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Chance and Necessity

If you free-associate the word “chance,” you may arrive at “I’ll take my chances” before potentially arriving at Thomas Bayes’ “Doctrine of Chances”. Jacques Monod was an early explorer of the collision of probability and chance in biology.

THE PRINCE OF CHANCE

Jacques Monod grew up just down the coast from Monte Carlo in Cannes, France, another town famous for its casinos and, later, its film festival. Graced with movie star looks—one prominent French journalist described him as a “prince” who resembled Hollywood icon Henry Fonda, as well as considerable musical talent, and an exceptional intellect, Monod struggled to decide on a career path through his twenties. After distinguishing himself in the French Resistance, Monod rose to fame not as an actor or musician, but as a brilliant biologist. He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for seminal discoveries about how genes work.

A pioneer in the field of molecular biology, Monod was privy to the blizzard of discoveries in the 1950s and early 1960s about the molecules that determined the characteristics of living things—what Monod and others dubbed “the secrets of life.” He kept close company with a relatively small international community of leading researchers. For example, when James Watson and Francis Crick cracked the structure of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) in 1953, Monod was one of the first with whom Watson shared the breakthrough.

But as a Frenchman steeped in his culture’s deep philosophical traditions, Monod was interested in science for more than just science’s sake. After the war, Monod befriended France’s leading philosopher-writer Albert Camus, and the two men pondered questions of human existence in Left Bank cafés. Monod felt that the public misunderstood the principal purpose of science as being the creation of technology. Rather, Monod believed technology was merely a by-product. He said, “the most important results of science have been to change the relationship of man to the universe, or the way he sees himself in the universe”—a relationship of equally intense interest to his friend Camus.

Monod thought that there were profound philosophical implications of the new molecular biology, particularly in the realm of heredity, which had gone largely unnoted in the broader culture. Several years after his Nobel Prize and Camus’ untimely death, he decided to write a book to try to bring the meaning of modern biology to laypersons.

“[T]he ‘secret of life’…has been laid bare,” he wrote.

“This, a considerable event, ought certainly to make itself strongly felt in contemporary thinking.”

Monod used several chapters to describe the insights that had very recently emerged from the study of DNA and the deciphering of the genetic code. He understood this knowledge would be unfamiliar to most readers, so he included an appendix with chemical structures of proteins and nucleic acids, and a primer on how the genetic code worked.

In a matter-of-fact style, he explained genetic mutations as accidental alterations—substitutions, additions, deletions, or rearrangements—in the text of DNA, in the sequence of the long strings of chemical bases (A C TT G A T AA, etc.) that make up genes.

Then, almost without warning, he turned to the broader implications of how mutations arise in DNA. It is worth quoting him at length for after 111 pages of background, he delivered one of the most powerful ideas in five centuries of science (all italics are original):

“We call these events accidental; we say they are random occurrences. And since they constitute the only possible source of modifications in the genetic text, itself the sole repository of the organism’s hereditary structure, it necessarily follows that chance alone is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere.

“Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution: this central concept of modern biology is no longer one among other possible or even conceivable hypotheses. It is today the sole conceivable hypothesis, the only one that squares with observed and tested fact. And nothing warrants the supposition—or the hope—that on this score our position is likely ever to be revised.

“There is no scientific concept, in any of the sciences, more destructive of anthropocentrism than this one.”

In essence, heretofore obscure discoveries in biochemistry and genetics (largely studied at that time in simple bacteria) had upended two millennia of philosophy and religion that put humans at the center or apex of creation. “Man was the product of an incalculable number of fortuitous events,” Monod wrote. “The result of a huge Monte Carlo game, where our number eventually did come out, when it might not well have appeared.”

Le Hasard et la nécessité (Chance and Necessity) appeared in France in October 1970. It was a fairly technical book with several chapters on philosophy and genetics, and those appendices full of chemical diagrams. A first-time author, Monod did not know what reactions to expect.

The merde hit the fan.

The book received dozens of reviews across France and quickly became a bestseller—second only to the French translation of Erich Segal’s Love Story (this was France after all. After it was translated into English, reviews and interviews with Monod were featured in several of the most prominent British and American newspapers and magazines.

Many commentators immediately recognized the threat chance posed to traditional ideas of humanity’s origins and purpose. To Arthur Peacocke, a British biochemist turned prominent theologian, Monod had put forth “one of the strongest and most influential attacks of the century on theism.” A flurry of articles and books appeared with titles such as Anti-Chance: A Reply to Monod’s Chance and Necessity, Beyond Chance and Necessity, and God, Chance, and Necessity. Monod was invited to debate philosophers and theologians both in France and abroad, on television, radio, and in print.

