In science, evolution is a natural process. It is not any artificial form of genetic manipulation, as all forms thereof take away some fundamental part of the evolutionary process. I acknowledge that it is convenient to use the term "evolution" in broader terms, but it can serve to undermine general understanding of the scientific theory itself, and we already have a hard enough time getting people to accept evolution as an actual thing that is real without conflating it with a thousand other things.
Nope, evolution is an incremental (and occasionally catastrophic) process, nothing in the definition requires that it occur without human intervention. Again, you are equating
natural selection with
evolution. The two are related but distinct concepts. A species can evolve via any number of mechanisms, of which NS is but one. Natural selection is the process of adapting to the environment nature presents, artificial selection is simply humans wilfully exerting control over that environment in order to manipulate the selective process.
First of all, you're saying that any type of breeding is "evolution", which would basically mean that we were "evolving" animals and plants since hunter-gatherers were tossing bones to the friendlier gray wolves.
Which is correct, that's exactly what was happening to those grey wolves and isn't in any doubt. In fact it's the classic example used to illustrate the process. Artificial selection is a well established mechanism of evolution, Darwin himself coined the term. Sexual selection is essentially a very specific, contextual and very well studied example of this
applied unintentionally to ourselves. I'm not sure why you'd seemingly have a grounding in evolutionary theory and object to such a well established piece of the groundwork?
Secondly, in the natural process of evolution, back mutations happen all the time. That is not reverse or retrograde evolution; it's simply a part of the evolutionary process. What you're talking about is simply breeding for original characteristics, like breeding horses to have the traits of ancient wild horses. Just because you do it incrementally doesn't make it a form of evolution.
Yes it does I'm afraid to say, that's exactly what it means. Back mutations do occur but there are provisos, the genotype will not revert to an earlier form and the tendency is always towards greater complexity as adaptations reflect ever increasing mutations on the original genetic material, regardless of the apparent direction of physiological change.
However even at the physiological level there are significant limitations on this process as the very traits being selected for themselves become part of the selective environment. One cannot go back to the "drawing board" so to speak. An elephant, for instance, could not evolve wings in order to gain access to food sources out of it's reach, nor could selective processes reduce it's mass in order to prepare for such a mutation. The likely solution would be to develop a longer trunk or more powerful hind legs precisely because it's own naturally evolved physical dimensions have limited the available options. The organism is a part of it's own environment and it's own form both applies selective pressures and sets boundaries on the adaptive options.
Think about it this way. If you "reverse evolve" an animal to a previous state, do the genes of that animal actually match a naturally occurring instance of that animal from long ago? Are the genes of the new animal a combination of genes that could have actually happened in nature long ago, or do you have an animal that more closely resembles an average of the ancient genome, lacking any genetic diversity?
Assuming you do so via our currently available means what you have is a new, more complex genome which
functionally mirrors an earlier form on the morphological level. This is not a new concept, it's merely a particularly contrived form of convergent evolution, with a modern organism adopting the same (or similar) functional adaptations that had served an ancestor.
However from the point of view of your story I'm assuming you are talking about a species reverse mapping the genotype? The distinction between that and the scenario above (selecting for phenotypes via artificial selection) is redundant for this discussion as both would warrant use of the term "reverse evolution" on the phenotypic level. The fact they would result in the end characteristics via a different combination of genetic materials (or that only one is capable of reproducing an ancient genotype) doesn't make one jot of difference to use of the term. After all bear in mind the vast majority of any species genetic material is "junk" from the organisms point of view anyway.
Perhaps you don't even have the original genome, or an incomplete copy. You select for ancient traits, but you can't actually verify that traits that superficially match the recorded traits of the animal are from the original DNA. It could simply be a completely new gene that acts like the old one, but works in a completely different manner. Imagine if you knew that birds once had wings to fly, but you're working with a species of flightless bird that has no feathers. Trying to "reverse" to a flight-capable bird could result in an animal that has the general body of a bird, but the wings of a bat!
In a nutshell: You can't go home again, evolutionarily speaking. Jurassic Park never really had any dinosaurs. They were always approximations made from incomplete data.
Which was exactly the point I made in my earlier post, which is making your objections somewhat bewildering. There's no resetting the clock on the genetic level, there's always an entropic process and a tendency towards complexity, therefore evolution
does have an inherent direction, despite the lack of master plan. That has no bearing, however, on making arbitrary distinctions on what processes do or do not qualify as being part of "evolution", especially as the existing frameworks are so clear.
