Michel Veuille

Sex, Gender, Ethics, and the Darwinian Evolution of Humanity examines the impact of Darwin's 'Descent of Man' on contemporary biology and the humanities. Its publication in 1871 was a founding event in anthropology. Its content was primarily concerned with the development of sexual life, social life, and intellectual life, not only as outcomes of evolution, but as components that have actively intermixed over time with the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection. The stamp of Darwinism on modern thought is still very important and brings novelties to academic studies. Several fields influenced by Darwinian anthropology developed in recent decades, including evolutionary ethics, the evolution of sociality and sexual communication in animal and plant species. Sociobiology and evolutionary psychology are topics that draw heavily on Darwin's 'Descent of Man'. The understanding of Darwin's thought has also progressed greatly in recent decades, following the systematic study of Darwin's correspondence and notebooks, leading to a reassessment of the development of his thought on humans, social groups, and heredity, and how they come together in his theory of evolution. The book combines a historical perspective on Darwin's achievement and his legacy. It will be of interest to students and scholars in a variety of fields, from experimental biology to the social and historical sciences.

The history of evolutionary theory in France after 1859 and of genetics after 1900 is unique to this country, and most of it remained poorly understood until the historical studies conducted by Jean Gayon, Richard BurianBurian, Richard, Doris ZallenZallen, Doris and collaborators. Academic studies and teaching in evolutionary genetics in France developed only after geneticists Philippe L’HéritierL’Héritier, Philippe (1906–1994) and Georges TeissierTeissier, Georges (1900–1972) conducted a series of experiments as of 1932. Having a dual background in descriptive zoology and mathematical biology, TeissierTeissier, Georges and L’Héritier were pioneers in experimental population geneticsPopulation genetics and were among the first geneticists to draw attention to the maintenance of polymorphismPolymorphism in populations as a major evolutionary issue in the 1930s. L’HéritierL’Héritier, Philippeand TeissierTeissier, Georges used population cages (“démomètresDémomètres”) as the main experimental paradigmParadigm to tackle this question. This provided the basis for a scientific school that flourished in Paris after WWII. This school is characterized by its interest in a variety of selective mechanismsMechanism potentially leading to a polymorphic equilibrium, even though most of its members remained outside the debates on polymorphismPolymorphism that raged in USA and UK in 1950–1970. L’HéritierL’Héritier, Philippeand TeissierTeissier, Georges were generally at odds with neutralism, with the famous exception of the collaboration of one of its members, Maxime LamotteLamotte, Maxime (1920–2007), with French theoretician Gustave MalécotMalécot, Gustave (1911–1998). This school never abandoned its deep roots in zoology, and while its image in France rested on its interest in DarwinismDarwinism, it was established institutionally on a network of laboratories and periodicals in zoology, which can be viewed as a source of academic power. This led to some kind of isolation of this school, which eventually dissolved in the 1970s in a rising new generation of geneticists restoring international ties. The contribution of this school to French science is considerable since it introduced three fields: genetics, DarwinismDarwinism and biological statistics.

Chance has been a focus of attention ever since the beginning of population genetics, but neutrality has not, as natural selection once appeared to be the only worthwhile issue. Neutral change became a major source of interest during the neutralist–selectionist debate, 1970–1980. It retained interest beyond this period for two reasons that contributed to its becoming foundational for evolutionary reasoning. On the one hand, neutral evolution was the first mathematical prediction to emerge from Mendelian inheritance: until then evolution by natural selection was considered the alternative to the fixity of species; now it appears to be the alternative to continuous change. Second, neutral change generated a set of clear predictions on standing variation. These could be used as a reference for detecting more elusive alternative mechanisms of evolution including natural selection. In the wake of the transition from Mendelism to genomics, the combination of coalescent theory, DNA sequence variation, and numerical analysis made it possible to integrate contingent aspects of the history of species into a new null model, thus opening a new dimension in the concept of population that the Modern Synthesis formerly considered as a mere gene pool.