Quote:
Originally Posted by SATCHMO
What I'm saying is that it's not strictly biological evolution which has a tremendous influence on the direction in which we travel as a species. You can look at a timeline of human evolution from human prehistory to the present and see one thing, and conversely look at the history of human adaptation which has largely manifested itself through the use of technology and see something completely different, perhaps not contradictory, but different. Has the speed and complexity of our rate of adaptation not increased progressively as we've evolved as a species? I'm asking literally, because I'm assuming and I don't have any hard factual evidence to assert that claim.
What I'm throwing out there is this: We have come to be able to manipulate the way our species evolves through technology and the interconnectedness of our awareness that things like the internet provide, this process of adaptation through technology has grown at an ever increasing rate since the beginning of the species. Our growing rate of adaptation and it's increasing influence on the course of human history makes the influence of biological natural selection less relevant and influential as our history progresses.
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I was confused at first because adaptation is also a biological term which means a trait that evolves by natural selection as a response to the environment. Adaptation implies natural selection and so I didn't understand what you meant.
I think I do now. You're saying that we can f.ex adapt to women not being able to give birth the natural way because our technological advancement allows for C-sections. Because of that, women don't "have" to evolve to become better at giving birth. This is broadly true, technological advancements lighten the selective pressures. A selection pressure is something in the environment that pushes evolution in a specific direction, f.ex a colder climate can mean a selection pressure that pushes for thicker fur in animals. Technology helps lighten selection pressures on humans, but it doesn't completely remove all of them. It doesn't stop us from evolving, but it has a lot of influence on which traits evolve, which direction we evolve in and and how fast.
Generally speaking, the higher the pressure, the faster organisms evolve. If they can't adapt and the pressure is very high, organisms generally go extinct. An example could be sheep living in a cooling climate which they can't move away from. As it gets colder, they should grow thicker fur. The faster it gets colder (the higher the selection pressure), the quicker the thicker fur will evolve. If the change happens so fast that biological evolution can't respond quickly enough, the sheep may go extinct.
Without technology, a lot of selection pressures of old would come back in force and it can be safely assumed that if civilization is destroyed and technological luxuries with it, a lot of women who are not capable of surviving natural child births will die and some of their genes (the ones that cause the birth disadvantage) will quickly become a lot more sparse in the collective human genome. Such a change in our common genetic makeup is an example of human evolution.
Less selection pressure due to technology (or whatever really!) generally means slower (biological) adaptation in the traits where pressure is relieved.
Edit :
Switched the word "evolution" for adaptation in the last sentence. It's more correct that way.