American Calvinist theologian and pastor R.C. Sproul summed up the high stakes posed by chance in the first page of his book Not A Chance:

“It is not necessary for chance to rule in order to supplant God. Indeed, chance requires little authority at all if it is to depose God; all it needs to do the job is to exist. The mere existence of chance is enough to rip God from his cosmic throne. Chance does not need to rule; it does not need to be sovereign. If it exists as a mere impotent, humble servant, it leaves God not only out of date, but out of a job.” More than two hundred pages later, Sproul concluded:

“Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all.”

Sproul and other critics argued that what scientists perceived as chance merely reflected a lack of knowledge of true causes. Perhaps that was the expression of hope to which Monod alluded—the hope that as scientists learned more, our position on the role of chance would somehow be revised.

A SECOND CHANCE

The ensuing fifty years have not played out as either Monod or his detractors hoped. The Frenchman thought that the new insights from molecular biology should be a turning point for modern society-away from traditional beliefs about causes in the natural world toward one that embraced randomness and our chance existence.

Ha! Fat chance. The excitement and fuss stirred by Chance and Necessity simmered down, and Monod passed away a few years later. Surveys reveal that the majority of Americans, for example, continue to believe that everything on earth happens for His reasons.

But Monod’s critics should take no comfort. The province of chance in the biosphere and human life has been revised, although not at all in the scope or direction that they hoped.

The domain of chance has expanded into realms neither Monod nor anyone else imagined.

As we have learned much more about the history and workings of the planet, we have been startled to discover how the course of life has been buffeted by a variety of cosmological and geological accidents—without which we would not be here. As we have explored human history, we have seen how pandemics, droughts, and other civilization-changing episodes have been triggered by random, singular events in nature that easily might not have happened. And as we have probed human biology and the factors that impact our individual lives, we have caught chance red-handed, reigning over the often-thin line between life and death.

This book tells the stories that Monod could not—of astonishing discoveries from the planetary to the molecular scale, from great upheavals across the globe to the machinery of chance that operates within every cell of every creature, including ourselves. And while these discoveries vaporize the comforts of anthropocentrism, the story of chance, I hope you will come to agree, is much more than highfalutin philosophy or the refutation of theologians’ wishful thinking.

I hope that you are awed—awed by the power and the drama of asteroids slamming into the planet, of continents colliding, and of the rapid rising and falling of ice and oceans; awed by the realization that we live on (and are at the mercy of a planet that is far more unstable than our short lives perceive; awed by the knowledge of how random chance is at the source of all of the beautiful and wondrous creatures with whom we share the planet; awed by the unique invisible accidents that made each one of us; and awed by the fact that we humans, recent descendants of bands of hunter-gatherers who persevered through a period of exceptional chaos, have in just the last fifty years or so, figured all of this out!

My goal here is to be comprehensible without being comprehensive. It is almost trivial to claim that the world is the way it is or that we are here because of a long chain of chance, albeit fortunate, events. The explanatory power I seek comes from specificity. It is essential to unpack some of those events to appreciate how they shape the direction of life. The layout of the book follows a simple three-part logic. I’ll begin with inanimate, external chance events that have shaped the conditions for life (Part One, “Stuff Happens”), and then turn to the internal random mechanism within every creature that generates the adaptations to those conditions (Part Two, “A World of Mistakes”). Then, I bring the story to the personal level (Part Three, “23 and You”) and how chance impacts our natural lives, as well as our deaths. Our chance-driven existence shatters long-held beliefs about humanity’s place and raises challenging questions about the meaning and purpose of our lives. In the Afterword, I’ll offer some possible replies with the help of some special guests.

This is a relatively small book for a really big idea. Science has given us a handful of really big ideas over the centuries, but they have been received in funny ways. Darwin had a huge idea that was very simple to understand, and even though the evidence is massive and everywhere, many refuse to believe it. Einstein had a brand new idea, and even though few understand it or the evidence for it, most everyone seems to believe it. Monod had a great idea, but these days most people (other than scholars) have not heard of it, or of him.

My greatest hope, then, is that this short book might be chance’s second chance.
Sean B. Carroll, A Series of Fortunate Events: Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You, Princeton University Press, 2020, pp. 6-12.

