Chance and Necessity

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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. Aimed at a general audience, the book describes the basic characteristics of life, reviews findings of modern biochemistry and molecular biology, and argues that life arose by blind chance guided by natural selection, could not have been predicted, and does not have a higher purpose. The author concludes that traditional philosophical or religious systems of value, explanation and meaning are untenable, and advocates for an "ethic of knowledge": committing to objectivity in the pursuit of knowledge.

According to the introduction, the book's title was inspired by a line attributed to Democritus, "Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity."