tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62969021619967464042024-03-13T04:04:14.220-07:00anthropomicsA blog about evolution, anthropology, and science, inspired by the three Georges: Gaylord Simpson, Carlin, and S. Kaufman.Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.comBlogger26125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-52741671664919880862023-12-24T08:59:00.000-08:002023-12-24T09:07:38.933-08:00Critical Hominin Theory<h4 style="text-align: left;">[Note: Both reviewers recommended publication of the following essay for <i>Paleoanthropology</i>, but it has not yet been accepted. If you like it and want to cite it, go ahead and cite this page. I'll let you know if it ever gets officially published.]</h4><h1 style="text-align: left;"><a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt;">Introduction: Physical anthropology
as pseudo-taxonomy</span></a></h1><div><span><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">At one time, the field
of physical anthropology was occupied primarily with establishing the number
and natures of the elementary natural units of the human species. Radical
biologists, like Ernst Haeckel (1868)<span style="text-indent: 0px;"> </span>, W. C. Osman Hill (1940) and Reginald R.
Ruggles Gates (1944) even held the different varieties of living peoples to be
themselves species, rejecting the familiar interbreeding criterion. Nevertheless,
once that question was resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, in the early 1960s,
(e.g., Barnicot 1963), the question still remained about how to understand the
elementary units of the human species taxonomically below the species level. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">In <i>Nature</i>,
Campbell (1962) formally identified <i>H.
sapiens sapiens</i>, <i>H. sapiens afer</i>,
<i>H. sapiens asiaticus</i>, <i>H. sapiens americanus</i>, <i>H. sapiens australasicus</i>, and <i>H. sapiens neptunianus</i>. Concurrently, based
on serological genetic considerations, Boyd (1963) proposed thirteen human “races,”
clustered into seven “groups” in <i>Science</i>. Garn (1961) identified nine “geographical
races” and 32 “local races”. Coon (1962) identified five subspecies of living <i>Homo sapiens</i> (ignoring the additional
nonsense about their having evolved in parallel from five subspecies of <i>Homo erectus</i>, and its possible bearing
on school integration), namely: Caucasoids, Mongoloids, Negroids, Capoids, and
Australoids.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">In the intervening decades, we stopped thinking
about and teaching about human variation that way in physical anthropology. <a name="_Hlk149938119">We have learned to
talk about human variation without formal biological taxonomy. The actual
empirical biological structure of our species is </a></span><span style="line-height: 150%;">“</span><span style="line-height: 150%;">regarded as constituting a widespread network of more
or less interrelated, ecologically adapted and functional entities” (Weiner
1957: 80), or in contemporary language, a “structured metapopulation” that
defies taxonomic precision. The groups
that compose our species are created for particular purposes, and while they
may correlate with some biological patterns, they do not represent natural
divisions, but political identities.</span><span style="line-height: 150%;"> Classifying our species as Linnaeus did
turned out to be a square peg – round hole problem (Livingstone 1962). Race can
thus be modeled on the classic anthropological example of African witchcraft
(Evans-Pritchard 1937; Fields and Fields 2012), which structures people’s lives
in spite of not having any material, naturalistic existence.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Indeed, partly as a result of the historical
baggage associated with treating the human species in such a pseudo-taxonomic
fashion, we terminated physical anthropology altogether and rebranded ourselves
formally as biological anthropology. Yet even as biological anthropology, we retain
the urge to try and make sense of the ostensible lineages in our ancestry taxonomically
(e.g., Wood and Boyle, 2016; Reed et al., 2023), a daunting task that even Linnaeus
himself never faced back in the 18<sup>th</sup> century.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">A popular science bestseller, Harari’s (2014) <i>Sapiens</i>, told readers on its back cover that
“[o]</span><span style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">ne hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species
of humans inhabited Earth”</span><span style="line-height: 150%;">. That, of course, might indeed be true. What are the
six species he identified 100,000 years ago? One, <i>Homo sapiens</i>, modern people. Fair enough, if a bit on the robust
side. Two, <i>Homo neanderthalensis</i>. Indeed,
according to the best genetic data thirty years ago (Krings et al. 1997); but
now the geneticists say I may have 2% Neanderthal DNA, which presumably changes
the status of Neanderthals, or the status of species, or both (Harvati and
Ackermann 2022; Weasel 2022). Three, <i>Homo
denisova</i>. Yet even the geneticists, who are the only people to whom it is
visible, say this is a genomic subgroup of Neanderthals (Meyer et al., 2012) – who,
as just noted, may not even be their own species in the first place. Four, <i>Homo erectus</i>. That is largely
uncontroversial as a taxon; but not at 100,000 years ago, unless perhaps we
regard species #6 as <i>H. erectus</i>.
Five, <i>Homo floresiensis</i>. Clearly, the
mysterious and isolated <i>H. floresiensis</i>
was something (Madison 2023). And six, <i>Homo
soloensis</i>, named for a different set of Indonesian fossils than <i>H. floresiensis</i>, which are generally
regarded as archaic <i>H. sapiens</i>
(Swisher et al., 1996) on account of their anatomical continuity with both <i>H. erectus</i> and <i>H. sapiens</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">All of a sudden, we
are down from “at least six different species” to humans, the hobbit, and
possibly Neanderthals. This is not to single out Harari for criticism, but
rather to note that biological anthropologists know that all of these species
are vexatious at best (e.g., Athreya and Hopkins 2021; Bae et al., 2023), while
outside of biological anthropology, the nuanced winks that generally accompany
these taxa tend to get lost.</span> <span style="background: yellow; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span>The problem is not a
new one. Reviewing mammalian systematics in 1945, G. G. Simpson was frustrated
by the difference he encountered between paleontological and
paleoanthropological taxonomy. Since human are mammals, it stands to reason
that an expert on mammalian species should be able to make sense of extinct
<a href="I regard a species to be a group of organisms composed of potential mates and competitors for mates, and representing a temporarily stable state in a biopolitical field of evolution, ecological relations, capitalism, conservation science, and governmental action." rel="nofollow" target="">hominin</a></span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[</span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span><a href="Although I reject the two premises that led to the adoption of “hominin” (only naming clades, and privileging our genetic intimacy with the apes over our ecological difference from them), I use the term for its hipness. ">1</a></span></span><span style="line-height: 107%;">]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span><span> species. Like any other
biological taxonomic enterprise, there is a proper taxonomic scheme, reflecting
a proper understanding of the fossil species in that particular evolutionary
lineage. It’s simply a matter of finding it. Some people see too few species
(lumpers), and some people see too many species (splitters), while a competent
paleontologist should produce results that are as Goldilocks found the baby
bear’s porridge: just right.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">The problem, however,
is not simply that everybody fancies themselves to be the baby bear; but rather,
lies more fundamentally in the assumption that the elementary units in
paleoanthropology and the elementary units of paleontology are equivalent. I
think it is time to call that assumption into question. The units of
paleontology, and of biology more generally, are different from the units of
paleoanthropology, in that the latter are units in a story of our ancestors,
and the ancestors are invariably sacred.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">
</span></p></span><div style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--></span><h1 style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium; line-height: 150%;">What are primate species?</span></h1></span><div><span><span><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span>A species, like a
culture or a gene, is infamously difficult to define precisely and
satisfactorily. Species appear to be units of nature of some sort, but
different kinds of units than species among plants or bacteria (Godfrey and
Marks 1991; Barraclough 2019). Nevertheless, for multicellular animals at
least, it appears to be an elemental unit of ecology, as a cell is an elemental
unit of physiology, a genotype is an elemental unit of a population genetics,
and an organism is an elemental unit of society. If we restrict ourselves just
to the more familiar mammalian and primate species, we can ideally identify
several properties possessed by a species: (1) it is composed of organisms
related to one another as either potential mates or competitors for mates, thus
bounded by the limits of a gene pool; (2) it constructs and is adapted to a
niche, filling a role in a dynamic ecosystem; (3) it has a locus in space and a
duration in time as an evolutionary lineage; and (4) it can replicate, making
more species, each slightly different from itself. Different definitions of
species, from Buffon (1753; Farber 1973) through Mayr (1942) and beyond,
highlight <a href="I regard a species to be a group of organisms composed of potential mates and competitors for mates, and representing a temporarily stable state in a biopolitical field of evolution, ecological relations, capitalism, conservation science, and governmental action." target="_blank">one or another of these features.</a>[</span><a href="I regard a species to be a group of organisms composed of potential mates and competitors for mates, and representing a temporarily stable state in a biopolitical field of evolution, ecological relations, capitalism, conservation science, and governmental action."><span>2</span></a>]<span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">A more
recently-appreciated feature of species is that they are also units of
conservation legislation, and thus partly cultural as well. That is why the
number of extant primate species has risen so dramatically in recent decades,
from about 170 in the mid-1980s (Richard 1985) to over 500 today (Strier 2022).
It is not simply that the number of species is being taxonomically inflated,
and is thus <u>less</u> accurate than it used to be (Rosenberger 2012); or that
new species are finally being recognized, and their number is thus <u>more</u>
accurate than it used to be (Groves 2014). In a sense, comparing the number of
living primate species 35 years ago and today is simply unfair, because they
are actually tabulating different things than they used to.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> <o:p></o:p></span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">However entropic the universe of extant
primate species seems to have become, it is disconnected from extinct primate
species, which are of course unaffected by conservation legislation. They
nevertheless have their own issues, and their status is constantly being negotiated
by the community of primate paleontologists. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the closer
we get to ourselves, the more complex things seem to become (Kimbel and Martin,
1993).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</span></span><div style="line-height: 150%;"><span><span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: left; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Hominin species seem just as vexed today as
they did to Simpson back in 1945. His explanation was that the people doing the
paleoanthropology were generally coming from medical anatomy, and simply didn’t
understand taxonomy well enough: “much of the work on primates has been done by
students who had no experience in taxonomy and who were completely incompetent
to enter this field, however competent they may have been in other respects” (Simpson
1945:181). In particular, he noted, “Dart's placing of <i>Australopithecus</i> in a family ‘Homo-simiadae’ (1925) only served to
exemplify the total ignorance of zoology so common among the special students
of these higher primates (although, of course, Dart's work is excellent in his
own field)” (Simpson 1945:188).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: left; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"></span></p><h1 style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; line-height: 150%;">The ontology of
hominin species</span></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: left; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: medium; line-height: 150%;"></span></p><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">The underlying
presupposition is that hominin biological history is composed of zoological
units that are equivalent to species, however species may be defined
biologically. Thus, <i>Homo naledi</i>, <i>Homo longi</i>, <i>Homo heidelbergensis</i>, <i>Homo
luzonensis</i>, etc., either are or are not distinct phylogenetic lineages, and
only a proper taxonomy will resolve and describe it.<br /></span><span style="line-height: 150%;">Suppose, however, that
there are no recoverable biological species in the history of our lineage, perhaps
because much of that history is occupied biologically by a structured
meta-population rather than by distinct species (Pääbo 2015; Scerri et al. 2019).</span><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span><span style="line-height: 150%;">Perhaps because there
is more at stake in identifying our ancestors than there is in identifying the
ancestors of other species. Perhaps because the names themselves represent not
so much biological ancestors, as anthropological ancestors.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">What do I mean by an
anthropological ancestor? I mean the subject of a sacred narrative about our
past, a story intended to explain who we are and how we came to be here. The diverse
manners by which peoples construct relations of (horizontal) kinship and (vertical)
ancestry was among the earliest discoveries of anthropology (Morgan 1871;
Franklin & McKinnon 2001). And while we have talked for decades about looking
at science as a culture (Snow 1959), we are only recently actually getting
around to doing it (Franklin 1995). I want to suggest that the reason that
hominin taxonomy is, and has always been, so vexed, is because its elements are
<u>not</u> biological species. The species that compose our own lineage are
mythic ancestors, which are intended to resemble biological species. But they
are actually elements in a story, the <i>bricolage</i>
(Lévi-Strauss 1962) out of which scientific narratives of our origins (Landau
1985) are constructed.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">In one story, the
actor in a creation story might be Mother Corn Spirit. In another, it might be <i>Homo luzonensis</i>. In still another, it
might be <i>Homo soloensis</i>. And they
might have precisely the same ontological status: as nonexistent naturalistic
entities in human ancestry. As some other kind of entities, namely as
characters in an origin narrative, they may have a very different kind of
existence.<br /></span><span style="line-height: 150%;">The persistent
confusion over hominin taxonomy is a result of misunderstanding the nature and
existence of hominin species. It is not that there is a correct taxonomic interpretation
of the fossils, which will reveal itself under the proper analytic technique.
It’s that (1) this taxonomic practice is different from other ostensibly
zoological taxonomic practices, by virtue of being reflexive; (2) the origin of
this difference lies in the fact that it is naming and describing our own
ancestors, and (3) ancestors are invariably sacred (in the broad
anthropological sense of “special”, rather than in the narrower sense of
“holy,” although the ancestors may of course sometimes be that too; Zerubavel
2012).</span><span style="line-height: 150%;"></span><span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwETjvCKzvWBUEH2Tz1cNPFCOu5COx7D4CB95dCRmb2AnGcPVy2_jHbGGflWFhjWZt9yHLZ3t7gXor_h5ABsFSpvOJ5p-FFtmTaMWno7z5ZoX8ogwyi3WQ9cW-m5B4HQYlZHyLVf0x_zrkp4t6Ik7IsiK8ZWazoF5eFCUoVI6fvlIPC0by0cfVla8Jya4/s1024/a1.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="867" data-original-width="1024" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwETjvCKzvWBUEH2Tz1cNPFCOu5COx7D4CB95dCRmb2AnGcPVy2_jHbGGflWFhjWZt9yHLZ3t7gXor_h5ABsFSpvOJ5p-FFtmTaMWno7z5ZoX8ogwyi3WQ9cW-m5B4HQYlZHyLVf0x_zrkp4t6Ik7IsiK8ZWazoF5eFCUoVI6fvlIPC0by0cfVla8Jya4/w294-h248/a1.jpg" width="294" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Figure 1: A notoriously sacred ancestor, <br /><i>Eoanthropus dawsoni</i>, or Piltdown Man.<br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="line-height: 150%;">Anthropologically
speaking, hominin species are sacred ancestors. In some cases, this is more obvious
than others. The role of <i>Eoanthropus
dawsoni</i> as a sacred British ancestor (Figure 1), which effectively
precluded its exposure as a hoax for decades, is well-known (Weiner 1955).
Another notable example is <i>Sinanthropus
pekinensis</i>. We often retell the story of the loss of the Peking Man fossils
on Pearl Harbor Day. They were being transported for safe keeping to the naval
base in Hawaii to protect them from the Japanese, who were very interested in
taking control of the fossils (Roberts et al. 2021). We never tell a parallel
story in Europe: After all, there were hominin fossils scattered around Europe
in 1941, but they didn’t require special protection from the Germans. Why did
Peking Man require protection from the Japanese? Presumably, because the
fossils were regarded as ancestors of the Chinese (Sautman 2001; Schmalzer 2008),
and thus possessed symbolic power and value to East Asians, which was quite
different from the cultural meanings of European fossils.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">And it wasn’t even <i>Homo erectus</i> at the time, but <i>Sinanthropus pekinensis</i>. That is what
all of these names represent: not elements of biological history, but elements
of stories <u>about</u> biological history. They are attempts to create formal
biological characters and distinctive elements in order to convey a story of
human origins, where there are, in fact, no such formal biological distinctions
in nature. This situation is familiar
from the neontological end of physical anthropology, in the form of two
centuries of misguided racial classification. I am suggesting that the problem
with paleoanthropological taxonomy today is the same problem with racial
taxonomy decades ago: namely, a fundamental confusion of categories, mistaking
units of symbolic culture for units of biological nature.</span><span style="line-height: 150%;"></span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihIKqKChanqQ8eLvDS1KVJdp7r2tfgR1e5LTS7-IU-MqeCPuwk4sZinBUbUPOYWb8BVhXgjLhpqk9Fdrwy6wxvYZGfSpGTvGpJDuLU74f2VDu4e__GeEVMDv1aDP4L_BpsjqXzaeoXBrLjhfPT1Gcuqmr8KWQTnwLuGQNajI95g335z1F3zDTfyTPb3L0/s799/a2.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="516" data-original-width="799" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihIKqKChanqQ8eLvDS1KVJdp7r2tfgR1e5LTS7-IU-MqeCPuwk4sZinBUbUPOYWb8BVhXgjLhpqk9Fdrwy6wxvYZGfSpGTvGpJDuLU74f2VDu4e__GeEVMDv1aDP4L_BpsjqXzaeoXBrLjhfPT1Gcuqmr8KWQTnwLuGQNajI95g335z1F3zDTfyTPb3L0/w291-h188/a2.jpg" width="291" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Fi</span><span style="line-height: 107%;">gure 2: An ancestor (STS-5 or Mrs. Ples) <br />on a postage stamp <br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Some famous fossil
ancestors have appeared on national postage stamps (Figure 2), an unusual
location for scientific data. My point is that studying and narrating one’s own
ancestry is a culturally powerful activity. The elements of a scientific story
of our ancestors are species, and those species are not like other species, by
virtue of being our ancestors (Walker et al., 2021). We are humans studying
human ancestors; the reflexivity is built into the system. In order to break
out of the loop (Huxley 1863:69), we can pretend to be space aliens
(“scientific Saturnians, if you will”), but that is hardly a scientific
solution to any problem.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">We no longer teach the
pattern of extant human variation as being taxonomically structured, because we
have come to realize that the taxonomies of race did not in fact represent what
they purported to: the existence of a fairly small number of fairly discrete
and fairly natural clusters of people. By shifting the ontological status of
race from the biological to the cultural (obviously, sometimes correlated with
a bit of biology), race has become no longer a subject of formal biological
taxonomy. Consequently, whether the International Code of Zoological
Nomenclature recognizes <i>Homo sapiens afer</i>
as a valid subspecies is irrelevant, for it isn’t actually a biological thing.
It is simply one of the many cultural ways that humans form politically salient
groups, and consequently one of the identities that are available for people to
adopt in a particular time and place. </span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Similar reasoning can
be applied to human ancestry. We may begin to regard <i>Homo heidelbergensis</i>, for example, as ontologically equivalent to <i>Homo sapiens asiaticus</i>. That is to say,
as an attempt to apply scientific taxonomic rigor where it is inapplicable, by
naming something and thus willing it into existence. This is the fallacy of
reification, or misplaced concreteness. There is no <i>Homo sapiens asiaticus</i>, although we can certainly discuss the
peoples of East Asia, their gene pools, and their adaptations. We do not
recognize Linnaean subspecies taxa as describing our species at present. Are
the Linnaean species taxa that ostensibly describe our ancestry any realer? Or
are they primarily serving to conceal the actual structure of human prehistoric
biology? It is, after all, at least conceivable that the human lineage was more
like a structured metapopulation than like a clade, all the way down. If that
were true, then gene flow would presumably be occurring, which becomes a
mechanism for the horizontal transmission of derived characters. If derived
characters are transmitted horizontally by gene flow, rather than vertically by
common ancestry, that would render any ostensible phylogenetic analyses
untenable; in which case the goal of establishing a proper taxonomy and
phylogeny for recent hominin fossils (e.g., Bae et al., 2023) would be impossible.</span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: left; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"></span></p><h1 style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium; line-height: 150%;">Conclusion</span></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: left; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; font-size: 12pt;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXo8XvXfhVYzfOq2gUNCtY-DHqwzL8uAVNxBRW7Ri4zmYjZaaSupY61FAt-QmzhHwbBecukWxIAdlAJdhU7pnh7cVHHUmsPYO75w9rBoevZhQX0246RdpPyEdx9RX1dH4lQ4-5j7Hi6j4818QPq20GA9Rr87bR2DwbNmBMMdGEhvE_XdwKz6eA8Ko0W2w/s1600/a3.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1158" height="388" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXo8XvXfhVYzfOq2gUNCtY-DHqwzL8uAVNxBRW7Ri4zmYjZaaSupY61FAt-QmzhHwbBecukWxIAdlAJdhU7pnh7cVHHUmsPYO75w9rBoevZhQX0246RdpPyEdx9RX1dH4lQ4-5j7Hi6j4818QPq20GA9Rr87bR2DwbNmBMMdGEhvE_XdwKz6eA8Ko0W2w/w281-h388/a3.jpg" width="281" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Figure 3: Five official kinds of living people, from 1911 </span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>We talk today about a
species </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Homo sapiens</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">, and even about
a subspecies, </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Homo sapiens sapiens</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">,
without further formal taxonomic structure, although with real and studiable patterns
of biological diversity below that level. But instead of characterizing </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Homo sapiens europaeus</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> as if it were a
naturalistic taxon, today we ask instead why scientists thought it existed as
such for two or three centuries when it actually doesn’t (Figure 3).</span><span style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> Instead of
asking how many and what the human races are, we ask how and why they get made,
and what work they do. We may look similarly at the question in
paleoanthropology of how hominin species get made and manipulated – without
necessarily assuming that hominin species are biological things, because that
is what we think our prehistory is supposed be composed of. It may be that the
quest for a proper and correct taxonomy of hominin species is itself a vain
one.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: left; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"></span></p><div style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The 18th century Linnaean tree of classification does not map perfectly on to the 19th century Darwinian tree of phylogeny. Why not? Because adaptive Darwinian divergence creates paraphyletic Linnaean categories – such as invertebrates (minus vertebrates), fish (minus tetrapods), reptiles (minus birds), monkeys (minus hominoids), and apes (minus humans). Consequently, 21st century cladistic classifications often have weird components, as they attempt to make all recognized taxa monophyletic (Withgott, 2000). Nevertheless, even Linnaeus was not faced with trying to incorporate extinct taxa into his work; he didn’t even believe in extinction. Moreover, Linnaeus did not know about macro-and micro-evolution when he formulated his system, and the distinction has vexed systematists ever since, since speciation is a process and not an event, and thus reproductive isolation (if that is your criterion of species) is often incomplete (Dobzhansky, 1937).</span></div></span></span><div style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><div><span><span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">The recent paper by Meneganzin
and Bernardi (2023) about Neanderthal specieshood underscores the problem. With
imprecise definitions of what “human,” “Neanderthal,” and “species” mean, the
Linnaean system simply breaks down here. They may well be right: Neanderthals
may indeed be a “good” species, assuming that species actually mean something real
and biological in this context. But I would suggest that Neanderthals are neither a “good”
species nor a “bad” species; the imposition of biological species labels where
the species are at best biologically ambiguous is the problem. That would be a
problem anywhere on the “tree” of life; but Neanderthals have the added burden
of sitting on the boundary between the human and the nonhuman, which is about
as singularly symbolically charged as any place you can imagine. </span></span></span></div><div><span><span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Perhaps hominin
species do more harm than good at present, when it comes to understanding the
bio-historical processes and patterns that got us here. Perhaps hominin species
are examples of scientific pareidolia: projecting patterns like faces onto
objects like clouds and tortillas. If you really want them to be there, you can
always find them. The problem lies in convincing everyone else that they are
there.</span></span></span></div></div><span><span><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">
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274:</i> 1870-1874.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 6pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Walker, J., Clinnick, D., and White, M. 2021. "We
are not alone: William King and the naming of the Neanderthals." <i>American
Anthropologist</i> 123 (4): 805-818.
https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13654.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 6pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Weasel, L. 2022. "How Neanderthals became white:
The introgression of race into contemporary human evolutionary genetics." <i>The American Naturalist</i> 200 (1):
129-139. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1086/720130.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 6pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Weiner,
J. S. 1955. <i>The Piltdown Forgery</i>.
London: Oxford University Press.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 6pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Weiner, J. S. 1957. Physical anthropology: An
appraisal. <i>American Scientist</i>, 45:
79-87.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 6pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Withgott, J. 2000. "Is it “So Long, Linnaeus”?" <i>BioScience</i> 50: 646-651.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 6pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Wood,
B., </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">&.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Boyle, E. 2016</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Hominin taxic
diversity: Fact or fantasy? <i>American
Journal of Physical Anthropology, 159</i>(S61): 37-78. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">
</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 6pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Zerubavel,
E. 2012</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> <i>Ancestors and Relatives: Genealogy, Identity, and Community</i>. New
York: Oxford University Press.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></p>
<hr align="left" size="1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;" width="33%" />
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</span></span></div></div><span><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></p>
<hr align="left" size="1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;" width="33%" />
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<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/jmarks/Desktop/Critical%20Hominin%20Theory%20comp.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Although I reject the two premises
that led to the adoption of “hominin” (only naming clades, and privileging our
genetic intimacy with the apes over our ecological difference from them), I use
the term for its hipness.</p><p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/jmarks/Desktop/Critical%20Hominin%20Theory%20comp.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="font-size: 12pt;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 14.2667px;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I regard a species to be a group of organisms composed of potential mates and competitors for mates, and representing a temporarily stable state in a biopolitical field of evolution, ecological relations, capitalism, conservation science, and governmental action.</span></p>
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</div>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-18150932624487543972022-12-05T17:32:00.001-08:002022-12-05T17:44:58.454-08:00Fire, Corn, and CreationismAt the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in May 2018, the Episcopalian Bishop Michael Curry sermonized on the power of love and fire. On the latter subject, <a href="https://youtu.be/OhV0PL49d3Y?t=589" target="_blank">he invoked the writings</a> of the Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.<div><br /><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3_nluXs2JqHsECVnE9jCo8XyMnWxf65pzMVHt3yaaIbNobX85jJm45t6vt3T0qwzUn7RpY6mjZItlmvT9rAXsdqQgJOoqarD4xkhT-mZP5JxMF8-v0bzV4g6HkvF1JGr-hvZpe_C_sweOnEZXecsM48JYMxDsOzc_K2YO91Yqup3ZkYqvnOjzBRlM/s1920/Untitled_gif.gif" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3_nluXs2JqHsECVnE9jCo8XyMnWxf65pzMVHt3yaaIbNobX85jJm45t6vt3T0qwzUn7RpY6mjZItlmvT9rAXsdqQgJOoqarD4xkhT-mZP5JxMF8-v0bzV4g6HkvF1JGr-hvZpe_C_sweOnEZXecsM48JYMxDsOzc_K2YO91Yqup3ZkYqvnOjzBRlM/w319-h180/Untitled_gif.gif" width="319" /></a></div><div><div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[According to Teilhard] the
discovery or invention or harnessing of fire was one of the great scientific
and technological discoveries in all of human history. Fire to a great extent
made human civilization possible. Fire made it possible to cook food and to
provide sanitary ways of eating which reduced the spread of disease in its
time. Fire made it possible to heat warm environments and thereby made human
migration around the world a possibility, even into colder climates. Fire made
it possible, there was no Bronze Age without fire, no Iron Age without fire, no
industrial revolution without fire.</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Fire was indeed a great biocultural
development in human evolution, for the apes have neither sufficient brains nor
sufficient thumbs to create and control it. The direct ancestors of humans were
doing it hundreds of thousands of years ago; we know this because they left us
the remains of their hearths.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The Greeks, who knew nothing of
prehistoric archaeology, at least knew where fire came from. It was given to
people<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>by <a href="https://www.typelish.com/b/origin-stories-of-greek-mythology-1-prometheus-103478" target="_blank">Prometheus</a>, against the wishes
of Zeus, who punished him for the deed in a classically Zeusian way: by
chaining him to a rock and having an eagle peck out his liver on a daily basis.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Ha! Those silly Greeks! But did you
ever wonder what the Bible says about where fire came from?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The answer is easy. Nothing. Fire
was such an obvious part of being human that the Bible doesn’t even have an
origin myth about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was just always
there with people. They didn’t have to discover it, or learn to control it. The
Book of Jubilees, which expands on Genesis and figures prominently among the
Dead Sea Scrolls, has a detail that Genesis doesn’t. After getting expelled
from Eden, Adam and Eve make “an offering of frankincense, galbanum, and myrrh,
and spices,” which implies the control of fire, since God generally doesn’t
take <a href="https://archive.org/details/rawcookedintrodu01levi" target="_blank">raw offerings, only roasted</a> offerings. If we go just with canonical books
of the Bible, the first offerings are those of Cain and Abel.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlF5ZpZVMnxD3tAWadiqICX2GzT5gIQZ_Eb74zXuleVZdiJo_g2I3yBw7SoBQqOFHmaitWcUBjjWtLz8eIdP2HvC5D9MDAKm7Z8_1rlq7_p3a3xrCeW7x7WdHYpl9JkX9HlSBvPxqdP7TwtIU2qq3P-n3Zxy87USBoNcke1OycKQfJyMtOjLyJvd2g/s267/Clip_44a.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="267" data-original-width="247" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlF5ZpZVMnxD3tAWadiqICX2GzT5gIQZ_Eb74zXuleVZdiJo_g2I3yBw7SoBQqOFHmaitWcUBjjWtLz8eIdP2HvC5D9MDAKm7Z8_1rlq7_p3a3xrCeW7x7WdHYpl9JkX9HlSBvPxqdP7TwtIU2qq3P-n3Zxy87USBoNcke1OycKQfJyMtOjLyJvd2g/w185-h200/Clip_44a.jpg" width="185" /></a></div><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>The problem is that there is no
learning curve. Neither Adam and Eve, nor their children, apparently have to
experiment with fire, or are even given fire. One day they are just using it.
Perhaps they simply cadged it from the cherubim brandishing the flaming sword
at the entrance to the Garden of Eden; or perhaps they just ate from the fruit
of the Tree of the Knowledge of How to Make Fire – but if so, the Bible doesn’t
say.<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The anti-intellectualism of the
biblical literalist has tended to be focused on biological narratives, specifically
denying that our species is descended from ape ancestors over last few million
years. But the battleground of archaeology is even more problematic for a 21<sup>st</sup>
century believer in the inerrancy of the Bible, but one rarely confronts it because
of the blinding light of <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/129OAVBOnKwps5KEZrA1WDYHg3Jrq5tJ0/view" target="_blank">Darwin and biology</a>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Consider the economic prehistory of
the human species. The early 1860s saw the publication of two important English
works on the subject: Charles Lyell’s </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><a href="https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.222663/page/n7/mode/2up" target="_blank">The Antiquity of Man</a></i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> (1863) and John Lubbock’s </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><a href="https://archive.org/details/prehistorictimes00lubbrich/page/n7/mode/2up" target="_blank">Pre-Historic Times</a></i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> (1865). Between them, they cemented a
significantly non-biblical story about human ancestry: namely, that the
earliest state of humanity was a long time of living off the land, without
agriculture, as contemporary hunter-gatherers (whom they regarded as “savages”)
did.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Now, of course, the discovery and
spread of food production is one of the most fundamental issues in archaeology.
Humans began to transform animals and plants from wild to domesticated forms,
by controlling their breeding, starting around 12,000 or so years ago, thus
ensuring a stable supply of food. The problem faced by scholars in the mid-19<sup>th</sup>
century is this:<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="background: white; font-family: Papyrus;">The <span class="small-caps"><span style="font-variant-caps: small-caps; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">Lord</span></span> God took the man and
put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. (Genesis 2:15)<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">According to the Bible, there was
never any hunting and gathering. People were farming from day one; or rather,
from Day 6. And the disparity between archaeology and the biblical text created
a problem for anyone wanting to understand contemporary foragers in places like Australia
and South Africa and America in the 19<sup>th</sup> century. If farming was
invented and learned, then contemporary foragers were just people who hadn’t
learned it. If, on the other hand,
farming was there from the beginning, then they were degenerates who had abandoned
that God-given knowledge. So which was it – were living foragers primordial or
devolved? Lyell and Lubbock settled the matter: Hunting-and-gathering was how
our ancestors long ago made a living off the land, and only subsequently was
agriculture eventually developed. The alternative idea is not only
anti-empirical, but also a bit racist.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> Moreover,
agriculture arose in different parts of the world, using different available
wild resources: In one place wheat; in another, rice. And that leads to an important and
incontrovertible conclusion from modern archaeology: God did not make corn.</p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOo6TrjA6Ua11BIRw3uOWiVWUK8OhlgyQ8l8RLH9KA-YqsXNeEhqLqI1wDyYUtXnySkuQ8c7E69jJfZ99XXyLuJRLS95I7Q9gHdKjK2ZVgC09pFYBwHDS8vPUi1dzeB6iof3KZSKZtduO-51DoTx_XTEmxjRUhRBKmmLlK8i1h8TBLwULD9lPIGZ5g/s952/corn2%60.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="298" data-original-width="952" height="63" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOo6TrjA6Ua11BIRw3uOWiVWUK8OhlgyQ8l8RLH9KA-YqsXNeEhqLqI1wDyYUtXnySkuQ8c7E69jJfZ99XXyLuJRLS95I7Q9gHdKjK2ZVgC09pFYBwHDS8vPUi1dzeB6iof3KZSKZtduO-51DoTx_XTEmxjRUhRBKmmLlK8i1h8TBLwULD9lPIGZ5g/w200-h63/corn2%60.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"> People
made corn. In particular, people of Mesoamerica made corn over the course of a
few thousand years, from a grass called teosinte, which is still capable of hybridizing
with corn. We have their learning curve, in the form of dated ancient cobs. The
learning curve for food production is critical, since the Bible directly
implies that there shouldn’t be one. Moreover, all the evidence for early corn
is in Mesoamerica; there was no corn in the Garden of Eden. (And of course,
wherever the King James Version says “corn,” you should read “grain” – because
what the Bible says and what the Bible means are often not the same. And while
you’re at it, where you encounter the word “unicorns” in the King James, you
might want to read “wild oxen”.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> With both the creationists and evolutionists
transfixed on Darwin, perhaps the scholarly community might take a step back
from apes and DNA, and try attacking biblical literalism/inerrancy on a
different battlefield. Make the creationist explain fire and corn. Any
explanation will necessarily be unbiblical, at the very least, in addition to
being inaccurate. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Then you can share a bowl of
popcorn with your new friend.<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div></div></div>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-31460281081444579802022-04-30T14:21:00.000-07:002022-04-30T14:21:06.297-07:00You tell me that it's evolution, well, you know...<p>It has been a frustrating several decades for science since
John Whitcomb and Henry Morris published <i>The
Genesis Flood</i> in 1961, the book that laid the groundwork for modern
biblical literalist creationism. Those authors just flatly denied what science
had appreciated since the early 1800s: that the earth is very old, and has been
populated at different times by diverse creatures that were quite different
from living ones, although frequently resembling them. While there has always
been religiously-based resistance to Darwinism, it was a rare anti-intellectual
who dared venture into “young-earth creationism”. Even William Jennings Bryan,
Clarence Darrow’s antagonist in the famous Scopes trial, volunteered the fact
that he was an “old-earth” creationist, to the surprise of both sides in the
courtroom. </p><div class="separator"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhMN7JWC-1ItwayEc8T2mvSgeUXLj7REXprnuvxgNcgUG9-klGybKEyL7n4ZJt5S1FeuZd3jq1nu6JmijgMsQojO3k8Oel6ZN847uUydmvjFQzNe_joweh_Wz25qd-7sy-uO-4-yHlyHue11oQkY_ls965rusiItaEgwG6j3kl_bnCiHdywmIi53a45" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="463" data-original-width="800" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhMN7JWC-1ItwayEc8T2mvSgeUXLj7REXprnuvxgNcgUG9-klGybKEyL7n4ZJt5S1FeuZd3jq1nu6JmijgMsQojO3k8Oel6ZN847uUydmvjFQzNe_joweh_Wz25qd-7sy-uO-4-yHlyHue11oQkY_ls965rusiItaEgwG6j3kl_bnCiHdywmIi53a45=w321-h187" width="321" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">DARROW:</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> Would you say the earth was only 4,000 years old?<br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">BRYAN:</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> Oh no, I think it is much older than that.<br /><o:p></o:p></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">DARROW:</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> How much?<br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">BRYAN:</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> I couldn't say.<br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">DARROW:</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> Do you say whether the Bible itself says it is older than that?<br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">BRYAN:</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> I don't think the Bible says itself whether it is older or not.<br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">DARROW:</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> Do you think the earth was made in six days?<br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">BRYAN:</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> Not six days of twenty-four hours.<br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">DARROW:</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> Doesn't it say so?<br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">BRYAN:</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> No, sir.</span></span></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">In other words, “young-earth creationism” was too stupid even for William Jennings Bryan in 1925.</p><p></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgpOARfPqvV-68t2SRPMQ05TWa1Rm1MqoQyNlo0NNOUPCDcZGW-Oi3EIMBlWod-atsRAV7JSU24CGzmNEkenvdjrQ68wTqyI87ZVJbVaL2yDHZmUYH-wP1Ux1QSYHJAxGnyW5zcgTJP1Cl2giTiq3oVPqvO4vf-qSfOYYayAZEFK6L1cvH__F1RE428" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img data-original-height="625" data-original-width="396" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgpOARfPqvV-68t2SRPMQ05TWa1Rm1MqoQyNlo0NNOUPCDcZGW-Oi3EIMBlWod-atsRAV7JSU24CGzmNEkenvdjrQ68wTqyI87ZVJbVaL2yDHZmUYH-wP1Ux1QSYHJAxGnyW5zcgTJP1Cl2giTiq3oVPqvO4vf-qSfOYYayAZEFK6L1cvH__F1RE428=w127-h200" width="127" /></a></div><p></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"><i>The Genesis Flood</i>,
on the other hand, began in 1961 with the premise that the Bible relates
literal history; the Bible says that the Earth is merely thousands of years old;
therefore it must be; and therefore all species lived at the same time, not so
long ago. Almost as an afterthought, evolution must be false as a simple
consequence of this biblical revisionism. This begged the question of how
animals actually came to be fossilized, short of having been magically
petrified by the visage of the gorgon Medusa; or how particular fossils came to
be very consistently deposited in similar formations of rock layers, in spite
of all that sloshing of the flood waters. It left you to wonder how the modern
lemurs made it to Madagascar, and nowhere else; or how the koalas made it from
Mount Ararat in the Near East all the way to Australia, without eucalyptus
forests in between.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Most importantly, though, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Genesis Flood</i> enjoined the reader to simply reject lots and
lots of real and scholarly geology in favor of some dopey alt-geology. Where
might such a bizarre suggestion come from? Saying that science has gotten
something wrong is not in itself threatening. After all, when we teach that
science is self-correcting, that is quite specifically what we mean: Science
has gotten something wrong and we are correcting it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The context of modern biblical literalist creationism bears
some examination. Today it is fashionable to regard creationists along with anti-vaccinators,
anthropogenic climate-change deniers, and flat-earthers, as part of a vast
conspiracy of stupid. But there are two problems with this view. First, science
is, and has sometimes famously been, wrong. When American geneticists of the
1920s said that we needed to sterilize the poor and restrict immigrants on
account of their “bad germ-plasm,” it was the anti-science mobilization of the civil
libertarians, social scientists, political conservatives, and religious
Catholics that we can admire in retrospect for standing up to the geneticists.
And second, we don’t know the degree of overlap among the anti-vaccinators,
anthropogenic climate-change deniers, flat-earthers, and creationists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although some of them rationalize their
beliefs with Bible verses, only the creationists are actually religiously
motivated. In fact, <a href="https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/earth/reflections-flat-earth-movement/">even the creationists think the flat-earthers are nuts.</a> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg-k-dUDQwalEVP4ti2gzUfJBnVOO06zId_Qalzpw6mOPIkw9une5bO2812v2PpSuhqxej9ga1gh-JqNM4ZJQSp-Mote9Ny7OUqULiWmIvQxFwQF0dHEbISTvZh6LPpHGB_BfHsnrFLvfHEBo5_WNRDi-TaAUJgq4s-WdY2Hd3k7bkFdY241Ods0U04" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg-k-dUDQwalEVP4ti2gzUfJBnVOO06zId_Qalzpw6mOPIkw9une5bO2812v2PpSuhqxej9ga1gh-JqNM4ZJQSp-Mote9Ny7OUqULiWmIvQxFwQF0dHEbISTvZh6LPpHGB_BfHsnrFLvfHEBo5_WNRDi-TaAUJgq4s-WdY2Hd3k7bkFdY241Ods0U04" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St. Augustine, a Hippo</td></tr></tbody></table>In other words, creationism represents a special kind of
anti-science, rooted in a particular hermeneutic treatment of the Bible: selective
biblical literalism. It’s selective because, as even St. Augustine of Hippo recognized,
when you read that Adam and Eve’s “eyes were opened” after eating the fruit in
the Garden of Eden, you simply can’t imagine that they had been walking around
the Garden with their eyes closed, bumping into things. It has got to be a
figure of speech, not to be taken literally.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There is a different context for looking at creationism,
however. Scarcely a decade before <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Genesis
Flood</i>, the scientific world was scandalized by a Bible-based book of a
different sort. It was called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Worlds in
Collision</i>, written by psychoanalyst named Immanuel Velikovsky.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhWSLgbE0MBp2u4zrlv5V5ac1LcxgQXZw3kwPx_nNOrpkewegVco7GE2jpOpMBpJfBhxjS4R1Sp7VgCOzgCs9Dpg40HjTz0vy-xfysI5stwXoTM62gRvrACo1uo7yCdX8gQypZlsS-9VZsKXmibxpoRK35sKqk2Gyu7UZSvsAfnF6kAOHY4oJlLzkqx" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="191" data-original-width="118" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhWSLgbE0MBp2u4zrlv5V5ac1LcxgQXZw3kwPx_nNOrpkewegVco7GE2jpOpMBpJfBhxjS4R1Sp7VgCOzgCs9Dpg40HjTz0vy-xfysI5stwXoTM62gRvrACo1uo7yCdX8gQypZlsS-9VZsKXmibxpoRK35sKqk2Gyu7UZSvsAfnF6kAOHY4oJlLzkqx" width="148" /></a></div>Velikovsky was not a literalist, nor was he concerned with
the book of Genesis. His interest lay in Exodus, but his biblical focus was
rooted in an equally ridiculous premise: Since all myths and legends are
ultimately based upon real events (rather than just being stories, like Cosette
and the Thenardiers, or Oliver Twist and Fagin, or Luke Skywalker and the Death
Star) then <span style="color: #660000;"><b>what actual circumstances might have been the inspiration for the
miracle-infused biblical Exodus from Egypt</b></span>? In particular, what might have started
things off by turning the Nile to blood, Plague Number One of Ten – or at least to something that Bronze
Age yokels might have mistaken for blood? The subsequent plagues of Egypt would
also receive naturalistic explanations too – frogs making their own amphibious
exodus from the now-toxic river, then hosting insect vermin as disease made its
way up the food chain, eventually culminating in mass deaths – hazily misremembered
and misrecorded as merely the Egyptian first-born.<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But what started it off, turning the Nile river to blood?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Velikovsky had an answer, and peppered his biblical exegesis
as well with tendentious renderings of ethnographic and archaeological texts.
