Apples and Oranges

So, I had a thought while driving today --We often discount domesticated plants and animals as not being a part of big E evolution.While splicing fish DNA into corn is clearly beyond the scope of mutation and natural selection, I don't think we can say the same about an apple tree.Yes, over hundreds/thousands of years, humans have made sure that this one type of apple is more successful than, say, crab apples.However, aren't we just part of natural selection. I mean, we'd consider our influences on cockroach populations to be a part of natural adaptation.So, when one apple tree produces big sweeter apples and gets spread around, isn't that just an advantageous mutation paying off in a big way?

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

My opinion is that we have become seperate from nature. IMO, this isn't natural evolution.When we make a conscious decision to make one apple more successful then it isn't nature doing it. Nature, himself, doesn't make conscious decisions, he is just results and consequences. I'd say we are a result of it but no longer a part of it.How do you feel about invasive exotics?On the other hand, I could consider us as a part of nature and everything we do is a result of nature, including this:

A fine opinion, but try telling that to the Dodo We are part of nature, and if a fruit is to our tastes then it gets protected and harvested by us, so the fruit becomes more successful.This is not the same as artificial selection where we take traits we like and breed them, and try and breed out traits we don't. It is a bit similar but in this case we are a species that is protecting a food source and being its vector. The fruit is 'using' us to spread its seed...a symbiotic relationship of sorts...especially when a lot of the successes of our example fruits came before we really knew about selection and breeding methods.We see a fruit that is nice, so we look after the tree that makes that fruit, and try to help more trees grow so we can be sure we always have our nice fruit available. Intelligent, but not unnatural. If, however, we start to say "That tree over there is sweeter than ths tree, so we'll only breed from that tree"...then we have entered conscious decisions to select, and that is the line to artificial selection in my opinion.

I'm not distinguishing between our "conscious" decision to spread around Tree A instead of Tree B from an elks decision to eat Bush A instead of Bush B (and thereby spread the seeds in it's droppings).Yes, it can be argued that we are "aware" of our decision, but does that really matter. We are making the decision based on what serves us best. The elk is doing likewise.

Indeed - and aeroplanes are natural objects.At some point, for convenience we differentiate between artificial and natural when it comes to the actions of man. Our support of various fruit trees is the perfectly natural result of intelligence...a symbiotic relationship as I said.However, when we deliberately shape the direction of the selection procedure (try and breed sweeter or bigger fruit), whilst it is still done by a natural agent (us), we refer to it as artificial selection to help differentiate it from selection that has no decision making entity behind it.

Sometime ago in the middle east, probably between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago, a goat grass mutated and produced a version with bigger seeds. Shortly there after it happened again and the result was what we call wheat.But the end product was not perfect. The seeds were too big to fly off in the wind and so they all fell straight down. The result was that few seeds matured and became plants and the first ones usually took all the resources so the others failed.About the same time, thousands of miles away in the new world, another plant mutated into what we know as maize, corn. Again, the seeds were too big and too tightly held to the core. When they fell, they mostly just rotted away.But in both cases, there was a critter around to take over from nature, to play the part of a great wind and distribute the seeds.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Are you suggesting the Dodo became extinct via natural selection? In this day and age, I'd have to say that they are the same. To me you can't have one without the other, its an all or none thing. I choose none. I mean, all are actions are artificial selection.like you said here: now that I think about it though, some of our decisions have consequences we couldn't have seen, so those results could be natural selection. But I agree with you that the conscious decision makes it artificial, and these days, most of our decisions are conscious.

The word "natural" is part of our language. Our language did not come as part of our genes. It is an invention. Society controls the meaning of a word such as "natural". The meaning is set by social customs and conventions. According to our conventions, the word "natural" does not include human technological activity.In my opinion, that's all there is to it. Don't look to logic for this. Language is not logical, it is conventional.

No - I'm suggesting that as far as the Dodo was concerned a very aggressive predator came ashore and wiped them out. Aye.