Word: monod
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Having dispatched with the nucleic acids, showing how they could originate and function by random events. Monod moves to the question of cellular proteins. The processes of life within a cell--metabolism--are carried out primarily by proteins: enzymatic proteins, regulatory proteins, structural proteins. Monod carefully constructs for the reader the essence of enzyme functions and mechanisms as they are presently known and builds from this a model for complex, intricate interactions (as they must be inside the cell) which originated and shaped themselves by chance...
This part of Monod's argument--that the initial biochemical events which formed what we call life can and must have occurred by chance--is well supported. It is not inconceivable to think of millions of "false starts" when previous organisms came close to hitting the right combination for life; nor is it impossible to imagine that species differentiation occurs by genetic alteration and mutation...
...Monod also points out that, knowing what we do about nucleic acids, it is easy to explain the transmission of genetic information from one generation to the next. Thus there is a biochemical necessity for a specific function to take place in the organism and in his descendants once this function has been coded (randomly, it seems) in the paternal...
None of this is scientifically new or particularly revelatory. What Monod has done, however, is outline the basic strategy of science, and therefore of creation: Take a few immutable characteristics, add a presumption of thermodynamic movement, inject an element of randomness and you get life...
...befits a book on the Secret of Life, Monod describes his thesis in grandoise terms...