"A philosophical statement whose explicit intention is to sweep away as both false and dangerous the 'animist' conception of man that has dominated virtually all Western world views from those of primitive cultures to those of dialectical materialists. Monod bases his argument on the evidence of modern biology, which shows, indisputably, that man is the product of chance genetic mutation. He draws upon what we now know about genetic structure (and on what we can theorize) to suggest an entirely new way of looking at ourselves. He argues that objective scientific knowledge, the only knowledge we can rely on, denies the concepts of destiny or evolutionary purpose that underlie traditional philosophies; and he contends that the persistence of those concepts is responsible for the intensifying schizophrenia of a world that accepts, and lives by, the fruits of science while refusing to face its momentous moral implications"--Publisher description.