Monod was ahead of his time. I bought this book when it was first published - early 1970"s? It affirmed what seemed likely to me, that because chemistry works in probabilistic fashion life and evolution are fueled by small random changes. In this, I see the reason for disease - that the same chemistry that is flexible enough to give life is the same chemistry that gives disease.
Monod has never been understood broadly I think for two reasons: (1) Chemistry scares people away although his main points do not rely on the reader's expertise in chemistry and (2) because some see his work as being at odds with religion.
Where is religion in his work? Someday we will understand widely that whatever "force" we call God, Allah, Buddha, etc. created matter, energy, time, space and the laws of nature. We are made of and exist in these things. The universe is not only stranger than we know but stranger than we can know. (Some variation of this is attributed to many and various people. I first saw it attributed to Werner Heisenberg who gave us the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle).
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