Comment How universal is Darwin’s principle?

Charles Darwin derived his principle of natural selection form observations he made in Britain and on his voyage as naturalist on board of HMS Beagle. All his conclusions were derived from studies on higher organisms, animals and plants [1], and yet the principle applies equally well to unicellular organisms, protists, eubacteria and archaebacteria. Even the evolution of viruses, viroids, and molecules in the test-tube is perfectly described by Darwin’s ideas. More-over, competing computer programs [2] and other objects outside biology follow the rules of natural selection. The Darwinian mechanism sets in whenever biomolecules, cells, organisms, societies, computer devices or other entities capable of reproduction are on the stage and compete for resources. Why is Darwin’s approach almost universal? The answer is simple: Neither details of reproduction nor the nature of the multiplying entities matter in the contest. The only property that counts is the number of progeny in future generations and the genius Charles Darwin recognized this fact through making an enormous abstraction from the wealth of details in the adaptations of species he saw in nature. Extrapolations of Darwin’s principle to pre-cellular life were made ever since the nineteen sixties when the idea of a world of biomolecules optimizing the rate of reproduction in the sense of Darwin was born. Sol Spiegelman’s experiments with RNA molecules [3] and Manfred Eigen’s kinetic theory of evolution [4] provided evidence that adaptation and evolution do not require cellular life. Tom Cech and Sidney Altman discovered that RNA molecules ar