge, the only reliable knowledge, denies the concepts of destiny or evolutionary purpose that underlie traditional philosophies. He contends that the persistence of those concepts is responsible for the intensifying schizophrenia of a world that accepts, and lives by, the fruits of science while refusing to face its moral implications. Name on inside front cover, otherwise clean. No dust jacket.