What had turned the Nile red and undrinkable was <b><span style="color: red;">red matter that had fallen
into the Nile from the surface of the planet Venus</span></b>. How did it get there? The
planet Venus had just come into existence, having been expelled as a comet from
the Great Red Spot of Jupiter; and was shooting through the solar system,
eventually banging into Mars before both planets settled into their separate
orbits just a few thousand years ago. It was an ingenious theory, with only one
obstacle in its way: <span style="color: #38761d;"><b>astronomy</b></span>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So
Velikovsky invented his own alt-astronomy and settled into the #1 slot of the
New York Times best-seller list in the Spring of 1950.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjH7_lRq6jIjQN8h-GTXT7rrEyV268FIOLjWgavbhh4wR3uyqN6pCATlWo7J2_OE9qRt-hywTdlaB5SNNV_WazhimwrxZBdh34DwXji6ax7oocRvZEFRw6QGZ5WTFENVXRpVphaKn72zuyJ83Yb_LtVmkrepKoMjk2yipdlpzXwwW4XFRNvSe6eFjce" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="766" data-original-width="657" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjH7_lRq6jIjQN8h-GTXT7rrEyV268FIOLjWgavbhh4wR3uyqN6pCATlWo7J2_OE9qRt-hywTdlaB5SNNV_WazhimwrxZBdh34DwXji6ax7oocRvZEFRw6QGZ5WTFENVXRpVphaKn72zuyJ83Yb_LtVmkrepKoMjk2yipdlpzXwwW4XFRNvSe6eFjce=w275-h320" width="275" /></a></div>Needless to say, astronomers did not take this at all well. Sadly,
though, they did a spectacularly poor job of engaging with Velikovsky’s work,
beginning with threatening its publisher. Their fulminations were properly
dismissive, necessarily technical, sometimes <i>ad hominem</i>, and occasionally
incoherent. Eventually, though, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Worlds in
Collision</i> faded from view, and today you can generally only find Velikovsky’s
ideas by searching for them on the <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=worlds+in+collision">internet</a>. Nevertheless, both <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Worlds in Collision</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Genesis Flood</i> prominently cast
themselves against science, and in favor of their particular interpretations of
the Bible. One bluntly opposed astronomy, the other opposed <b><span style="color: #38761d;">geology</span></b>. Yet the
biblical text figures prominently in both, as misunderstood “history” in the
colliding planets narrative, and as properly-understood “history” in
creationist narratives.<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We (in the human evolution community) have engaged most commonly with biblical literalist
creationism as a false theory of biology, or as an archaic remnant of older
modes of thought; but it is reactionary, not primitive, and treating it as a
false story simply replicates the astronomers’ frustrating engagement with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Worlds in Collision</i>. It will always
prove unsuccessful to engage with creationism as “our story is true and yours
is false” – since at very least, many aspects of any story of human evolution
are debatable or downright inaccurate. Indeed, both evolutionist and
creationist narratives of human origins have at times freely incorporated
racist elements.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But Velikovsky had fashioned a mold: a Bible-validating
narrative, and the replacement of real science with his own. And he largely
succeeded in focusing the resulting debate on the nature of the story he had to
tell – science had theirs, and Velikovsky had his. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjVgUEDXvWYD9xdoPLeKIHxElIIMyKg-gx98gFaR0PuX3egwKqhA2yccbR-wxKWZyEN6d9e9kQBlXt0YEBEVhbiDbWYiLsILc1AgtiVDMH14GKtD_0zj2L8WHWR-diEmDo4i8Owl-vuWHYc3rInVg0NpF1wRXALbNFqTIJ0Uz1G-6lD2JR21oeg7OqZ" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="339" data-original-width="196" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjVgUEDXvWYD9xdoPLeKIHxElIIMyKg-gx98gFaR0PuX3egwKqhA2yccbR-wxKWZyEN6d9e9kQBlXt0YEBEVhbiDbWYiLsILc1AgtiVDMH14GKtD_0zj2L8WHWR-diEmDo4i8Owl-vuWHYc3rInVg0NpF1wRXALbNFqTIJ0Uz1G-6lD2JR21oeg7OqZ" width="139" /></a></div>That was 1950. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Genesis Flood</i> was 1961. And a decade after that, Erich von Däniken
published his best-seller, called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chariots
of the Gods?</i> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once again, the Bible
figured prominently, but this time with God’s presence as mis-remembered and
mis-reported visitations by ancient astronauts. And the only thing standing in
its way was <span style="color: #38761d;"><b>archaeology</b></span>. <o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Yet while the colliding worlds astronomy scenario has all
but vanished, young-earth creationism and the ancient astronauts are very much
still with us. Creationism’s biology scenario is touted in evangelical churches across
America, and the ancient astronauts archaeology scenario is touted on The
History Channel. Approximately as any people believe it as believe creationism,
and we have no idea how much those 40% or so of Americans overlap with one
another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It’s not simply the rejection of science, but the arrogant construction
of a different science, based in some measure on an idiosyncratic
interpretation of the Bible. That is what connects the colliding worlds,
young-earth creationists, and ancient aliens. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And one thing seems clear: arguing over whose
story is right is not a successful strategy. “You” may believe that the planets
have been more-or-less as they presently are for billions of years, but “we”
believe that Venus is only 3500 years old. And why are you trying to disabuse
us of that? Don’t we have a right to believe it? Come to think of it, aren’t you just being an
intolerant archaic throwback to colonialist hegemonic practice?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">The joint possession of secret knowledge is, after all, a pretty obvious form of social bond. People who believe the Jets are going to the Super Bowl have something to agree on and to hope for together, regardless of any basis it might have in reality.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Would it give you pleasure to try and convince them otherwise? To me, that's a bit sadistic. I agree rather with H. L. Mencken, who said something like: Everyone is entitled to the belief that their spouse is attractive and their children are smart. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Talking people out of their delusions can be fun, don't get me wrong. I just don't think it should be the goal of science education. It's one thing to teach what scientists believe, and quite another to insist that everyone believe as you do. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Instead, we should be focusing on how scientific stories get
made, and why their odd beliefs aren’t science. How do we explain appropriate
scholarly practice to those who have never experienced it? That's the pedagogical challenge. But this is the
complementary intellectual domain of the humanities: turning
the conversation away from the content of the science itself, and towards the
nature of scientific epistemologies. That is to say, what makes something scientific knowledge as opposed to unscientific knowledge.</p><p class="MsoNormal">And sure, if you want to go for broke, why, in most contexts, scientific knowledge is more reliable than unscientific knowledge.</p><p class="MsoNormal">But this will necessarily be a
humanistic conversation, and it may not be one that scientists are comfortable
with, but it is probably a conversation that has a better chance of making a
difference than just insisting that they’re wrong and you’re right.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Or, to put it in the non-scientific domain of morality: Don't be an asshole.</p>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-89705985587184780212022-04-13T05:44:00.001-07:002022-04-13T12:39:01.755-07:00Guest post: Carleton Coon made me do it, by Barry Bogin<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal">I loved Jonathan Marks’s Legacy Review of <i>The Origin of
Races</i> <!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-begin;
mso-field-lock:yes'></span>ADDIN CSL_CITATION
{"citationItems":[{"id":"ITEM-1","itemData":{"DOI":"10.1002/ajpa.24482","ISSN":"2692-7691","author":[{"dropping-particle":"","family":"Marks","given":"Jonathan","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""}],"container-title":"American
Journal of Biological
Anthropology","id":"ITEM-1","issued":{"date-parts":[["2022","2","2"]]},"page":"1-2","title":"Legacy
review: Carleton S. Coon (1962) The origin of races . New York:
Knopf","type":"article-journal"},"uris":["http://www.mendeley.com/documents/?uuid=bb1a6582-8210-4d3a-a3bd-cd0685189774"]}],"mendeley":{"formattedCitation":"(Marks,
2022)","plainTextFormattedCitation":"(Marks,
2022)","previouslyFormattedCitation":"(Marks,
2022)"},"properties":{"noteIndex":0},"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"}<span
style='mso-element:field-separator'></span><![endif]--><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Marks, 2022)</span><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]-->. The
review is good history with an important lesson that academics must take
responsibility for their research in terms of the way we interpret our findings
and the way that others use or misuse our work. Marks is spot-on when he says
that Coon’s writings on ‘race’ were, “…quite simply evil…” and that, “Scientists
are not trained to grapple with evil.” We need such training, as many evils such
as racism, sexism, and ethnic cleansing are ever-present.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal">Marks's Legacy Review dredged-up memories of how I became an
anthropologist and this is the theme of this letter. Perhaps my story will
resonate with others. My start toward anthropology had little to do with
combating evil, but did involve reading another book co-authored by Carleton
Coon, <i>Anthropology A to Z</i> <!--[if supportFields]><span
style='mso-element:field-begin;mso-field-lock:yes'></span>ADDIN CSL_CITATION
{"citationItems":[{"id":"ITEM-1","itemData":{"author":[{"dropping-particle":"","family":"Coon","given":"Carlton
S","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""},{"dropping-particle":"","family":"Hunt","given":"E.E.","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""}],"id":"ITEM-1","issued":{"date-parts":[["1963"]]},"publisher":"Grosset
& Dunlap","publisher-place":"New York,
NY","title":"Anthropology A to
Z","type":"book"},"uris":["http://www.mendeley.com/documents/?uuid=7c3b4cc9-897b-48fd-afb8-e12d1fa9cb7c"]}],"mendeley":{"formattedCitation":"(Coon
& Hunt, 1963)","plainTextFormattedCitation":"(Coon
& Hunt, 1963)","previouslyFormattedCitation":"(Coon
& Hunt,
1963)"},"properties":{"noteIndex":0},"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"}<span
style='mso-element:field-separator'></span><![endif]--><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Coon & Hunt, 1963)</span><!--[if supportFields]><span
style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]-->. More about this book in a
moment but first I want to state that like Marks, I was never taught <i>The
Origin of Races</i>. I do not recall that Coon was even mentioned in any of my
anthropology courses. I learned about <i>‘Races’</i> sometime after earning my
Ph.D. in 1977 and purchased a used copy. The perverse nature of the book’s argument
was, I thought, a fascinating footnote in the history of anthropology. When
relevant, I explained to my students Coon’s proposals and classroom discussion
often became animated with incredulity! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>About
10 years ago, I gave away <i>‘Races’</i> and my few other books that tried to
make ‘race’ a serious anthropological topic (e.g., Garn, SM 1960 <i>Readings on
Race</i>; Mead M, Dobzhansky T, Tobach E, Light RE 1968 <i>Science and the
Concept of Race</i>). The pseudo-scientific concept of ‘race’ had long since become
an embarrassment to anthropology and, besides, I needed the shelf space for
more useful books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal">I purchased a new, paperback edition of <i>Anthropology A to
Z</i> in in 1969, near the end of my junior year of university in Philadelphia.
At that time I was miserable. I was the third member of my immediate family to
attend a university. Previously two aunts had completed courses in elementary
education and physical therapy. My parents expected me to pursue a similarly
applied vocation, especially medicine. Being mostly naïve, I thought that a
major in biology was the only route to success in medicine. The biology of the
late 1960s was strongly molecular and my instructors lectured toward genetics.
I appreciated the marvels of the genome, but whole organisms held more
interest. One lecturer was RL Miller, a developmental biologist who was the
first to discover fertilization by sperm chemotaxis in an animal <!--[if supportFields]><span
style='mso-element:field-begin;mso-field-lock:yes'></span>ADDIN CSL_CITATION
{"citationItems":[{"id":"ITEM-1","itemData":{"DOI":"10.1002/jez.1401620104","ISSN":"0022-104X","abstract":"The
pre-fertilization behavior of the sperm of the thecate hydroids Campanularia
flexuosa and Campanularia calceolifera has been observed and recorded by means
of dark-field cinephotomicrography. The sperm of both species activate and
aggregate homotypically around the aperture of the female gonangium. Plots of
the paths of sperm approaching the aperture show that the aggregations are the
result of directed turning movements and not of so-called trap-actions or an
increased random turning of the spermatozoa. An aperture-associated tissue of
ectoderm origin has been found to produce the attractive substances. Active sea
water and alcohol extracts of female gonangia of C. calceolifera have been
prepared. The substance affects sperm in the same ways as the material released
by the female gonangium. The active material is heat stable, non-volatile,
dialyzable, polar, and appears to be a single molecular species of less than
5,000 mw. Injection of these extracts into sperm suspensions by means of a
micropipette produces activation and aggregation of only the sperm of C.
calceolifera about the pipette tip. If agar impregnated with the chemotactant
is used as a source, the sperm are seen to orient with considerable accuracy.
Extraction of C. flexuosa female gonangia has not yielded active extracts.
These results demonstrate that chemotaxis does occur during fertilization in an
animal. The mechanism of the reaction remains to be
determined.","author":[{"dropping-particle":"","family":"Miller","given":"Richard
L.","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""}],"container-title":"Journal
of Experimental Zoology","id":"ITEM-1","issue":"1","issued":{"date-parts":[["1966","6"]]},"page":"23-44","title":"Chemotaxis
during fertilization in the hydroid
Campanularia","type":"article-journal","volume":"162"},"uris":["http://www.mendeley.com/documents/?uuid=b5c9e5b9-8bc2-4e5e-b5fc-9e773d60d2d6"]}],"mendeley":{"formattedCitation":"(Miller,
1966)","plainTextFormattedCitation":"(Miller,
1966)","previouslyFormattedCitation":"(Miller,
1966)"},"properties":{"noteIndex":0},"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"}<span
style='mso-element:field-separator'></span><![endif]--><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Miller, 1966)</span><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]-->.
Human sperm chemotaxis toward ova was shown 25 years later <!--[if supportFields]><span
style='mso-element:field-begin;mso-field-lock:yes'></span>ADDIN CSL_CITATION
{"citationItems":[{"id":"ITEM-1","itemData":{"DOI":"10.1073/pnas.88.7.2840","ISSN":"0027-8424","PMID":"2011591","abstract":"Spermatozoa
normally encounter the egg at the fertilization site (in the Fallopian tube)
within 24 hr after ovulation. A considerable fraction of the spermatozoa
ejaculated into the female reproductive tract of mammals remains motionless in
storage sites until ovulation, when the spermatozoa resume maximal motility and
reach the fertilization site within minutes. The nature of the signal for sperm
movement is not known, but one possible mechanism is attraction of spermatozoa
to a factor(s) released from the egg. We have obtained evidence in favor of
such a possibility by showing that human spermatozoa accumulate in follicular
fluid in vitro. This accumulation into follicular fluid was higher by 30-260%
than that observed with buffer alone and was highly significant (P less than
10(-8)). Not all of the follicular fluids caused sperm accumulation; however,
there was a remarkably strong correlation (P less than 0.0001) between the
ability of follicular fluid from a particular follicle to cause sperm
accumulation and the ability of the egg, obtained from the same follicle, to be
fertilized. These findings suggest that attraction may be a key event in the
fertilization process and may give an insight into the mechanism underlying
early egg-sperm
communication.","author":[{"dropping-particle":"","family":"Ralt","given":"D","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""},{"dropping-particle":"","family":"Goldenberg","given":"M","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""},{"dropping-particle":"","family":"Fetterolf","given":"P","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""},{"dropping-particle":"","family":"Thompson","given":"D","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""},{"dropping-particle":"","family":"Dor","given":"J","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""},{"dropping-particle":"","family":"Mashiach","given":"S","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""},{"dropping-particle":"","family":"Garbers","given":"D
L","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""},{"dropping-particle":"","family":"Eisenbach","given":"M","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""}],"container-title":"Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America","id":"ITEM-1","issue":"7","issued":{"date-parts":[["1991","4","1"]]},"page":"2840-4","title":"Sperm
attraction to a follicular factor(s) correlates with human egg
fertilizability.","type":"article-journal","volume":"88"},"uris":["http://www.mendeley.com/documents/?uuid=8ce7629e-4e06-41d3-b344-5b0421226f25"]}],"mendeley":{"formattedCitation":"(Ralt
et al., 1991)","plainTextFormattedCitation":"(Ralt et al.,
1991)","previouslyFormattedCitation":"(Ralt et al.,
1991)"},"properties":{"noteIndex":0},"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"}<span
style='mso-element:field-separator'></span><![endif]--><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Ralt et al., 1991)</span><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:
field-end'></span><![endif]-->. In my junior year (1969) I enrolled in Prof.
Miller’s marine biology course, did well, and was able to secure a job in
Miller’s lab. My work was to tie to glass slides male and female hydrozoans of
the genus <i>Campanularia</i>, then feed and care for them until needed for
further experiments. Later, I was trained analyze film images recorded by means
of dark-field cinephotomicrography and trace the paths that spermatozoa from
male animals followed toward the female gonangium (the reproductive members of
the hydrozoan colony). Doing so allowed me to observe fertilization and the
formation of new hydroids. This job stimulated my interest in growth and
development. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwQvm1L786dtT8Qx8YGaP_EYPOZKPub8640IqsrM3ySffGhZTpDqe7sKquFyEAxsCv8x-qOZTbrEp3NgfBasTeG-83xbag7MYIIyRubA82mtLI-EI97kh3-0xIpH3NOxvaMx_DBKTRu3MrI53bOnsvrhTxIGtFScjWpEoROzR5KCCbdBLBkqCvneag/s2455/coon%20az.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2455" data-original-width="1635" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwQvm1L786dtT8Qx8YGaP_EYPOZKPub8640IqsrM3ySffGhZTpDqe7sKquFyEAxsCv8x-qOZTbrEp3NgfBasTeG-83xbag7MYIIyRubA82mtLI-EI97kh3-0xIpH3NOxvaMx_DBKTRu3MrI53bOnsvrhTxIGtFScjWpEoROzR5KCCbdBLBkqCvneag/w213-h320/coon%20az.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">In other third year courses I was failing. At the end of the
semester the university placed me on the ‘Dean’s List’, the one for students
threatened with dismissal. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A few weeks
into the second semester I had physical-emotional meltdown. I missed three
weeks of classes, the lab work and two other jobs I had at that time, and all
social life. A physician prescribed a barbiturate tablet, to which I developed a
nasty allergic reaction, but it did help to regulate my emotions. When I
returned to the university I went to the bookstore and discovered <i>Anthropology
A to Z. </i>The text is mostly about ‘race’ and ‘constitution’ but there are
sections on growth and development, paleoanthropology, primates, demography,
and social anthropology. The material on fossil and non-human primates grabbed
my attention. I bought the book ($2.95) and decided to change my major to
anthropology. I took the three required introductory classes (Social,
Biological, Archeology) in the summer term between my junior and senior years.
