RE: Is artificial selection considered "evolution"?
March 12, 2012 at 6:04 pm
(This post was last modified: March 12, 2012 at 6:32 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
But they are not changes based solely on human predation. They are changes directed by human beings with knowledge of what they are affecting (and possible alternatives) often in complete and utter disregard for the creature, not beneficial in any way except to be kept as livestock or crops. Often infertile, sometimes genetically modified, and done, all the while, by a conscious agent of change. The products of natural selection and artificial selection themselves are remarkably and noticeably different.
Nature is not a conscious agent of change. It does not select upon the metrics that we might (and even phrasing it this way is only an attempt to make it seem more easily understood to us), and while we are natural, not everything that we do conforms to the process by which nature has "formed" life. We are capable of inserting ourselves and exploiting. Ultimately, what we do is a product of nature, as it is a product of ourselves. That doesn't mean that it is not artificial selection. Oftentimes words mean different things in different areas, especially so of science. The mechanism by which nature facilitates evolution is called "natural". When that mechanism is deliberately tinkered with, it is called "artificial" (because it was here before us, handled the job before us, and gets to claim credit-
).
Think, artifice, artifact, artificial.
Nature is not a conscious agent of change. It does not select upon the metrics that we might (and even phrasing it this way is only an attempt to make it seem more easily understood to us), and while we are natural, not everything that we do conforms to the process by which nature has "formed" life. We are capable of inserting ourselves and exploiting. Ultimately, what we do is a product of nature, as it is a product of ourselves. That doesn't mean that it is not artificial selection. Oftentimes words mean different things in different areas, especially so of science. The mechanism by which nature facilitates evolution is called "natural". When that mechanism is deliberately tinkered with, it is called "artificial" (because it was here before us, handled the job before us, and gets to claim credit-
).Think, artifice, artifact, artificial.
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