  Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory explains how the appearance of purposive
design in the sophisticated adaptations of living organisms can have come about
without their intentionally being designed. The explanation relies crucially on
the possibility of certain physical processes: mainly, gene replication and
natural selection. In this paper I show that for those processes to be possible
without the design of biological adaptations being encoded in the laws of
physics, those laws must have certain other properties. The theory of what
these properties are is not part of evolution theory proper, and has not been
developed, yet without it the neo-Darwinian theory does not fully achieve its
purpose of explaining the appearance of design. To this end I apply Constructor
Theory's new mode of explanation to provide an exact formulation of the
appearance of design, of no-design laws, and of the logic of self-reproduction
and natural selection, within fundamental physics. I conclude that
self-reproduction, replication and natural selection are possible under
no-design laws, the only non-trivial condition being that they allow digital
information to be physically instantiated. This has an exact characterisation
in the constructor theory of information. I also show that under no-design laws
an accurate replicator requires the existence of a "vehicle" constituting,
together with the replicator, a self-reproducer.