My performance went from failing to As and Bs. I found my place and my profession.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>Anthropology A to Z</i> was translated, with new material
added, from the original German book <i>Anthropologie. Das Fischer Lexikon</i> <!--[if supportFields]><span
style='mso-element:field-begin;mso-field-lock:yes'></span>ADDIN CSL_CITATION {"citationItems":[{"id":"ITEM-1","itemData":{"author":[{"dropping-particle":"","family":"Heberer","given":"Gerhard","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""},{"dropping-particle":"","family":"Kurth","given":"Gottfried","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""},{"dropping-particle":"","family":"Schwidetzky-Roesing","given":"Ilse","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""}],"id":"ITEM-1","issued":{"date-parts":[["1959"]]},"publisher":"Fischer
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& Schwidetzky-Roesing, 1959)"},"properties":{"noteIndex":0},"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"}<span
style='mso-element:field-separator'></span><![endif]--><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Heberer, Kurth, & Schwidetzky-Roesing, 1959)</span><!--[if supportFields]><span
style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]-->. The German book was designed
as single-volume encyclopedia (the meaning of the German word ‘<i>lexicon</i>’).
There is an ‘A Z’ artistic design on the cover, but not used in the official
title. The authors were Gerhard Heberer, Gottfried Kurth, and Ilse
Schwidetzky-Roesing. Heberer was a zoologist and anthropologist who was a
member of the Nazi Party SS and was a high ranking "racial researcher
" for the SS ‘German Ancestral Heritage (<i>Ahnenerbe</i>) Research
Association’. Heberer was interned after the war because of his SS membership,
but was declared ‘reformed’<a href="file:///C:/Users/jmarks/Downloads/Carlton%20Coon%20made%20me%20do%20it%20(1).docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> in 1947. From 1949 to 1970
he was director of an "anthropological research center" at the
Georg-August University in Gottingen. Gottfried Kurth was an anthropologist who
studied the ‘races’ of German villages and paleoanthropology. His publications
contributed to Nazi ideology on ‘racial hygiene’ and education. Years later, Kurth
edited a festschrift to the professional life of Heberer, which was given a
mostly positive review by C. Loring Brace <!--[if supportFields]><span
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style='mso-element:field-separator'></span><![endif]--><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Brace, 1963)</span><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]-->.
Ilse Schwidetzky-Roesing was an anthropologist who in the 1930s was assistant
to Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt, one of the leading ‘race theorists’ of the
Third Reich. After the war she worked at Mainz University from 1946, eventually
succeeding Eickstedt as Mainz Professor of Anthropology in 1961 until her
retirement in 1975. I found no information that either Kurth or Schwidetzky-Roesing
were interned or ‘reformed’. Instead, both seemed to have assumed traditional
academic lives after the war and Schwidetzky-Roesing was even an honored member
of several European academic societies and in 1974 the Vice President of the International
Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br />Both in its original German and in English translation, <i>Anthropology
A to Z</i> is a neo-Nazi racist diatribe. In English it includes the racist
ideology of Carleton Coon that is exemplified by Marks’ Legacy Review. On page
129, for example, Coon and Hunt write, “The hypothesis to be presented here was
suggested by Franz Weidenreich in 1947, and has been much elaborated since by
C. S. Coon in <i>The Origin of Races</i> (1962).” A few sentences later, Coon and Hunt succinctly
precis the hypothesis by writing that Coon’s elaborations boil down to, “…some
racial differences seen today can be traced all the way back to <i>Homo erectus</i>.”
Much of the text of <i>Anthropology A to Z</i>, both before and after page 129 is
a summary of material first published in <i>The Origin of Races</i> (<i>A to Z</i>
is 277 pages long). The work of Franz Boas, towards whom Coon was personally
and professionally antithetical <!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:
field-begin;mso-field-lock:yes'></span>ADDIN CSL_CITATION
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divided into five races before it had evolved into Homo sapiens and that the
races evolved into sapiens at different times. Coon's thesis was used by
segregationists in the United States as proof that African Americans were
“junior” to white Americans and hence unfit for full participation in American
society. The paper examines the interactions among Coon, segregationist
Carleton Putnam, geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, and anthropologist Sherwood
Washburn. The paper concludes that Coon actively aided the segregationist cause
in violation of his own standards for scientific objectivity. This is a preview
of s","author":[{"dropping-particle":"","family":"Jackson","given":"J.P","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""}],"container-title":"Journal
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style='mso-element:field-separator'></span><![endif]-->(Jackson, 2001)<!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:
field-end'></span><![endif]-->, is mentioned one time in <i>Anthropology A to Z</i>,
with a sentence on Boas’ studies of the offspring of immigrants. There is no
citation of that work, but Coon and Hunt dismiss the importance of Boas’
research and explain it away by stating that the plasticity of phenotypes Boas
reported was merely due to selective migration. It is an understatement to say
that it is ironic that Coon and Hunt’s <i>Anthropology A to Z</i> helped me
become an anthropologist who dedicated his professional work to Boasian-style research
and ideology. In the latest edition of my book <i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ1Pwbn8qvbLDCMWcg8oSTgUGQcyles5h7DEyZ_vvmzgoHXrnN3ej3wVmlOQ47WdGLbjzSKXbp6fooCoxK1NEDn9SULdrYZ9xsbGvOcQZZoAAeI9l3cpJN5GER4lAsfdlb5xtxU7lvgxJSAjYFDky5klmUkNMcSnJ8wKw7q-glUzVMNZER6iJjfBcJ/s258/bogin%202021.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="258" data-original-width="180" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ1Pwbn8qvbLDCMWcg8oSTgUGQcyles5h7DEyZ_vvmzgoHXrnN3ej3wVmlOQ47WdGLbjzSKXbp6fooCoxK1NEDn9SULdrYZ9xsbGvOcQZZoAAeI9l3cpJN5GER4lAsfdlb5xtxU7lvgxJSAjYFDky5klmUkNMcSnJ8wKw7q-glUzVMNZER6iJjfBcJ/s1600/bogin%202021.jpg" width="180" /></a></i></div><i>Patterns of Human Growth</i> <!--[if supportFields]><span
style='mso-element:field-begin;mso-field-lock:yes'></span>ADDIN CSL_CITATION
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University
Press","publisher-place":"Cambridge","title":"Patterns
of Human
Growth","type":"book"},"uris":["http://www.mendeley.com/documents/?uuid=0a23caab-8cb3-4ccc-a1b4-59d329f2575f"]}],"mendeley":{"formattedCitation":"(Bogin,
2021)","plainTextFormattedCitation":"(Bogin,
2021)","previouslyFormattedCitation":"(Bogin,
2020)"},"properties":{"noteIndex":0},"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"}<span
style='mso-element:field-separator'></span><![endif]-->(Bogin, 2021)<!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]-->,
I devote a paragraph to Coon’s hypothesis and show that his ‘evidence’ from
anthropometric studies was incorrect. More importantly, I devote many pages to
explaining and critiquing the on-going research by contemporary genetic
determinists from biology, psychology, bioinformatics, medicine, and other
fields who promote claims of biological, cognitive, and emotional differences
between ‘races’, ethnic groups, and socioeconomic classes. <o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">There is one more anecdote to relate about how I came to
read <i>Anthropology A to Z</i>. This story begins with Coon’s television
career and ends with a possibly racist high school guidance counsellor. I grew-up in
Philadelphia. About the time when I was 10 years old (1960ish), it was
difficult for me to get out of bed on school days, but I was up and running by 6
AM on Saturday. I ate some breakfast in front of the TV and often watched a repeat
showing of <i>What In The World</i> (<i>WITW</i>), which was a co-production of
the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia TV station WCAU. The <a href="https://www.penn.museum/collections/videos/video/1082" target="_blank">Penn Museum website</a>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">provides the basic history of <i>WITW</i><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext" style="background: white;">. Watch the video at that site, with its d</span></span><span style="background: white; color: #202122;">ry ice ‘smoke’, mysterious flute music </span><span style="background: white; color: #212529;">excerpts from Stravinsky’s <i>The Rite
of Spring</i>, and</span><span style="background: white; color: #202122;"> images
of worlds in space,</span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext" style="background: white;"> and you will
understand</span></span><span style="background: white; color: #202122;"> the
show’s impact on my 10-year-old mind! <i>WITW</i> won the Peabody Award for
television in 1951, was shown by 89 affiliates of the CBS television network, and
ran for 16 years (1950-1966). This is incredible for show that was based on a
panel of academic ‘egg-heads’ trying to guess the identity of an archeological
object held by the University’s </span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext" style="background: white;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Pennsylvania_Museum_of_Archaeology_and_Anthropology" title="University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology"><span color="windowtext" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology</span></a>. The host of the show was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Froelich_Rainey" title="Froelich Rainey"><span color="windowtext" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Froelich
Rainey</span></a></span></span></span><span style="background: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">,
director of the Museum. One regular panelist was Carleton Coon, who was
then Curator of Ethnology at the Museum. I marveled at the wisdom of Coon and
the other tweed-jacketed, pipe-smoking professors as they debated the symbolism,
beauty, and use of the mysterious object. Today, I suspect that the objects
were selected by Rainey and Coon and that Coon may have prepared some text for
the other panelists to help make the show more entertaining.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #202122;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f3f3f3; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(243, 243, 243); color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f3f3f3; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(243, 243, 243); color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwJICWpq0Kzcl7nvc4lNf43fXWi_JorrD00HHIo2R25oRuKhxLyGCfpNS_BjybdTQNgtS8c2GNU9jLSrDBgVA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></div><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f3f3f3; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(243, 243, 243); color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><br />The show must
have made a lasting impression because when it came time for me to think of
life after high school, I went to my guidance counsellor to ask about a career
as an archeologist. I still recall that she looked at me with a condescending
expression and said, “There is only one place you can study archeology – the
University of Pennsylvania, and you cannot get in there.” I guess that <i>WITW</i> made a lasting
impression on her as well! As a 16-year-old I interpreted her words to mean
that I was too stupid to successfully apply to the Ivy League University of
Pennsylvania. I did attend Temple University, a public, state-supported university
in Philadelphia. In the 1990s I had occasion to reminisce about my high school
counselor’s words and realized that what she really meant was that Penn would
likely reject me because of its desire to be international and cosmopolitan. Many
elite universities had admission quotas for local residents, so that the
student body would be geographically diverse. There were also quotas for ethnic
and religious ‘diversity’ – meaning lack thereof in most cases – and my counselor
may have thought that I was too Jewish for that quota. In fact, Penn never had
a ‘Jewish quota’ and was the Ivy League school with the highest percentage of
Jewish students. Was my guidance counselor an anti-Semite? Was she trying to
promote her favorite students for admission to Penn? I will never know. But the impact of <i>WITW</i>
stayed with me and when I saw <i>Anthropology A to Z</i> in the Temple
University bookstore the name Carleton Coon must have stirred something that
lead to my life-long excitement for biological anthropology and all it has to
offer.<o:p></o:p></span><p></p><span style="font-size: large;">Barry Bogin</span><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://carta.anthropogeny.org/users/barry-bogin" target="_blank">Member, UCSD/Salk Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA), USA</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ssehs/staff/barry-bogin/" target="_blank">Professor Emeritus of Biological Anthropology, Loughborough University</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://lsa.umich.edu/ncid/people/diversity-scholars-directory/barry-bogin.html" target="_blank">Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, University of Michigan-Dearborn, USA, Member Diversity Scholars Network</a></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>References</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 24pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -24pt;">Bogin, B. (2021). <i>Patterns of Human Growth</i> (3rd
ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108379977</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 24pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -24pt;">Brace, C. L. (1963). Review of <i>Evolution und
hominisation:Evolution and hominisation</i>. Edited by Gottfried Kurth. 228
pp.; 43 figures; 3 tables. Published by Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stuttgart,
Germany. D.M. 45,50. <i>American Journal of Physical Anthropology</i>, <i>21</i>(1),
87–91. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.1330210117</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 24pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -24pt;">Coon, C. S., & Hunt, E. E. (1963). <i>Anthropology
A to Z</i>. New York, NY: Grosset & Dunlap.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 24pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -24pt;">Heberer, G., Kurth, G., & Schwidetzky-Roesing, I.
(1959). <i>Anthropologie. Das Fischer Lexikon.</i> Frankfurt-Main: Fischer
Bücherei, K.G.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 24pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -24pt;">Jackson, J. . (2001). "In Ways Unacademical”: The
Reception of Carleton S. Coon’s The Origin of Races. <i>Journal of the History
of Biology</i>, <i>34</i>, 247–285. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010366015968</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 24pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -24pt;">Marks, J. (2022). Legacy review: Carleton S. Coon
(1962) The origin of races . New York: Knopf. <i>American Journal of Biological
Anthropology</i>, 178:193–195 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.24482</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 24pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -24pt;">Miller, R. L. (1966). Chemotaxis during fertilization
in the hydroid Campanularia. <i>Journal of Experimental Zoology</i>, <i>162</i>(1),
23–44. https://doi.org/10.1002/jez.1401620104</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 24pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -24pt;"><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">Ralt, D., Goldenberg, M., Fetterolf, P., Thompson, D.,
Dor, J., Mashiach, S., … Eisenbach, M. (1991). Sperm attraction to a follicular
factor(s) correlates with human egg fertilizability. <i>Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America</i>, <i>88</i>(7),
2840–2844. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.88.7.2840</span></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 24pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -24pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 24pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -24pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 24pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -24pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 24pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -24pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 24pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -24pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 24pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -24pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 24pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -24pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p>
<!--[if supportFields]><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:107%;
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<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/jmarks/Downloads/Carlton%20Coon%20made%20me%20do%20it%20(1).docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The term used in the 1940s was
‘denazified’. That word is used by Putin as part of Russian aggression against
Ukrainian people and has taken on a new, evil meaning.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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</div><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-87461719209213716422021-12-01T07:33:00.029-08:002022-04-12T15:43:46.176-07:00Carleton Coon’s "The Origin of Races": Evil Turns 60<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="color: red;"><b>Important note added on 12 April 2022:</b>
If you like this essay so much that you feel the need to quote or cite it, please consult the official cleaned-up version published in the <i>American Journal of Biological Anthropology</i>, 178:193–195 (2022).