Modern biology as described by Monod pushes the linkage of probability, randomness and chance to the center. At the time, this was a very radical and profound way of looking at biology. If we combine Monod’s biology with theoretical physics like Lawrence Krauss’ A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing, we realize that accidentality is the bedrock on which our knowledge of the universe is built.

Navigating through Sources

Consciousness and the Novel: Connected Essays by the famous British novelist David Lodge is a classic work published by Harvard in 2004.

In this Lodge book, the author mentions a famous British society-watcher, Charles Masterman. In 1909, Masterman published his best-known study, The Condition of England, which tells us that England at that time experienced a greater inflow of migrants into London than in previous centuries taken together.

[Charles Frederick Gurney Masterman PC MP (24 October 1873 – 17 November 1927) was a British radical Liberal Party politician, intellectual and man of letters. He worked closely with such Liberal leaders as David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill in designing social welfare projects, including the National Insurance Act 1911. During the First World War, he played a central role in the main government propaganda agency.]

We then notice that one recurrent topic in various movie versions of the E. M. Forster novel Howards End (1910, set in those years) is the “horrifying” trend where great mansions and stately estates (Howards End and Wickham Place, say, in the novel) are all being demolished and replaced by ugly “flats.”

There must be, one thinks, a direct link between all the massive migrations into London at the time and all the proliferating flats at the “expense” of beautiful and historical villas. (This “demolish” trend is also part of the story of the classic novel A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh, 1934)

In the predecessor to Downton Abbey called Upstairs, Downstairs, the story ends in 1930 with a sign outside the great “house” at Eaton Place offering flats coming soon, as the demand for housing (think of San Francisco today) is so massive that sellers can make a fortune selling out to developers, move into one of the flats being created, and live off the sale for the rest of their lives and “duck” the higher “Lloyd George taxes.” (In Downton Abbey, the dowager played by Maggie Smith repeatedly lashes out at Prime Minister Lloyd George as a kind of financial traitor.)

We see from this simple example how students should learn to “jump” between books and movies and TV miniseries to get a stronger focus on what’s being depicted on screens and pages and not just “swim along” at the surface level without any “drilling down.”

Education is largely the struggle or habit where students learn to bring pattern and structure out of “chaos,” thus giving narratives some overall shape.

This reminds one of the opening lines of Beryl Markham’s 1942 Africa memoir:

“How is it possible to bring order out of memory? I should like to begin at the beginning, patiently, like a weaver at his loom. I should like to say, ‘This is the place to start; there can be no other.’ ”
from West with the Night by Beryl Markham

This is a similar impetus: to bring order out of memory or others’ memories in books and movies from various times and places.

Looking Backwards and Forwards at the Same Time

Janus and Bi-Directional Smarts

The Roman god Janus looks backwards and forwards at the same time and learning to be somewhat Janus-like is very conducive in the metaintelligence (i.e., larger overview) quest.

There’s a useful French phrase, “reculer pour mieux sauter” which means like a high jumper, you have to take steps backwards to jump higher. In other words, learn to look bi-directionally at the world.

First look back, then forward.

Here’s a concrete example:

W. Arthur Lewis, the “father” of development economics, originally from the Caribbean, taught at Princeton. He won the Nobel in 1979 and wrote various classics such as Growth and Fluctuations, 1870-1913 (1978).

Lewis writes:

In this book we shall not be attempting to give formal or complete explanations of why fluctuations occurred. Like the captain of a ship navigating in stormy seas, we shall need to identify the waves, without needing an exhaustive theory of what causes waves.
When analyzing these fluctuations economists have identified four different cycles, distinguished by length of periodicity, each of which is named after the economist who first wrote about it:
the Kitchin (about three years)
the Juglar (about nine years)
the Kuznets (about twenty years)
the Kondratiev (about fifty years)
(W. Arthur Lewis, Growth and Fluctuations, 1870-1913, 1978, page 19)

Lewis gives us a quick overview of how we got to the era covered by his book:

“The essence of the industrial and agricultural revolutions in the first three quarters of the nineteenth century was in new ways of doing old things—of making iron, textiles and clothes, of growing cereals, and of transporting goods and services. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century the revolution added a new twist—that of making new commodities: telephones, gramophones, typewriters, cameras, automobiles and so on, a seemingly endless process whose twentieth century additions include aeroplanes, radios, refrigerators, washing machines and pleasure boats.”

(Growth and Fluctuations, 1870-1913, page 29)

Professor Norman Stone in his masterpiece on WWI calls this late nineteenth century explosion of material change and inventions the greatest fast quantum leap in world history in transforming the world.

