ENHANCING EVOLUTION AND ENHANCING EVOLUTION

It has been claimed in several places that the new genetic technologies allow humanity to achieve in a generation or two what might take natural selection hundreds of millennia in respect of the elimination of certain diseases and an increase in traits such as intelligence. More radically, it has been suggested that those same technologies could be used to instil characteristics that we might reasonably expect never to appear due to natural selection alone. John Harris, a proponent of this genomic optimism, claims in his book Enhancing Evolution that we not only have it in our power to enhance evolution, but that we also have a duty to do so. In this paper, I claim that Harris' hand is strong but that he overplays it nevertheless. He is correct to dismiss the arguments of the anti‐enhancement lobby and correct to say that enhancement is permissible; but ‘good’ is different from ‘permissible’ and his argument for the goodness of enhancement is less convincing. Moreover, he is simply wrong to claim that it generates a duty to enhance.     

进化论与分类学

达尔文在《物种起源》的最后结语中指出: “我们的分类将成为——尽可能地使之成为——生物的系谱,那时将真的显示出所谓‘创造的计划’了。当分类学有了确定目的之时,它的法则将趋于简单。我们没有宗谱或纹章,我们必须用长期遗传下来的各种性状,去发现和探索自然系谱上的许多分歧的系线”。