</span></blockquote><p><span style="color: red;"> </span> I was
never taught Carleton Coon’s <i>The Origin of Races</i> as a text or a
cautionary tale, although my first class in physical anthropology (around 1977)
was called “Racial Origins” and was taught by a great old Lefty, Frederick
Hulse. By the time I got around to reading it on my own, I understood the book
to be “controversial” because of its reliance on parallel evolution.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Of
course, it was much more than that. The book was a scientific manifesto for the
segregationists. Coon corresponded with them, sent them preprints of his work,
and brainstormed with them on how to use his work. And how do we know this?
Because we have his mail (Collopy 2015).<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That
Carleton Coon was a racist is hardly noteworthy. He was certainly not the first
physical anthropologist to hold retrogressive social ideas, and he certainly
would not be the last. But what Coon tried to do in 1962 was to weaponize the
science of physical anthropology against the non-European peoples of the world.
It wasn’t the German scientists twenty years previously; it was American
physical anthropology, and in the present tense. That is what set him apart
from the rest of the field.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-rJgFWntU6AE/YablG4wSOzI/AAAAAAAAAes/eYYpjmnzPokZ9ReNnn7kaqn_n_kMG35HQCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img data-original-height="808" data-original-width="1143" height="141" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-rJgFWntU6AE/YablG4wSOzI/AAAAAAAAAes/eYYpjmnzPokZ9ReNnn7kaqn_n_kMG35HQCLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h141/image.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Carleton Coon, in “What in the World?” circa 1952. <br />Vidcap courtesy of the Penn Museum.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Carleton
Coon was of sturdy New England Yankee stock, which is shorthand for it is hard
to imagine anyone much whiter. He did his doctoral work with Earnest Hooton at
Harvard, where he remained as an instructor until 1948, when he moved to Penn.
In the mid-1950s, Coon was a regular on the early television show, “What in The
World?”, a few episodes of which survive on the internet. My
personal favorite highlights Coon’s erudition, as he identifies and rhapsodizes
about a Scandinavian Neolithic tool, to the amazement of the other panelists,
including the actor and art collector, Vincent Price (starting at 12:27).<o:p></o:p><p></p><br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XmUnEeJiW04" width="320" youtube-src-id="XmUnEeJiW04"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"></p></div></div></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div> In
1961, Coon was elected President of the American Association of Physical
Anthropologists (AAPA). He was working
on the book, as well as corresponding with a relative named Carleton Putnam.
Putnam had run Delta Airlines and was now a major propagandist against school
integration. Putnam’s little book, <i>Race
and Reason</i>, was published that year, and was a huge racist hit; it was
required reading for high school students in Louisiana, for example. The
governor of Mississippi proclaimed October 26, 1961 to be “Race and Reason Day.”
The point of Putnam’s book was that not only is school integration wrong, but
the very idea that Blacks and Whites could even be intellectual equals is the product
of an intellectual conspiracy led by Franz Boas. Normative anthropology was, to
Putnam, “insidious propaganda posing in the name of science” (Putnam 1961:20). <o:p></o:p><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZUtE5gw_VS4/YabpYk-raWI/AAAAAAAAAfE/JXE5Ac0-3k0nGIp7iXs24OSCFXRlDpljgCLcBGAsYHQ/s899/putnam1.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="899" data-original-width="595" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZUtE5gw_VS4/YabpYk-raWI/AAAAAAAAAfE/JXE5Ac0-3k0nGIp7iXs24OSCFXRlDpljgCLcBGAsYHQ/w133-h200/putnam1.jpg" width="133" /></a><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">And yet Putnam had a mole within
anthropology: “Besides intimidation there has, of course, been a false
indoctrination of our younger scientists, although some hope on this score may
be found in the following statement in a letter to me from a distinguished
scientist younger than I am, a scientist not a Southerner, who is a recognized
international authority on the subject we are considering: ‘About 25 years ago
it seemed to be proved beyond a doubt that man is a cultural animal, solely a
creature of the environment, and that there is no inheritance of instinct,
intelligence or any other capacity. Everything had to be learned and the man or
race that had the best opportunity for learning made the best record. The tide
is turning. Heredity is coming back, not primarily through anthropologists but
through the zoologists. It is the zoologists, the animal behavior men, who are
doing it, and the anthropologists are beginning to learn from them. It will take
time, but the pendulum will swing’” (Putnam 1961: 42). <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Who might that anonymous babbling hereditarian
scientist be? Carleton Coon’s name did not even appear in Putnam’s book index,
while Franz Boas got seven mentions. Colleagues suspected and murmured, of
course (Lasker 1999:148), but without evidence, you couldn’t simply accuse the
President of the AAPA of colluding with the segregationists. In fact, though, the
quotation was a scrambled version of what Coon had written to Putnam on 17 June
1960, but didn’t want his name attached to in print. In a letter of 1 September
1960, Putnam pleaded with him: “Suppose I cut out the ‘prize-winning’ and the ‘physical’
and the ‘international reputation’ and simply referred to the writer as a ‘Northern
anthropologist,’ would you let that pass?
Suppose I referred to him simply as a ‘distinguished scientist, younger
than I am’ (since one of the issues is out-of-date doctrines), saying nothing
about anthropologist or North or South?” To which Coon responded, “OK. A distinguished scientist, younger than I am,
is broad coverage. I’ll buy it. But
doctor the words a bit to eliminate the Cornish element” (Carleton S. Coon Papers, National Anthropological Archives).<o:p></o:p></p></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">At the November 1961 meetings of
the American Anthropological Association, a resolution denouncing Putnam’s book
passed unanimously (Margolis, 1961). A few months later, Stanley Garn brought a
similar resolution to the floor at the AAPA meetings, chaired by President Coon
himself. “The vote for the resolution was something like ninety-one ‘aye’ and
one ‘nay.’ ...but nobody joined Coon in
the vote against the motion, and Coon stormed out of the room” (Lasker 1999:148-9).
In Coon’s own pathetically self-interested recollection, he stormed off in
disgust that no one in the audience had read the Putnam book they were
condemning. </p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-2-2SKQNauk8/YabmbLh2FhI/AAAAAAAAAe4/Iu5wAffD4r4pJSLD98E4AH2hkzSaV4pLQCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1374" height="400" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-2-2SKQNauk8/YabmbLh2FhI/AAAAAAAAAe4/Iu5wAffD4r4pJSLD98E4AH2hkzSaV4pLQCLcBGAsYHQ/w269-h400/image.png" width="269" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Ironically depicting the four Linnaean, <br />not the five Coonian, races</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">At any rate, that was the context in
which Carleton Coon’s </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The Origin of Races</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> was published </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">in October of
1962. It authoritatively reviewed the fossil evidence for human evolution and
the processes by which microevolution and macroevolution take place. Coon’s
presentation of evolution was what we would now call adaptationist, and he
mentions, then dismisses, the role of genetic drift in human ancestry. Then Coon
argues for a fairly normative proposition in the physical anthropology of the
age: That there are five kinds of people, geographically localized. And yet
Coon’s five races of people weren’t necessarily the ones you might expect.
There were Whites (“Caucasoids”), Blacks (“Congoids”), and Oceanics
(“Australoids”); but Native Americans were just a sub-group of “Mongoloids” and
the Khoesan were their own race (“Capoids”). Moreover, argued Coon, there were
five kinds of </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Homo erectus</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> back in the Pleistocene as well, each of
which corresponded to one of the modern races of </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Homo sapiens</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">. And they
evolved from </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Homo erectus</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> into </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Homo sapiens</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> in a linear sequence:
Caucasoids, then Mongoloids, then Negroids, then Australoids and Capoids. In
particular, 200,000 years of evolution separated the Caucasoids from the
Negroids.</span></p></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p></o:p></p></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">That 200,000-year gap was
eventually mitigated in Coon’s scenario by gene flow out of sapient Europe, as
the Europeans genetically elevated <i>Homo
erectus</i> populations elsewhere in the world up into the newer species.
However, since the transition to <i>Homo
sapiens</i> was also a transition to civilization (or at least to the potential
to become civilized, apparently unlike <i>Homo
erectus</i>), it followed that the Caucasoid peoples had also been civilized
for rather longer than the rest of the world. Coon thus constructed a chimeric
theory that fused elements of the reputable evolutionary ideas of Franz
Weidenreich (1947), who saw human evolution in terms of both local continuity
and gene flow, with the disreputable pseudo-historical racism of Arthur de
Gobineau (1853), who imagined civilization to reside in the blood of White
people. Coon’s stunning biocultural conclusion, of presumptive social
relevance, was coyly given in his preface: “it is a fair inference … that the subspecies
which crossed the evolutionary threshold into the category of <i>Homo sapiens</i>
the earliest have evolved the most, and that the obvious correlation between
the length of time a subspecies has been in the sapiens state and the levels of
civilization attained by some of its populations may be related phenomena”
(ix-x). It obviously afforded a broad naturalistic
defense of colonialism; but for the current events in America, it contained an
implicit naturalistic explanation both for why American Blacks were making all
this trouble about civil rights, and for why they didn’t really deserve full
equality, much less to be in the same schools as White children: Blacks had not
been members of our species for nearly as long as Whites had.<o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">This set up a problem for the other
physical anthropologists of the day. What to do with a work by a distinguished
colleague that is, quite simply, evil? A work that seems to recall German
anthropology of a generation earlier, naturalizing a racial hierarchy; and is being
gleefully embraced for it by the most horrid reactionary American politicos of
the day? Scientists aren’t trained to grapple with evil. We are trained to look
at facts and arguments as if they are amoral, and not to imagine how we might
be being conned or manipulated by a smart, dishonest scoundrel. And that, obviously, is like a solid-gold
engraved invitation to a smart, dishonest scoundrel (see <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.337.6100.1283" target="_blank">Hauser, Marc</a>; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Burt" target="_blank">Burt, Sir Cyril</a>; <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-bomb/" target="_blank">Sibley, Charles</a>; Man, Piltdown).<o:p></o:p></p></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The most common reaction in the
physical anthropology community was to pretend that Coon himself was naïve,
that his conclusions were based on a few key misinterpretations, and that his
work was being somehow misused by the segregationists (Jackson 2001). Thus, Bill
Howells in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1962/12/09/archives/our-family-tree.html" target="_blank"><i>The</i> <i>New York Times</i></a> wrote “Even if Coon is correct in
his paleontological arguments – and I disagree with many – it is not possible
to use these standards to measure modern racial differences, and anyhow I see
no way of using such arguments to disprove the Constitution of the United
States. I am not going to apologize for Coon, but in fact his book is not
dealing with such matters…. He is making an effort to further the study of
evolution with a scholarly hypothesis. It is unfortunate if such efforts must
immediately be used, by context-strippers of any kind, for social and political
ends…”<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">But was that really what Coon was
doing, merely presenting a value-neutral hypothesis?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or was he rather trying to develop a
biological rationalization for the oppression of the non-European peoples of
the world – and trying to make it <u>look</u> like a value-neutral hypothesis? <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Obviously, Howells was striving to
be simultaneously both critical and polite. As he (and others, for example,
Wilfrid Le Gros Clark in <i>The Nation</i>) presented it, maybe Coon just
happened to come up with an idea that implicitly dehumanizes
non-Europeans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a darned shame that
such an idea might be misused by racists. Because the dehumanizing idea is just
a hypothesis, right? I mean, can you prove that Europeans <u>weren’t</u> <i>Homo
sapiens</i> for hundreds of thousands of years while sub-Saharan Africans were
still <i>Homo erectus</i>? No, I thought not.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">But let’s turn it around. Suppose,
for example, that Coon just stumbled on to this brilliant understanding of the
hominin fossil record, which “came to me one night, at 2 AM. It struck me like
a bolt of lightning, in a dream. I leaped out of bed and dashed to my study to
write it down” (Coon 1981: 340). And maybe it required a bunch of tendentious
assumptions about the fossil record and human variation, but it just happened
to be spot on, and it just happened to indicate, as Carleton Putnam (1967:33) put
it, “[…] that the Negro race is 200,000 years behind the white race on the
ladder of evolution.” Would you, as a progressive physical anthropologist of Those
Fabulous Sixties, really want to be in the position of having to try and
convince people that – just because evolution is dendritic, not scalar – therefore
Black and White kids should still be in the same schools with 200ky of cranial
evolution separating them?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">I sure wouldn’t.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FIRDhL10xKo/Yadrtl2JHqI/AAAAAAAAAfc/PMvctAIVikMni6dMW-ibbEiXVFoQE25wACLcBGAsYHQ/s657/The-Problem-We-All-Live-With.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="378" data-original-width="657" height="184" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FIRDhL10xKo/Yadrtl2JHqI/AAAAAAAAAfc/PMvctAIVikMni6dMW-ibbEiXVFoQE25wACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/The-Problem-We-All-Live-With.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">"The Problem We All Live With" by Norman Rockwell (1964)</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Coon’s idea about five races of one
species evolving at different times into five races of a different species was
treated as an abstract problem in evolutionary ecology by biologists like G. G.
Simpson and Ernst Mayr (Jackson and Depew, 2017). Mayr (1962:422) wrote in <i><a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.138.3538.420" target="_blank">Science</a></i>,
“There is little doubt that this volume will stir up more than one controversy”
but it’s nevertheless a great book, “regardless of how controversial it may be
in parts” without ever telling his scientific audience precisely what was so controversial about it. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Let’s try this. Is there anything
controversial about being beloved by Nazis? Or can we pretty much agree that if
the Nazis like you, you’re probably despicable?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is, of course, a moral issue, which scientists are generally not
trained to think through. It’s just not their training; morality is something
scientists are expected to absorb osmotically. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Coon became something of a pariah
in the field by the 1970s (Shipman 1994; Wolpoff and Caspari 1997). So here is
a post-modern question, in an age that has gone beyond the facile idea that
science is value-neutral and that only its applications are evil. What is the
relationship between evil causes and evil science?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">If the Nazis invoke your science as
somehow validating their evil cause, does that make your science evil? Or does
science transcend good and evil (a status which ethnographically would be
threatening in all known human societies)?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">This is Carleton Coon on his best
day: The segregationists are invoking his scientific work independently of his
politics, which are irrelevant to the entire matter. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">But now his day gets
worse. What if the segregationists are actually invoking his work not in spite
of his politics, but <u>because</u> of his politics? If the segregationists are
publicly claiming him <u>illegitimately</u>, then he must repudiate them,
forcefully and possibly repeatedly. And if they are publicly claiming him <u>legitimately</u>, well then he and his segregationist friends can just fuck right off, can’t they?
