From natural selection to social co-optation of genetics: Charles Darwin’s journey through culture

Abstract

Natural selection helps to solve the mystery of life but it is not applicable to explain cultural diversity. Natural selection is seen, on the one hand, as part of the imagination of a fleeting industrial world, and, on the other, as a means to produce differences in the midst of social processes that are decisive in the distribution of human genes. Genetics is intentionally translated into the social world: biology is subverted and submitted to human agencies. Such is an essential rupture that reframes the genetic pool under the newness of the human world. Humans deliberate about their condition and, in so doing, they co-opt nature. However such is not a blunt process but deliberation in itself is infiltrated by the neurological process, a strong reason for maintaining a dialectical view between genes and humans.