ABSTRACT
The difficulties suggested by J. Von Neumann’s analysis will be taken as an indication that the replication of primitive organisms was largely or wholly imposed on them by their environment — that the process of replication per se did not require the pre-existence of any elaborate internal instructions or machinery within the organisms. It has been argued that clay crystallites may have constituted the genes of primitive organisms, with survival-promoting instructions written in the form of patterns of internal cation substitutions, and with phenotypes consisting of adsorbed, abiogenically formed, organic molecules. Genetic extension could increase the versatility of a primitive genetic material, but there is no particular reason to suppose that such a material — one that is a good starter — would be particularly good at evolving very far in this way. The ‘metamorphosis’ occurred through an extended evolution during which the original organisms became heterogenetic.