Why should the rest of us have to waste our time grappling with racist pseudo-science
every generation?<o:p></o:p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4AyT7tLEIXM/Yab0Qly8AvI/AAAAAAAAAfM/11FsqSzZHjQntud4c5jaQtvq3U51Krs0gCLcBGAsYHQ/s238/doby2.jpg" style="clear: right; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"><img border="0" data-original-height="238" data-original-width="208" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4AyT7tLEIXM/Yab0Qly8AvI/AAAAAAAAAfM/11FsqSzZHjQntud4c5jaQtvq3U51Krs0gCLcBGAsYHQ/w175-h200/doby2.jpg" width="175" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Dobzhansky</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Because it’s there? Because it’s
our job? Because it’s the right thing to do?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Calling out Prof. Coon was a
dangerous business, given his stature in the field. The person who took him on
most aggressively was a friend of, and collaborator with, physical
anthropologists (in particular, with Sherry Washburn and with Ashley Montagu),
namely the Ukrainian-American fruit fly geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky. Not only was Dobzhansky the doyen of
evolutionary genetics,<a href="file:///C:/Users/jmarks/Dropbox%20(UNC%20Charlotte)/Flashdrive%20Sept%202021/Coon%203.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
but he was also very familiar with the bio-politics of both the Soviet version
of Lamarckism promulgated by Lysenko in his motherland and of the eugenics
movement in his adoptive homeland. Moreover, as Carleton Putnam and his circle
were rabidly blaming a conspiracy of anthropologists, communists, and Jews in
the Academy for the civil rights push, Dobzhansky was particularly immune,
being a geneticist, a Soviet émigré, and Russian Orthodox. And Coon went reciprocally after Dobzhansky
privately and publicly with great bluster, threatening litigation and
complaining to the president of his university. And all because Dobzhansky insisted that Coon stand
behind his words, or disown their “misuse” by the segregationists.<o:p></o:p></p>
<div><!--[if !supportEndnotes]--><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The upshot of </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The Origin of Races </i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">was to raise the question: To what extent are you, as a scholar, responsible for your words, and for how they are used? Even if, as he insisted in public, Coon had no responsibility for how the segregationists were invoking his work, the rest of the discipline seems to have felt that he did bear some responsibility.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">And of course, the segregationists actually had his blessing; Coon was turning physical anthropology into an instrument with which to bludgeon Black people. Physical anthropologists at the time bent over backwards to present Coon as something other than an overeducated segregationist hack. After all, if he spoke with any authority at all, it would make physical anthropology itself into little more than racist quackery.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0.5in; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><o:p></o:p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0.5in; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Sixty years later, much has changed. <a href="https://physanth.org/" target="_blank">Physical anthropology no longer exists as a professional science.</a> What replaced it is more expansive, more self-aware, and more ethically conscious. Of course, those intervening decades also saw sociobiology, NAGPRA, the Human Genome Diversity Project, and animal rights, each of which presented moral challenges to the field. <span> </span></span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">This was never science like chemistry, or even like fruit fly genetics.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Indeed, a few years later, Dobzhansky reviewed Carleton Putnam’s sequel to </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Race and Reason</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">, called… (wait for it) … </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Race and Reality</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The new reality was much like the old, involving anthropologists, communists, and Jews and a perfervid defense of the inherent stupidity of Blacks. But now, the text was sprinkled with references to Professor Coon’s work; in fact, with more references to Coon than even to Boas! Dobzhansky promptly called the question on Coon. “Regret[t]ably, Dr. Coon has not seen fit to state whether he approves or disapproves of his scientific hypotheses being used by Mr. Putnam, for the latter's very unscientific ends. Such a statement would be appropriate regardless of whether these hypotheses are judged valid or invalid by Coon's scientific colleagues. It is a duty of a scientist to prevent misuse and prostitution of his findings” (Dobzhansky 1968:103).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">And despite both the political left and the political right appreciating the political value of Coon’s work, Coon steadfastly maintained its value-neutrality; and in his plummet to scientific obscurity, if not infamy, he actually wrote something we can all agree with. “Were the evolution of fruit flies a prime social and political issue, Dobzhansky might easily find himself in the same situation in which he and his followers have tried to place me” (Coon 1968:275).</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">I would suggest that a few
intellectual generations later, normalizing that very recognition has helped to
distinguish the scientific pretensions of the older physical anthropology<a href="file:///C:/Users/jmarks/Dropbox%20(UNC%20Charlotte)/Flashdrive%20Sept%202021/Coon%203.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
from the scientific ambitions of biological anthropology. This is not like the
science of fruit flies. It is bio-political, and always has been. That gives
biological anthropology responsibilities that other sciences don’t have to bear,
and makes Carleton Coon’s <i>The Origin of Races</i> a tremendously important
work, although fortunately not in the way the author intended. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
</p><div><!--[if !supportEndnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<div id="edn1">
</div>
</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DsVcNFrqnus/YadzPlqM40I/AAAAAAAAAfk/OKdFtbwYdPINd2HuAyp0ZoNycVmAYFdaQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1495/Hulse.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1467" data-original-width="1495" height="314" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DsVcNFrqnus/YadzPlqM40I/AAAAAAAAAfk/OKdFtbwYdPINd2HuAyp0ZoNycVmAYFdaQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Hulse.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Fred Hulse's (1962) version of Weidenreich's trellis</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><u>References</u><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Collopy PS.
2015. Race relationships: Collegiality and demarcation in physical
anthropology. <i>Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences</i> 51(3):
237–260.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Coon CS. 1968.
Comment on “Bogus Science.” <i>Journal
of Heredity</i> 59(5):275.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Coon CS. 1981. <i>Adventures
and Discoveries</i>. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: -0.5in;">Dobzhansky T.
1968. More bogus 'science' of race prejudice. </span><i style="text-indent: -0.5in;">Journal of Heredity</i><span style="text-indent: -0.5in;">
59:102-104.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Gobineau,
A. 1853. <i>Essai sur l'Inégalité des Races Humaines, Tome I</i>. Paris: Firmin
Didot Fréres.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Howells, WW.
1962. Our family tree. <i>The New York Times Book Review</i>, 9 December. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="text-indent: -0.5in;">Hulse, FS. 1962. Race as an evolutionary episode. <i>American Anthropologist</i>, 64, 929-945.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Jackson JP, Jr.
2001. "In ways unacademical": The reception of Carleton S. Coon's <i>The
Origin of Races</i>. <i>Journal of the History of Biology</i> 34:247-285.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.5in;">Jackson JP & Depew DJ. 2017. <i>Darwinism,
Democracy, and Race: American Anthropology and Evolutionary Biology in the Twentieth
Century.</i> New York: Routledge.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Lasker GW.
1999. <i>Happenings and Hearsay: Reflections of a Biological Anthropologist</i>.
Detroit, MI: Savoyard Books.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Margolis
H. 1961.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Science
and segregation: The American Anthropological Association dips into politics. <i>Science</i>
134:1868-1869.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Mayr E. 1962.
Origin of the human races. <i>Science</i> 138:420-422.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Putnam C. 1961.
<i>Race and Reason</i>. Washington, D. C.: Public Affairs Press.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Putnam C. 1967.
<i>Race and Reality</i>. Washington, D. C.: Public Affairs Press.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Shipman P. 1994.
<i>The Evolution of Racism</i>. New York: Simon and Schuster.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Weidenreich F.
1947. Facts and speculations concerning the origin of <i>Homo sapiens</i>. <i>American
Anthropologist</i>, 49:135-151.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: -0.5in;">Wolpoff M. and
Caspari R. 1997. </span><i style="text-indent: -0.5in;">Race and Human Evolution</i><span style="text-indent: -0.5in;">. New York: Simon and Schuster.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></p><div style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><u>Acknowledgments</u>: </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Thanks to Karen Strier, Graciela Cabana, Lauren Schroeder, Trudy Turner, and some other folks for their comments along the way.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><u>Notes</u></p></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/jmarks/Dropbox%20(UNC%20Charlotte)/Flashdrive%20Sept%202021/Coon%203.docx#_ednref1" name="_edn1" style="text-indent: 0.5in;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span></span></a><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
Without getting into the niceties of professional credentialing, Dobzhansky had
written authoritatively on human genetic diversity. He was a member of
anthropological societies and published insightfully on such topics, especially
later in life, but his primary research was always on </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Drosophila</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">, not </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Homo</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">.</span></p></div></blockquote><hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div id="edn1"><p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-align: left;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/jmarks/Dropbox%20(UNC%20Charlotte)/Flashdrive%20Sept%202021/Coon%203.docx#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 14.2667px;">[2]</span></span></span></a> As an ironic footnote, Carleton Coon’s scientific pretensions were such that the book was initially titled, <i>On the Origin of Races</i>, specifically to invoke you-know-who.</p></div></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></p>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-4125871928746003372021-06-23T08:17:00.012-07:002021-06-25T06:43:46.327-07:00The Good, The Bad, and the Scientists Who Don't Know the Difference<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2;"> </span> <span style="background-color: #fbf5e2;">One of the things I’ve been giving a bit of thought to, as I
begin to contemplate retiring and not doing the stuff that I’ve been doing for
the last few decades, is the biggest gap in my own education. I take no
responsibility at all for the gap, for it is totally not my fault: I am the
victim of a good science education that gave me no moral education. Like other
scientifically-trained scholars, moral arguments intimidate me, I don’t know
how to construct them and I don’t know how to evaluate them. I just know, like other scientists, that I’m good and I'm right and that you are a fucking asshole for doubting it.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><span> </span>Looking back on the beginning of my career, which is what
one does at this stage, I realize that there were three things I was most
concerned with thirty years ago, aside from my actual lab research. These were questions
involving:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;">(1) <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Human-Biodiversity-Genes-Race-History/dp/1138525405" target="_blank">Racist science </a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;">(2) <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/241/4873/1598" target="_blank">Dishonest science</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;">and<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;">(3) <a href="https://webpages.uncc.edu/~jmarks/pubs/2014%20HGDP.pdf" target="_blank">Colonial science</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><span> </span>In retrospect, all three of these were linked by the moral
question in science. Right and wrong, good and evil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But having no background in philosophy or
theology, I lacked the intellectual framework to understand my own interests,
much less any vocabulary with which to describe them. The point is that scientists are expected to develop into moral beings without any education in it, which seems opposed to the rest of both education and the history of our species.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><span> </span>Yet the public positions I adopted early in my career, which
made me a dangerous radical to the older farts in physical anthropology, aren’t
so radical any more, at least within contemporary biological anthropology. But some of our
colleagues in cognate fields are a bit behind us, and it can be very frustrating to argue about basic moral issues with biologists, who
have as little training in the subject as I do. Many of them, after all, spend their lives torturing vermin like fruit flies in order to unravel the mysteries of life. Is it worth it? Sure, ok, yeah, torment the damn flies for the good of science. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><span> Back in 1871, </span>John Murray in London published a very important two-volume
work on human ancestry. The intellectual times and context were important.
There was an important question out there, being debated by first-generation evolutionary
biologists. The Bible clearly states
that Adam and Eve were placed in a garden, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=genesis+2%3A15&version=NRSV" target="_blank">to till the field</a>. Where, then, did
hunter-gatherers come from? Were modern foragers degenerate descendants of the biblical
horticulturists? Or were the foragers primordial, and the biblical story simply
wrong?</span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><span> </span>That question had been definitively answered by Darwin’s
neighbor, John Lubbock, in his <a href="https://archive.org/details/prehistorictimes00lubbrich" target="_blank">Pre-Historic Times</a> (1865). Those times had been
times of foraging, and they preceded agricultural times. But that raised a
second question: What of the living hunter-gatherers? What’s the matter with
them? Why are they even there? The first Darwinian answer to that question came
from the German Darwinian, <a href="https://archive.org/details/natrlichesch68haec" target="_blank">Ernst Haeckel</a>, in 1868. To Haeckel, the difference between
the “savage” and the European was zoological. They were different species
altogether. In fact, Haeckel argued,
savages should not even be classified with people; they should be classified
with apes. But don’t take my word for it. Here's the <a href="https://archive.org/details/b21910133/page/365/mode/1up">English translation of 1876</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;">If one must draw a sharp boundary between them, it has to be drawn between the most highly developed and civilized man on the one hand, and the rudest savages on the other, and the latter have to be classed with the animals.</span></p></blockquote></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;">Lovely guy, Haeckel. And a great Darwinian. A credit to his field. Remember that line when you <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ernst-Haeckel-Anniversary-Rainer-Willmann/dp/383658428X">admire his artwork</a>. Now his explanation for the existence of savages has a lot of biopolitical implications, which we
need not dwell on here. Suffice it to say that it was not regarded as a very satisfactory
answer in much of the rest of the scholarly community. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><span> </span>The next year, 1869, another first-generation Darwinian took a crack at the question: Why were there still savages? Alfred Russel Wallace acknowledged that
savages were smart. In fact, he reasoned, they were too smart. The savage has a
brain as large and powerful as that of an Englishman, reasoned Wallace, but the
savage doesn’t need it. It doesn’t take much brains to be a savage. And yet the
savage has a brain. Moreover, most of human prehistory involved brainy savages,
who evolved by natural selection. And yet, natural selection can’t make an
organ that the body doesn’t use. So if apes evolved into savages, that process must
have involved the acquisition of a big brain that natural selection couldn’t
make because the savages don’t need or use it. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><span> </span>So if natural selection didn’t produce the big powerful brain
that separates savages from apes (and allies them with Europeans, <u>contra</u>
Haeckel) then what did produce that big unused brain?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;">The brain of pre- historic and of savage man seems to me to prove the existence of some power, distinct from that which has guided the development of the lower animals through their ever-varying forms of <a href="https://archive.org/details/contributionsto00wallgoog/page/n366/mode/1up" target="_blank">being</a>.</span></p><p></p></blockquote></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;">You know what produced it. And Who. It was a miracle. From God.</span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><span> </span><a href="https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-6684.xml" target="_blank">Charles Darwin wrote to him</a>, “I hope you have not murdered
too completely your own and my child.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><span> </span>So by 1870 the Darwinians were batting 0 for 2 in trying to explain
the evolutionary relationship between savages and civilized people. Which
brings us up to 1871 again, and the publication by John Murray of that very
important two-volume work on human ancestry. Of course the author was Edward B.
Tylor and the book was <i><a href="https://archive.org/details/primitiveculture00tylo" target="_blank">Primitive Culture</a></i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><span> </span>What Tylor did in <i>Primitive Culture</i> (1871) was to
give yet a third explanation for the difference between the savage and
civilized person. It was not a distinction of biological evolution, as Haeckel
had it in 1868. Nor was it a distinction of supernatural evolution, as Wallace
had it in 1869. Nope, in 1871 it was a distinction of cultural evolution. That was the </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2;">correct,</span><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2;"> </span><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2;">and ultimately paradigmatic, answer.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><span> </span>Also, Darwin published <i>The Descent of Man</i> that year.
And sadly, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Most-Interesting-Problem-Darwins-Evolution/dp/069119114X">it doesn’t stand up much better under a modern reading</a> than Tylor’s
<i>Primitive Culture</i> does. They’re both quaint, insightful, and important in their
time and place, and dated now. But what makes them all of those things?
Graduate students should definitely try to find out with careful, critical
readings.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2;"><span> </span>And that brings me to the direct inspiration for this rant. A few weeks ago, Agust</span>í<span style="background-color: #fbf5e2;">n Fuentes, with whom I agree on the
great majority of things I hold a professional opinion about, published an
</span><a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6544/769" target="_blank">editorial </a><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2;">in </span><i>Science</i><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2;">. </span><i>Science</i><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2;"> is the leading scientific journal
in America, and a guest editorial in it is way up high on the prestige scale. You can bet they vetted the essay pretty carefully. And they published it with some of Fuentes's pretty uncontroversial assessments, like these.</span></span></p>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fbf5e2; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(251, 245, 226);"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Descent” is often problematic, prejudiced, and injurious. Darwin
thought he was relying on data, objectivity, and scientific thinking in
describing human evolutionary outcomes. But for much of the book, he was not.
