“We call these events [mutations] accidental; we say they are random occurrences. And since they constitute the only possible source of modification in the genetic text, itself the sole repository of the organism’s hereditary structures, 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.” – Nobelist (1965) Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity. An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology (New York: Knopf, 1971)
(Note: Monod is quoted in Mutation breeding, evolution, and the law of recurrent variation, Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, Recent Res. Devel. Genet. Breeding, 2(2005): 45-70 ISBN: 81-308-0007-1 ) who works at the Max Planck Institute and apparently doubts Darwin: “Providing an affirmative answer of the applicability of the law of recurrent variation not only to cultivated plant and animal lines but also to species in the wild, the statements and assertions of the synthetic theory as quoted below will have to be revised.”