Charles Darwin, You're Out Of Date

Charles Darwin's 202 birthday has come and gone, but  most of us didn't think to send a card, let alone throw a party. 

Perhaps it was memories of the family fight at the bicentennial celebration of his birth, when we couldn't agree on whether or not there is a scientifically based alternative to Uncle Charles' theory of evolution.

Even the late Aunt Emma, though ever Darwin's  loving wife, thought intelligent design should  be taught equally in school, while Cousin Thomas Henry in his day called ID a Trojan Horse for the Christian religion.  He was a real bulldog on the subject.

Since then, we,  the bright young grandkids have begun to disagree with both viewpoints.  We believe neither traditional evolution nor intelligent design are adequate for the classroom. 

If we are to equip our children for their future we need to teach what evolution has and will become in our hands.  For its mechanisms have been so hijacked by humankind that the old evolutionary rules, while still around and handy, are no longer the significant story.  Intelliegent design matters even less.  (In fact, it doesn't matter at all except to evolution deniers, whom are one intellectual cut above holocaust deniers.)

Plants, animals, even we humans, are now poised to evolve largely by humankind's own guiding hand, as we become ever more adept at exploiting evolution's mechanisms for our own ends. 

We began the abduction of evolution eons ago by dividing plants into crops and weeds and animals into livestock and game.  Then we used artificial selection to transform our chosen cultivars -- now spread far and wide -- to our liking and benefit.

Now of course we seek to by-pass the slow mode of cross breeding for the speedy tempo of genetic engineering. The billions of us about to be born will need the food.

Also long ago humans trumped nature's way of species development by the technique of geographic and climatic isolation that was first observed and exhaustively documented by our ingenious Uncle D. They did so by taking plants and animals along as herds, seeds and stowaways while migrating to the earth's farthest corners.

More lately we have replaced boots, dugout canoes and pack animals with cargo holds, ballast water,  airplane wheel wells and our own baggage. In Florida we legally import then abandon thousands of exotic pets, making the likes of pythons and howler monkeys at home in the Everglades.

Most alien species so introduced dwindle and die.  But those which survive often supplant the natives -- and the life forms dependent upon them -- that are unable to compete. The diversity of life takes another hit, although one alien species so far has always endured -- ours.

Of late we have concentrated on the future evolution of our own species. We have deployed the tools of science and technology in a ferocious fight with death. We have notched some victories.  In many favored societies infants and children seldom die and many more of us live comfortably and well to the invariant end.

When we do die, we usually succumb to ailments that afflict us after our reproductive years are well over. But by then there is nothing natural selection can do to cull and improve our kind. Since we are not apt to practice artificial selection on ourselves any time soon,  that leaves genetic engineering. Our tool of choice is the human genome, now grossly mapped and manipuable. 

We are, in short, testing a new style of evolution, with the only earth we know and ourselves as guinea pigs. We had better do it intelligently. There won't be a second chance, not for our species.