If one reads these lines with a “Janus mind” we wonder, looking forward from the Lewis book and its era:

How does his catchy metaphor of waves in the ocean relate to fluctuations and cycles? When Ben Bernanke (Fed Chair) describes recent decades as “The Great Moderation” does he mean to imply that Lewis-type waves disappeared or got much smaller?
Can computers and mobile phones really match cars and planes in profundity of impact? Or is it only the tremendous spread of mobile or smartphones in the Global South that can?

In fact, the recent economic history classic, Robert Gordon’s The Rise and Fall of American Growth argues against the assumption of endless technical change as a growth accelerator or endless frontier:

In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, home appliances, motor vehicles, air travel, air conditioning, and television transformed households and workplaces. With medical advances, life expectancy between 1870 and 1970 grew from 45 to 72 years. Weaving together a vivid narrative, historical anecdotes, and economic analysis, The Rise and Fall of American Growth provides an in-depth account of this momentous era. But has that era of unprecedented growth come to an end?

Gordon challenges the view that economic growth can or will continue unabated, and he demonstrates that the life-altering scale of innovations between 1870 and 1970 can’t be repeated. He contends that the nation’s productivity growth, which has already slowed to a crawl, will be further held back by the vexing headwinds of rising inequality, stagnating education, an aging population, and the rising debt of college students and the federal government. Gordon warns that the younger generation may be the first in American history that fails to exceed their parents’ standard of living, and that rather than depend on the great advances of the past, we must find new solutions to overcome the challenges facing us.

A critical voice in the debates over economic stagnation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth is at once a tribute to a century of radical change and a harbinger of tougher times to come.

Why does one not read of the four cycles mentioned by Lewis (i.e., Kitchin) and the rest listed above in today’s business and financial press? Has there been some great discontinuity?

If you apply a “Janus mind” to the past (described by Lewis) and our sense of the future (described by techno-pessimists like Gordon) you get a more thoughtful sense of “the human prospect.”

Reports of Rising Police-Society Conflict in China

Interview with Suzanne Scoggins (November 25, 2019)

China is facing a rising tide of conflict between the nation’s police officers and the public. While protest events receive considerable media attention, lower-profile conflicts between police officers and residents also make their way onto the internet, shaping perceptions of the police. The ubiquity of live events streamed on the internet helps illuminate the nature of state–society conflict in China and the challenges faced by local law enforcement.

Simone McGuinness spoke with Suzanne Scoggins, a fellow with the National Asia Research Program (NARP), about the reports of rising police–society conflict in China. Dr. Scoggins discusses how the Chinese Communist Party has responded to the upsurge, what channels Chinese citizens are utilizing to express their concerns, and what the implications are for the rest of the world.

What is the current state of police-society relations in China?

Reports of police violence have been on the rise, although this does not necessarily mean that violence is increasing. It does, however, mean that the media is more willing to report violence and that more incidents of violence are appearing on social media.

What we can now study is the nature of that violence—some are big events such as riots or attacks against the police, but there are also smaller events. For example, we see reports of passengers on trains who get into arguments with transit police. They may fight because one of the passengers is not in the right seat or is carrying something prohibited. Rather than complying with the officer, the passenger ends up getting into some sort of violent altercation. This kind of violence is typically being captured by cellphone cameras, and sometimes it makes the news.

The nature of the conflict matters. If somebody is on a train and sitting in a seat that they did not pay for, then it is usually obvious to the people reading about or watching the incident that the civilian is at fault. But if it is chengguan (城管, “city administration”) telling an elderly woman to stop selling her food on the street and the chengguan becomes violent, then public perceptions may be very different. It is that second type of violence that can be threatening to the state. The public’s response to the type of conflict can vary considerably.

What are the implications for China as a whole?

Regarding what this means for China, it’s not good for the regime to sustain this kind of conflict between street-level officers or state agents and the public. It lowers people’s trust in the agents of the government, and people may assume that the police cannot enforce public security. There are many state agents who might be involved in a conflict, such as the chengguan, the xiejing (auxiliary officer), or the official police. The type of agent almost doesn’t matter because the uniforms often look similar.

When information goes up online of state agents behaving poorly, it makes the state a little more vulnerable. Even people who were not at the event might see it on social media or in the news and think, “Oh, this is happening in my community, or in my province, or across the nation.” This violates public expectations about how the police or other state agents should act. People should be able to trust the police and go to them when they have problems.

How has the Chinese government responded to the increase in reporting violence?

