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My reasons for seeing the universe as meaningful lie in what I
perceive as its built-in necessities. Monod stressed
the improbability of life and mind
and the preponderant role of chance
in their emergence, hence the lack of design in the universe,
hence its
absurdity and pointlessness.
My reading of the same
facts is different. It gives chance the same role, but acting
within such a stringent set of constraints as to produce life and
mind obligatorily, not once but many times. To Monod's famous
sentence "The universe was not pregnant with life, nor the biosphere
with man," I reply: "You are wrong. They were."
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p. 300
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Christian de Duve
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Vital Dust: Life as a Cosmic Imperative
Basic Books, 1995
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De Duve refers to Jacques Monod, 1965 Nobel laureate in medicine
and author of Le Hasard et la Necessite [Chance and
Necessity], an "essay on the natural philosophy of modern biology"
(Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1970).
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