Frozen Evolution. Or, that’s not the way it is, Mr. Darwin. A Farewell to Selfish Gene.

Hard heredity consists in the transfer of the predispositions for individual traits from one generation to the next in unaltered form, without any effect on the other predispositions present in a particular individual and the effects of the external environment. In contrast, soft heredity assumes that predispositions can change from one generation to the next under the effect of the other predispositions present in a given individual and through the effect of the external environment. The Lamarckist theory of evolution and the later Darwin’s theory of evolution are based on the concept of soft heredity of predispositions; in contrast, the Neodarwinist theory of evolution, i.e. the main direction of the theory of evolutionary biology developed roughly from the 1930s and thus including the knowledge of Mendelian genetics, is based on the concepts of hard heredity.