There are living systems; there is no living "matter." No substance, no single molecule, extracted and isolated from a living being possess, of its own, the aforementioned paradoxical properties. They are present in living systems only; that is to say, nowhere below the level of the cell.
Interpretation
Living organisms possess unique properties that cannot be reduced to their individual components.
This quote by Jacques Monod emphasizes that the characteristics that define life cannot be found in isolated molecules or substances. Instead, these properties emerge within the complex interactions and systems present in living organisms, highlighting the importance of understanding life at a cellular level rather than merely at the level of individual components.
In practice
During a biology lecture about the uniqueness of living organisms.
Chance alone is at the source of every innovaton, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, only chance, absolute but blind liberty is at the root of the prodigious edifice that is evolution... It today is the sole conceivable hypothesis, the only one that squares with observed and tested fact. Stating life began by the chance collision of particles of nucleic acid in the "prebiotic soup."
Biology occupies a position among the sciences at once marginal and central. Marginal because-the living world constituting but a tiny and very "special" part of the universe-it does not seem likely that the study of living beings will ever uncover general laws applicable outside the biosphere. But if the ultimate aim of the whole of science is indeed, as I believe, to clarify man's relationship to the universe, then biology must be accorded a central position . . .
One of the great problems of philosophy, is the relationship between the realm of knowledge and the realm of values. Knowledge is what is; values are what ought to be. I would say that all traditional philosophies up to and including Marxism have tried to derive the "ought" from the "is." My point of view is that this is impossible, this is a farce.
One may well find oneself beginning to doubt whether all this could conceivably be the product of an enormous lottery presided over by natural selection, blindly picking the rare winners from among numbers drawn at utter random...nevertheless although the miracle of life stands "explained" it does not strike us as any less miraculous. As Francois Mauriac wrote, What this professor says is far more incredible than what we poor Christians believe.
A totally blind process can by definition lead to anything; it can even lead to vision itself.
...the scientific attitude implies what I call the postulate of objectivity-that is to say, the fundamental postulate that there is no plan, that there is no intention in the universe. Now, this is basically incompatible with virtually all the religious or metaphysical systems whatever, all of which try to show that there is some sort of harmony between man and the universe and that man is a product-predictable if not indispensable-of the evolution of the universe.
A page from a journal of modern experimental physics will be as mysterious to the uninitiated as a Tibetan mandala. Both are records of enquiries into the nature of the universe.
We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
... many folks take them seriously because they just 'know' that evolution can never be seen in the immediate here and now. In fact, a precisely opposite situation prevails: biologists have documented a veritable glut of cases for rapid and eminently measurable evolution on timescales of years and decades.
No longer is science asked to understand the world, or to improve any part of it. It is asked instead to immediately justify everything that happens... spectacular domination has cut down the vast tree of scientific knowledge in order to make itself a truncheon.
A discovery is like falling in love and reaching the top of a mountain after a hard climb all in one, an ecstasy not induced by drugs but by the revelation of a face of nature that no one has seen before and that often turns out to be more subtle and wonderful than anyone had imagined.
If the experience of science teaches anything, it's that the world is very strange and surprising. The many revolutions in science have certainly shown that.
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