The handicapped replicator

The metaphor can also be extended to earlier stages of evolution. If the origin of the first cells is likened to the origin of the first villages, we can compare the age of precellular evolution to the period of history in which villages did not exist. The interesting point is that this metaphor allows us to take a closer look at today s most popular model on precellular evolution the model of the naked gene as the first replicator (Dawkins, 1976). 

The substance of the replicator model is that all that matters in life is information, and all that matters in evolution is the replication of information with occasional mistakes. But we have seen that at the heart of life there are two fundamental entities, not one. Information and meaning are two independent entities, copying and coding are two independent processes, and the codemaker between genes and proteins must be a third party because otherwise there would be no 

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