There is a twofold approach. The first is through censorship. When negative videos go up online or when the media reports an incident, the government will go in and take it down. We see this over time. Even while collecting my research, some of the videos that were initially available online are no longer accessible simply because they have been censored. The government is removing many different types of content, not only violence. Censors are also interested in removing any sort of misinformation that might spread on social media.

If step one is to take the video or report down, step two is to counteract any negative opinion by using police propaganda. This is also referred to as “public relations,” and the goal is to present a better image of the police. Recently, the Ministry of Public Security put a lot of money and resources into their social media presence. Many police stations have a social media account on WeChat or Weibo (微博, “microblogging”) and aim to present a more positive, friendly image of the police. The ministry also teamed up with CCTV to produce television content. This has been going on for some time, but recently shows have become more sophisticated.

There is one program, for example, called Police Training Camp. It is a reality show where police officers are challenged with various tasks, and the production is very glossy. The ministry also produces other sorts of specials featuring police who are out in the field helping people. It shows the police officers working really long shifts, interacting positively with the public, and really making a difference in people’s lives. In this way, the government is counteracting negative opinions about police violence or misconduct.

Do you know of any effective avenues that Chinese people have to address their concerns? Which avenues are becoming more popular?

In general, I will say that it is difficult for people in any society to get justice with police officers because of the way legal systems are structured and the power police hold in local government politics. In China, one of the things people are doing beyond reaching out to local governments or pursuing mediation is calling an official hotline.

This is a direct channel to the Ministry of Public Security, and all these calls are reviewed. There is not a whole lot that citizens can do about specific corruption claims. But if somebody has a particular goal, then the hotline is slightly more effective because it allows citizens to alert the ministry. However, many people do not know about the hotline, so the ministry is trying to increase awareness and also help staff the call center so that it can more effectively field calls.

As for how much relief people feel when they use these channels, this depends on what their goal is. If the goal is to get somebody fired, then the hotline may not work. But if someone is looking to air their grievances, then it may be helpful.

What are the implications of increased police-society conflict in China for the rest of the world? What can the United States or other countries do to improve the situation?

These are really sticky issues that are difficult to solve. When discussing police–society conflict, it is important to step back and think about who the police are—the enforcement agents of the state. So by their very nature, there will be conflict between police and society, and that is true in every country. In China, it really depends on where and what type of police climate we are talking about.

Xinjiang, for instance, has a very different police climate than other regions in China. There is a different type of policing and police presence. Chinese leaders certainly do not want any international intervention in Xinjiang. They see this as an internal issue. While some governments in Europe and the United States might want to intervene, that is going to be a nonstarter for China.

As for police problems more generally, I would say that if China is able to reduce some of the police–society conflict in other areas of the country, then this is good for the international community because it leads to a more stable government. We also know that there is a fair amount of international cooperation between police groups. China has police liaisons that travel and learn about practices and technology in different countries. The police in these groups attend conferences and take delegates abroad.

There are also police delegations from other nations that go to China to learn about and exchange best practices. But that work will not necessarily address the underlying issues that we see in a lot of the stations scattered throughout China outside the big cities like Beijing (北京) or Shanghai (上海). Those are the areas with insufficient training or manpower. Those issues must be addressed internally by the Ministry of Public Security.

How is the Chinese government improving its policing capabilities?

Recently, the ministry has tried to overcome manpower and other ground-level policing problems by using surveillance cameras and artificial intelligence. Networks of cameras are appearing all over the country, and police are using body cameras for recording interactions with the public. This type of surveillance is not just in large cities but also in smaller ones. Of course, it is not enough to just put the cameras up—you also need to train officers to use that technology properly. This process takes time, but it is one way that the ministry hopes to overcome on-the-ground problems such as the low number of police per capita.

How might the Hong Kong protests influence or change policing tactics in China?

The situation in Hong Kong is unlikely to change policing tactics in China, which are generally more aggressive in controlling protests than most of what we have seen thus far in Hong Kong. It is more likely that things will go in the other direction, with mainland tactics being used in Hong Kong, especially if we continue to observe increased pressure to bring the protestors in check.

Suzanne Scoggins is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Clark University. She is also a 2019 National Asia Research Program (NARP) Fellow. Dr. Scoggins holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and her book manuscript Policing in the Shadow of Protest is forthcoming from Cornell University Press. Her research has appeared in Comparative Politics, The China Quarterly, Asian Survey, PS: Political Science and Politics, and the China Law and Society Review.

This interview was conducted by Simone McGuinness, the Public Affairs Intern at NBR.

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