3. Evolution shifts to off-world human colonies.
4. Transhumanism will drive evolution.
Is natural selection still a major force in human evolution? As far back as high school biology, we’ve been taught to think the answer must be yes. But is it really true?
Charles Darwin published his groundbreaking On the Origin of Species back in 1859, around the same time that Charles Dickens was making a name for himself writing about social conditions in England. Dickens’ stories emerge from a period in which only 50 percent of British children survived to adulthood — a number not so different from animals in the jungle. In that vein, Darwin was right when he said natural selection was operating on humans full force.
Yet the forces that came into play in the 1850s are far different from those we experience today, prompting some high profile biologists to suggest that our advanced medical capabilities have, in effect, blunted natural selection. In a 2013 Radio Times interview, science communicator David Attenborough described it this way: