Centre Alexandre-Koyré, UMR 8560 (EHESS/CNRS/MNHN), ESPCI Paris-PSL, Paris, France.
Hist Philos Life Sci. 2023 May 12;45(2):21. doi: 10.1007/s40656-023-00576-5.
The ancient, interlinked questions about the role of chance in the living world and the origins of life, gained new relevance with the development of molecular biology in the twentieth century. In 1970, French molecular biologist Jacques Monod, joint winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, devoted a popular book on modern biology and its philosophical implications to these questions, which was quickly translated into English as Chance and Necessity. Nine years later, Belgian thermodynamicist Ilya Prigogine, 1977 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, published a popular book on the history and philosophy of natural sciences with Belgian philosopher Isabelle Stengers. Translated into English under the title Order out of Chaos and widely discussed, the whole book can be seen as a response to Monod on these biological and philosophical questions. This study will trace this intellectual controversy between two Nobel Prize winners defending two opposing scientific and philosophical visions of the living world, rooted in two different scientific disciplines.
在二十世纪分子生物学发展的背景下，关于生命世界中偶然因素的作用以及生命起源的古老而相互关联的问题获得了新的意义。1970 年，法国分子生物学家雅克·莫诺德（Jacques Monod），1965 年诺贝尔生理学或医学奖的共同获得者，将一本关于现代生物学及其哲学意义的通俗书籍献给了这些问题，该书很快被翻译成英文，名为《偶然与必然》。九年后，比利时热力学学家伊利亚·普里戈金（Ilya Prigogine），1977 年诺贝尔化学奖得主，与比利时哲学家伊莎贝尔·斯特恩斯（Isabelle Stengers）出版了一本关于自然科学历史和哲学的通俗书籍。这本书被翻译成英文，书名为《从混沌中开创新秩序》，并被广泛讨论，整本书可以被视为对莫诺德关于这些生物学和哲学问题的回应。本研究将追溯这两位诺贝尔奖得主之间的这场知识争议，他们捍卫着两种对立的、根植于不同科学学科的生命世界的科学和哲学观点。
