“You can’t deny the force of selection in genetic evolution,” says [Stuart] Newman, “but in my view this is stabilizing and fine-tuning forms that originate due to other processes.” The same process might have given rise to animals themselves. The further you turn back the clock through geological time, Newman believes, the weaker genetic regulation of development becomes relative to plasticity and self-organization. The development of the most basic feature s of multi-cellular organisms some 600 million years ago, in the late Proterozoic, might have been the rapid and spontaneous result of molecules already present on unicellular organism doing new jobs when cells stick together. “You don’t need incremental change under gradual selection regimes to get attributes such as segmented, hollow or multi-layered bodies,” says Newman. “You can get it all with thermodynamics and self-organization.” The problem is testing such ideas . . .