Darwin’s selection metaphor derives directly from artificial breeding practice

Evidence

Darwin used the metaphor of selection to describe the evolutionary process of adaptation because he had in mind the activities of human plant and animal breeders. If people want to produce a strain of pigeons with longer tail feathers than usual, they pick from their flock those birds that have the longest feathers and exclusively use them for breeding purposes. This is artificial selection of the long-tailed pigeon by animal breeders. By analogy, Darwin referred to the differential survival of the characters that adapt an organism to its environment as natural selection. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 269

Categorization

• XREF: The breeder-as-selective-agent analogy parallels the reader’s Hardin interest in observable design choices — here as explicit designed constraint, contrasted with unobservable natural processes.