Darwin, artificial selection, and poverty Author(s): Luis Sanchez Source: Politics and the Life Sciences, 29(1):61-71. 2010. Published By: Association for Politics and the Life Sciences DOI: 10.2990/29_1_61 URL: http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.2990/29_1_61 BioOne (www.bioone.org) is an electronic aggregator of bioscience research content, and the online home to over 160 journals and books published by not-for-profit societies, associations, museums, institutions, and presses. Your use of this PDF, the BioOne Web site, and all posted and associated content indicates your acceptance of BioOne’s Terms of Use, available at www.bioone.org/page/terms_of_use. Usage of BioOne content is strictly limited to personal, educational, and non-commercial use. Commercial inquiries or rights and permissions requests should be directed to the individual publisher as copyright holder. BioOne sees sustainable scholarly publishing as an inherently collaborative enterprise connecting authors, nonprofit publishers, academic institutions, research libraries, and research funders in the common goal of maximizing access to critical research. Perspective Darwin, artificial selection, and poverty Contemporary implications of a forgotten argument Luis Sanchez Research School of Social Sciences Australian National University St. Bribie Island, Queensland 4507 Australia
[email protected] ABSTRACT. This paper argues that the processes of evolutionary selection are becoming increasingly artificial, a trend that goes against the belief in a purely natural selection process claimed by Darwin’s natural selection theory. Artificial selection is mentioned by Darwin, but it was ignored by Social Darwinists, and it is all but absent in neo-Darwinian thinking. This omission results in an underestimation of probable impacts of artificial selection upon assumed evolutionary processes, and has implications for the ideological uses of Darwin’s language, particularly in relation to poverty and other social inequalities.