UMR CNRS, MNHN, Ecole pratique des hautes études, Paris, France.
C R Biol. 2010 Feb;333(2):145-56. doi: 10.1016/j.crvi.2009.12.002. Epub 2010 Feb 6.
Darwin's book on the Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) is often viewed as the continuation of The Origin of Species published 12 years earlier (1859), both because of the implicit parallelism between natural selection and sexual selection, and because Darwin himself presents the book as developing a subject (man) which he intentionally omitted in the Origin. But the Descent can also be viewed as the continuation of his book on Variation published three years earlier (1868). Firstly because Darwin's hypothesis of pangenesis links the selection process to the origin of variation through use and disuse, an idea underlying his speculations on the origin of moral sense in humans. Second because like the action of the horticulturist on his domestic crops, sexual selection exerted by one sex on the other sex can develop fancy traits that are not easily accounted for by their utility to the selected organism itself, such as artistic taste, pride, courage, and the morphological differences between human populations. These traits are difficult to reconcile with pangenesis. They add up to other contradictions of the book possibly resulting from Darwin's erroneous inference about the mechanism of inheritance, like those on the determination of sex-ratio, or the confusion between individual adaptation and the advantage to the species. These inconsistencies inaugurate a weakening of the Darwinian message, which will last 50 years after his death. They contributed to the neglect of sexual selection for a century. Darwin however maintained a logical distinction between evolutionary mechanisms and hereditary mechanisms, and an epistemological distinction between evolutionary theory and Pangenesis hypothesis. In the modern context of Mendelian genetics, Darwin's sexual selection retrospectively appears as luminous an idea in its pure principle as natural selection, even though the mechanisms governing the evolution of sexual choice in animals remain largely unresolved.
达尔文的《人类的由来及性选择》（1871 年）通常被视为他 12 年前出版的《物种起源》（1859 年）的续篇，这不仅是因为自然选择和性选择之间存在隐含的平行关系，还因为达尔文本人将这本书视为在《起源》中故意省略的主题（人类）的发展。但《人类的由来》也可以被视为他三年前出版的《变异论》（1868 年）的续篇。首先，因为达尔文的泛生论假说将选择过程与变异的起源通过使用和废弃联系起来，这是他对人类道德感起源的推测的基础。其次，就像园艺家对他的家养作物所做的那样，一性对另一性的性选择可以发展出奇特的特征，这些特征不容易用它们对被选择的生物体本身的有用性来解释，比如艺术品味、骄傲、勇气和人类群体之间的形态差异。这些特征很难与泛生论相协调。它们与书中的其他矛盾一起，可能是由于达尔文对遗传机制的错误推断，比如性别比例的决定，或者个体适应与物种优势之间的混淆。这些不一致性导致了达尔文主义信息的削弱，这种情况将持续到他去世后的 50 年。它们导致了一个世纪以来对性选择的忽视。然而，达尔文在进化机制和遗传机制之间保持了逻辑上的区别，在进化理论和泛生论假说之间保持了认识论上的区别。在孟德尔遗传学的现代背景下，达尔文的性选择从回溯的角度来看，其纯粹的原则与自然选择一样是一个光辉的思想，尽管动物中控制性选择进化的机制在很大程度上仍未得到解决。
