The problem here is in the presumed meaning of “natural” in “natural selection.” Instead of calling it “natural selection” call it “Darwinian selection.” Then you don’t have to worry about the word “natural”

defining what is natural vs. not is itself a problem. If one requires that that which is “natural” be only a certain set of things, and that only when these things, and not other things, can be involved to call it Natural Selection, then there are problems. Nobody uses the term that way, with the constraint on what is natural vs. not.

Artificial selection is sometimes called by people who have not thought it through an alternative to natural selection. But it is a subset of natural selection where the selecting agent involves purposeful breeding/etc by humans.

Don’t we find Catholics and Muslims have a higher reproductive rate than Protestants and Confucians?

Do we still call this “natural” selection, when the factors that determine the changing allele frequency seem not to be particularly “natural”?

Honestly, I’m trying. I’ve been trying for decades. Made some progress.

I don’t have time to address your questions right now but I can suggest a few things I’ve written on the topic you may want to look at, and we can get back to it later.

First, some basics. Might seem too basic but really it isn’t:

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/08/25/the-modes-of-natural-selection-1/

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/08/25/the-three-necessary-and-suffic-2/

Then on humans specifically:

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/08/21/falsehoods-has-evolution-stopp/

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/08/24/humans-are-no-longer-subject-t/

Again, we can pick this up later.

What is natural about selection once society enters the picture? What is natural once there are MRIs and pap smears? Natural selection, such as it now works on humans, does not have the same kind of epigenetic populations to work on, with our recent centuries of industrial toxins, radiation, older parents, accumulating epigenetic damage.

Genes don’t matter as much when you also have society and medicine and aged parental [DNA+epigenetic markers]. Natural selection “works the same way” in a very shallow sense of the phrase. The outcome is very different in a population with minimal, pre-history levels of toxins and epigenetic damage versus today’s population.

I’m no expert in terms like speciation, or concepts like homeobox genes (which I had to look up just now), but the point is, there was a progression, there were themes, a “logic” of sorts – of course, not the goal of an anthropomorphized evolution, instead try calling it a falling towards order, complexity, adapting to niches, competing against predators and prey.

I don’t know what we’re doing now, but today’s natural selection is as distant from the past, as progressive jazz is to the madrigal. Sure it’s all music, but what kind of dancers do we eventually become, when we dance to such unnatural selections?

Understanding how natural selection is the same for humans today as it was for frogs in the Eocene is how you understand what natural selection is! 🙂

When I sized up this article, I saw the first part where epigenetics is perhaps the last important missing in our understanding – and the rest of the article, which becomes unmoored with epigenetics explanatory power, while simultaneously seeming to me riddled with possible unjustified presumptions. Not my minefield.

Kay Brown probably explored that territory fruitfully. Truth is, I zoned out; or rather, kept my focus on the epigenetics angle.

Natural selection sure isn’t what it used to be, not the way it works on us. Might as well give them different names. Before language, culture, society there’s another kind of natural selection. Jane Goodall chimpanzee clans, genetics and epigenetics reflective of fitness in a wild, organic, human and protohuman ecosystem.

The principles aren’t the same later, and now they’re ever more different still. As we keep people alive and reproducing into advanced years, we produce increasingly epigenetically-damaged genetic lines. Or look at the ancient Indian caste system from an epigenetics point of view. The niche we now adapt to is no longer nature, but each other.

I should look for an amateurs’ forum on epigenetics specifically. I haven’t found a place where I might make a more coherent contribution. Blog comments and discussions aren’t as lasting or effective.

Chris