Authors:

Jacques Monod Quotes - Page 2

Man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance.

Man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance.

Jacques Monod
Science, Chance
"Chance and Necessity: Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology". Book by Jacques Monod, 1970.

Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually, as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod
Mean, Thinking, Theory Of Evolution
"Evolution". Book edited by Mark Ridley, p. 389, 1997.

Evolution in the biosphere is therefore a necessarily irreversible process defining a direction in time; a direction which is the same as that enjoined by the law of increasing entropy, that is to say, the second law of thermodynamics. This is far more than a mere comparison: the second law is founded upon considerations identical to those which establish the irreversibility of evolution. Indeed, it is legitimate to view the irreversibility of evolution as an expression of the second law in the biosphere.

Jacques Monod
Science, Views, Expression
Jacques Monod (1971). “Chance and necessity: an essay on the natural philosophy of modern biology”

You May Also Like: