field of subjectivity

Developments in molecular biology over the past two decades have singularly narrowed the domain of the mysterious, leaving little open to vitalist speculation but the field of subjectivity: that of consciousness itself. There is no great risk in predicting that also in this area, for the time being still ‘reserved,’ such speculation will prove as sterile as in all the others where it has been practised up to now. - pg 29, Chance and Necessity [pdf] by Jacques Monod

Rupert Sheldrake writes that "As history of science this is naïve".

interestingly, Monod consider Hegel to be animist!

Think of such mighty efforts as those of Leibnitz, or of the colossal and ponderous monument Hegel raised. But idealism has not by any means been the only refuge for a cosmic animism. At the very core of certain ideologies said and claiming to be founded upon science, the animist projection, in a more or less disguised form, turns up again. 

дальше он пишет про Teilhard de Chardin, и далее - марксизм.