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

In order for a system to be able of becoming a subject of natural selection, it must contain elements that are capable of changing over time, of producing variants differing in smaller or larger details. Variability can again be realized in various ways. In modern organisms, mutations occur as the main source of variability, i.e. errors usually occurring during the replication or repair of DNA.

The necessity for the existence of variability is best apparent when we compare the propagation of living organisms with the propagation of crystals.  The shape of a crystal is fixed once and for all by the properties of the atoms or molecules from which it is composed and is not variable. Sometimes, there is the possibility of several alternative ways of crystallization of a certain substance (cf. the various shapes of snowflakes); however, these ways are previously unambiguously given by the structure of the water molecule and cannot develop in any way. Thus, biological evolution cannot occur in classical crystals. However, there are also classical crystals, such as clay pseudocrystals, which are characterized by the presence of a number of irregularities and defects. The properties and especially the shape of pseudocrystals are thus determined not only by the internal structure of the structural elements, but also by historical accident – the source of these irregularities and defects. Consequently, some biologists assume that, sometime in the past, some types of clays could have been the subject of a certain type of biological evolution (Cairns-Smith 1982).