Are humans a domesticated species? How is this issue related to debates on the roles of human agency in human evolution? This article discusses four views on human domestication: Darwin’s view; the view of those who link human domestication to anthropogenic niche construction and, more specifically, to sedentism; the view of those who link human domestication to selection against aggression and the domestication syndrome; and a novel view according to which human domestication can be conceived of in terms of a (...) process of political selection. The article examines and compares these views to illustrate how discussions of human domestication can contribute to debates about how, and to what extent, human agency has affected human evolution. (shrink)

It is not always considered that the discussion about the objective or subjective nature of beauty occurred partly in natural history, within the framework of the Darwinian revolution. The approaches of many pre-Darwinian naturalists assumed the existence of absolute standards of beauty. This idea was a presupposition in some versions of the great chain of being and in the idea that beauty was an objective characteristic of creation that could explain the possession of many traits of organisms. In this paper (...) I will show how Darwin explicitly confronted both views throughout his work. (shrink)