Motivated by one of my discussion forums where a contributor spoke about Democritus and his phrase about chance and necessity, I let myself reflect on this latter.

It was popularized by Jacques Monod, known as a great French biochemist, in his preface to Chance and Necessity. He claimed to be able to offer an explanation of the Universe without appealing to the notion of causality. To do this, he notably cites Democritus:

"All things in Nature are the fruit of chance and necessity".

Problem: looking a bit, Democritus never wrote this. First, Democritus didn't write in French, but in Greek (no kidding); second, according to Hermann Diels, in his Fragmente Der Vorsokratiker, considered a reference on pre-Socratics (of which Democritus is part), the closest quote we can find is

Oὐδεν χρῆμα ματην γίνεται ἀλλα παντα ἐκ λόγου τε και υπ'ανάγκης.

Oyden chríma matin gínetai alla panta ek lógou te kai yp anankis.

Moreover, it should be noted, according to Diels, that the quote is from Leucippus, not Democritus. I'll come back to these two authors in another post.

In his somewhat (too?) bold assurance, Monod copied this fragment from the page where the section on Democritus begins, and attributed it to him.

Let's pass over this detail.

Let's take the quote itself, and try to make a proper translation. If like me, you have the luck of not having studied Greek as a second language, you're forced to look up each word to avoid "betraying" the translation (traduttore traditore, as the Italians would say).

A bit shaky, the French quote would give

Nothing comes into existence in vain, but everything is done through λόγος and under ανάγκης.

Why leave these two words? Why not translate them as necessity and chance, as Monod did? Well...

...BECAUSE CHANCE IS NOT A GREEK NOTION.

No. Fan of Camus, he surely translated it that way.

The Greek word "λόγος" has several meanings (that of word, reason, number, proportion), including a meaning well known to Christians. The concept of "chance" is certainly none of those.

Likewise, "ανάγκης" can be translated as destiny (actually, it's the name of the goddess Ananke; that of the personification of destiny, unalterable necessity and fatality), necessity, legality, force, need, torture, etc.

Still no vision of "chance" or "randomness": here, the only thing that can be seen is that the author of the quote assumes that everything that exists has a reason to exist and that it obeys fixed laws.

Looking a bit, one can find a fragment that relates to the meaning Monod wanted in Democritus:

παντα γινεται δι αναγκησ θειησ

Which translates to

Everything comes into existence according to divine legality.

I think we're far from what Monod wanted us to say, in the sense that Science today operates a radical break with the animist tradition.

I'm willing to concede that it's coherent that many current scientists wish to link their own scientific conceptions with greater thoughts and ideas, but we shouldn't denature the original texts to make them say what we want them to say: regardless of the authors, we'll always find someone to manufacture new definitions of these words.

Small note in passing: it's a notorious tendency, for scientists and non-scientists, to consider their own theory as truth shared by the majority of people. The problem is that by doing this, we end up saying nothing comprehensible. I take the example of Monod's own theory and its most current representative, Dawkins. That we can speak, in the context of a random draw, or a lottery, of chance, I'm willing. But in the context of the entire Universe, what does that mean? In the case of the coin, before the coin flip, there must be a coin, precisely. Chance, as Aristotle would say, is only posterior to events, not anterior: an explanation by "chance" is saying, no more, no less, that we don't know what it's due to.

To deify chance is another matter. We leave the scientific domain to touch the philosophical domain. And invoking chance and necessity as "gap fillers" isn't worthy of a "rational" scientist, is it? No, of course not, that's the affair of animists.

And then, draped in a very modern vision, Democritus would never have said, as Tertullian would have had him say, that "the Gods sprang from the divine fire Logos". No, Democritus was a visionary, who only saw, in philosophy, destroying once and for all religious thought.

Unless...

Anyway. If some wish to deify Chance, please leave it at the lab cloakroom: in science, there's no room for beliefs. For my part, that's what I've been told, and what I try to respect...