“Descent,” like so many of the scientific tomes of Darwin's day, offers a
racist and sexist view of humanity....</span></span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fbf5e2; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(251, 245, 226);"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Today, students are taught Darwin as the “father of evolutionary
theory,” a genius scientist. They should also be taught Darwin as an English
man with injurious and unfounded prejudices that warped his view of data and
experience.</span></span></p></blockquote></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fbf5e2; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(251, 245, 226);"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">No book on any science from 1871 stands up scientifically today. If you
read a science book from 1871 you are probably reading it because someone told
you it was important, and maybe it was. But you will have to probe to find what
identifies it as a classic, and while you get there, you will struggle through
the intellectual primitiveness of the work itself. And it will hopefully be a
rewarding exercise, and then you can go back to reading the pdfs on line of the
articles that aren’t even published yet in your favorite journals.</span><span style="font-family: Roboto;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: rgb(251, 245, 226);"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Alas, there are some scientists out there who don’t countenance any
critical reading of Darwin. Any criticism of Darwin is fodder for creationists,
and therefore he must be defended at all costs. Which is pretty much <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6544/769/tab-e-letters">what the Darwinian All-Stars managed to splutter out</a> </span>in their angry letter to the editor<span style="font-family: Roboto;">. </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: rgb(251, 245, 226);"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> But first, let's go over the Darwinian All-Stars lineup. Leading off? Psychologist Andrew Whiten. Second, Walter Bodmer. That's right, Sir Walter Fucking Bodmer. Third, the geneticists: Brian and Deborah Charlesworth and Jerry Coyne. Next, psychologist Frans de Waal. And then six more of them, because, one supposes, something about group selection. And what is their top complaint?</span></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fbf5e2; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(251, 245, 226);"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">We fear that Fuentes’ vituperative exposition will encourage a spectrum of anti-evolution voices... </span></span></p></blockquote></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fbf5e2; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(251, 245, 226);"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Now if you bothered to read Fuentes's essay (and here's the <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6544/769" target="_blank">link </a>again), you may be puzzled by their use of the adjective "vituperative". Let's just assume for the sake of parsimony that they don't know what the word means.</span><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><span> </span>So anything that we perceive as critical of Darwin must be
suppressed, because it may aid the creationists. That is about the most
pathetic admission of abject failure on the part of science educators that I
have ever encountered. These scientists have been so unsuccessful in convincing
the American public we evolved from apes, that they are going to respond
by placing Darwin on a pedestal and reading his 19<sup>th</sup> century sexist
and colonialist views uncritically. Good lord, could they possibly sound more
like a cult?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fbf5e2; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(251, 245, 226);"><span style="font-size: medium;">
</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><span> </span>Without belaboring the essay or the response, I want to shift
back to the general moral question in science. I’m expending a little bit of mental energy
here pondering what appears to be <b>scientists trying to shield students from
confronting sexism, racism, and colonialism in scientific literature</b>. That is
an amazing corner to paint yourself into, rather like being anti-antifa, which
would seem to be the equivalent of pro-fascist. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fbf5e2; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(251, 245, 226);"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span> </span></span></span>But to return to the moral question. While Darwin was rewriting
the <i>Journal of Researches</i> (aka <i>The Voyage of the Beagle</i>) there was a lot going
on politically, and the <a href="https://archive.org/details/journalresearche00darw_290/page/n513/mode/1up" target="_blank">1845 second edition</a> contains a digression about how slavery really and truly sucks: </span></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">if the
misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our
institutions, great i<span style="font-family: inherit;">s our sin... </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">It
makes one's blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our
American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so
guilty: but it is a consolation to reflect, that we at least have made a
greater sacrifice, than ever made by any nation, to expiate our sin.</span></span></p></blockquote></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;">And folks have from time to time, trotted out
that passage to show what a socially concerned and morally advanced fellow
Darwin was.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><span> </span>But let’s look a bit more closely at that thought. I think
we would agree with Darwin (and even with his imaginary interlocutors, who are trivializing slavery by comparing it to mere poverty) that if the misery of the poor is due to our
institutions, then great is our sin. But
let’s turn the thought around. Suppose the misery of the poor is indeed actually due
to the laws of nature. Then what? Fuck them and their misery, because at least
we haven’t sinned?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><span> </span>Darwin’s moral thinking here isn’t very moral at all. It’s
weirdly amoral. The point Darwin is making is that slavery is much worse than mere poverty, no matter how much some people may try to equate them. Fair enough. But isn't there a problem with poverty too? The proper reaction to the misery of the poor is to work to
alleviate it, not to try and figure out who to blame for it. Darwin is less
concerned with the suffering and misery of the poor than he is about the
cleanliness of his own soul, and perhaps that of his entire
economic class (“our”). And here is the
moral problem for future generations: If the issue is <u>who caused the misery,
not how do we alleviate the misery</u>, then that places a scientific premium on showing that at least you aren’t the cause of that misery. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><span> </span>Which is why <a href="https://archive.org/details/heredityinrelati00dave" target="_blank">Charles Davenport blamed genes</a>, C. C. <a href="https://archive.org/details/b29814212" target="_blank">Brigham blamed IQ scores</a>, and Charles Murray blames them both. The important thing is
to somehow blame the misery of the poor on “the laws of nature,” rather than on
“our institutions”. For then, not only is “our” social class blameless, but we
have used science to answer the unthreatening question we posed, yet actually
done nothing to alleviate the suffering of the poor, regardless of why the fuck it’s there.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"> The suffering is the problem, its etiology is secondary.</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><span> </span>That is a moral statement, however, and I don’t know how to
defend it. Which is why I’m angry at my scientific education. And from the look
of things, at a lot of other people’s scientific education as well.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"><span> </span>But this is funny. What had gotten me interested in scientific
fraud was the DNA hybridization work of <a href="https://webpages.uncc.edu/~jmarks/dnahyb/Sibley%20revisited.pdf">Sibley and Ahlquist</a> back in the 1980s.
Sibley is long dead, but Jon Ahlquist only expired recently, and his passing was
noted ruefully by the <a href="https://creation.com/ahlquist" target="_blank">creationists</a>. You see, after a career falsifying data and
committing scientific sins, it seems as though Ahlquist gave his life to <a href="https://creation.com/jon-ahlquist">Jesus</a>,
to absolve himself and atone for them. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: #fbf5e2; font-size: medium;"> Well, that was convenient.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-73516212358957972762019-12-28T06:35:00.001-08:002019-12-29T15:26:16.761-08:00I coined the phrase “Human Biodiversity”. Racists stole it.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The essay that follows was declined by the NY Times. However,
a few days later (27 December 2019), they published a column by Bret Stephens
on Jewish genius (or, Jewnius©) that actually cited the horrid 2005 paper on that
subject by the late biological anthropologist Henry Harpending. <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/henry-harpending" target="_blank">Harpending was regarded by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a White Nationalist. </a><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
That is a very unusual status for an anthropologist. It
raises an interesting issue, though, about Harpending’s legacy. I am in favor of
his total erasure. I think his racism probably tainted everything he published,
however nice he may have been in person, and I do not see what value there is
in talking about him at all politely or respectfully, when his legacy is a black
eye for the field of anthropology. <a href="https://twitter.com/AdamRutherford/status/1210850822692769792" target="_blank">Adam Rutherford has been crapping on him over on twitter</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s page on Harpending also
uses the phrase “human biodiversity” quite a bit.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<br />
---------------------------<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">I coined the phrase “Human Biodiversity”. Racists stole it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Jonathan Marks</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It is rare
for a professor to birth a meme. We inhabit ivory towers, very few of us are in
the public eye, and those that aspire to be so are often regarded disdainfully
by our peers. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">For me, it
increasingly seems as though my lasting contribution will be to have coined the
phrase “human biodiversity” in my 1994 book of that name. Unfortunately it has
come to mean the opposite of what I meant, due to the distortions of internet
racists. In fact, they have even abbreviated “human biodiversity” as a meme for
the semi-literate, HBD.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Journalist
Angela Saini describes the appropriation of the phrase in her recent book,
“<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Superior-Return-Science-Angela-Saini/dp/0807076910" target="_blank">Superior: The Return of Race Science</a>.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I was proud
of the coinage a quarter-century ago, because I intended it to encapsulate the
major discovery of the science of biological anthropology over the course of
the 20<sup>th</sup> century. That century began with the scientific assumption
that the human species came naturally divisible into a fairly small number of
fairly discrete and homogeneous pseudo-taxonomic groups. We called them
“races”. By century’s end, however, a great deal of empirical research had
shown that our species does not in fact come structured that way. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“Human
biodiversity” was intended to label our newer understanding of the patterns by
which people actually differ from one another, as an alternative to the earlier
“race”.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“Race” and
“human biodiversity” are quite simply different things, two sets of patterns
that map very poorly onto one another – and it took the better part of the 20<sup>th</sup>
century to demonstrate it. The subtitle of my book was “Genes, Race, and
History” – to suggest that genes demonstrated that the proper place for race in
science lay in its history, along with phlogiston, pangenesis, and creationism.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Race exists,
of course, but its reality is not primarily biological. The reality of race is
in the domain of the symbolic. Race is most real in the sense that, as is
well-known, Thomas Jefferson fathered children with his black slave, Sally
Hemings. Yet according to the only extant descriptions of her, Sally Hemings
had light skin and long, straight dark hair. Why? Because only one of her four
grandparents was African. She was a slave because of her symbolic ancestry, not
because of her biological ancestry or her appearance. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Race is thus
now recognized to be very real, as a system of human classification, as lived
experience in a society of inequality. While it sometimes correlates with
biology, the proper study of race lies in the study of law, discrimination,
sociology, and political economy; the primary exception being in how social
prejudice can affect the body itself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“Human
biodiversity” was intended as an alternative way of talking about human
variation without the overarching assumption that our species sorts out into
fairly discrete, fairly homogeneous races – as was assumed by scientists a
century ago. But in the late 1990s, racists began to coopt the phrase as a more
genteel and sciencey way to simply say “race”. In other words, they began to
synonymize what should be antonyms.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Today all
sorts of ideas that were only recently outmoded and unthinkable have become
thinkable and real. The advancement of knowledge is clearly unsteady at best. I
doubt whether the racists who invoke the phrase actually consult my book and
learn that they are misapplying it. They probably wouldn’t care anyway.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">To have
provided racists with a scientific-sounding cover for their odious ideas is not
something to be particularly proud of, but I can’t take it back. All I can do
is disavow it.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">--------------</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
Postscript:: on 12/29, The New York Times published this apology.<br />
<img alt="Image may contain: text" src="https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/81109144_10157019757999385_3612806659807641600_n.jpg?_nc_cat=104&_nc_ohc=VZMawiC2qf0AQlb-hRCqtfvUBaC7PqxvvW3kPIeAnnAn-w_ot2mQbmwnw&_nc_ht=scontent-atl3-1.xx&oh=9771d20017862f582e21794e5facaeab&oe=5EA948D3" /><br />
<br />Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-44130606786879070732019-12-01T11:21:00.000-08:002019-12-01T11:21:29.923-08:00Necessity and Chance<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This blog post began as a book review solicited by an online
periodical called <span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><i><a href="https://www.inference-review.com/" target="_blank">Inference: International Review of Science</a>. </i></span></span></h3>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But it turns out to be <a href="https://undark.org/2019/01/28/junk-science-or-real-thing-inference/" target="_blank">somewhat disreputable</a>, funded by weird
billionaire <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel" target="_blank">Peter Thiel</a>, and with noted creationist shill <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Berlinski" target="_blank">David Berlinski</a> as the third
person on its masthead. Apparently the goal is to mix science andpseudoscience so readers become confused and manipulable, and what you end up with is a sort of Fox
Science News.</span></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<h3>
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So I withdrew the book review, but kept the book, because it’s
a good one and (as I told them) I’m sure Peter Thiel can afford another copy. And here it is.</span></b></h3>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<h3 style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0in;">The Accidental </span></i><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0in;">Homo sapiens<i>: Genetics
Behavior, and Free Will</i></span> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">by Ian Tattersall and Rob DeSalle. Pegasus, 222 pp.,
USD$27.95.</span></h3>
</div>
<div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">We
are storytelling creatures, the authors explain, before proceeding to tell
their own story about where we came from. The origins question is, of course,
one of surpassing breadth in our species. Evolve the ability to ask questions,
and that particular one emerges near the top of the list: Where did we come
from?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The
authors are eminently qualified to tell a story that is both authoritative and
engaging. Both are curators at the American Museum of Natural History in New
York (Tattersall now emeritus). Tattersall’s expertise lies in primate
anatomical evolution; DeSalle’s is in molecular evolution. They have written
many books separately, and have previously collaborated successfully on the
topics of beer, wine, and race.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">What
does it even mean to be an “accidental” species, anyway? There are several
directions in which one could go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First,
one could argue that the nucleotide substitutions in the DNA that facilitated
bipedalism, canine tooth reduction, cranial expansion, and the like, were all
ultimately accidental miscopyings of the DNA in certain late Miocene apes.
Indeed the great bulk of DNA changes are in fact neither good nor bad, but
neutral, or close enough to neutral that they can be readily carried through
the generations within the gene pool. The fact that some accidental DNA changes
eventually proved valuable would be ignored here, for this would be a view of
human evolution through a lens of the caprice of mutation. Alternatively, one
could argue that, unlike many religious views, there is ultimately no reason or
<i>telos</i> for our existence; our species is just another accident of nature,
not special or central in the history of life, for they all come and go. This
was the thesis of Henry Gee’s recent engaging polemic <i>The Accidental Species</i>,<a href="file:///H:/Review%20of%20accidental.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> but suffers from the fact
that our undirected, decentralized, pedestrian development in the universe
can’t be proved without standing outside of that universe, which is manifestly
impossible, and consequently the point can only be vigorously asserted – even if
it may well be true. Yet a third possible aspect of our “accidental” existence
might be the stabilization of random variation in our species.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just as there are one-humped (Dromedary) and
two-humped (Bactrian) camels, and they both seem to work well as camels, maybe
the features that characterize our own species are simply physical variations
that work as well as their alternatives. An example might be the syndrome of
smallish face, roundish head, and linear body build that seems to have emerged
first in Africa about 200,000 years ago and now characterizes our entire
species. Indeed when methods have been applied to detect the effects of deterministic
natural selection on the evolution of the human form, they have generally
failed, suggesting that much of our body or head shape may indeed be
“accidental”.<a href="file:///H:/Review%20of%20accidental.docx#_edn2" name="_ednref2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A fourth understanding of being “accidental”
might be as the result of extraneous events: luckily surviving an asteroid
impact or volcanic eruption, and subsequently repopulating the area in one’s
own image. Yet a fifth might reside in the classical mathematics by which small
gene pools (like those of our ancestors) can deviate from mathematical
expectations over the generations, and large gene pools<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(like ours today) can sustain large amounts
of diversity – both of which come with unpredictable consequences. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The
story told in <i>The Accidental Homo sapiens</i> is by and large a normative
one, and the authors are on sure ground in their discussions of human
biological evolution. This is actually not a situation to be taken lightly, for
evolution is our particular origin myth, and everybody in science thinks they
own a piece of it – unlike, say, boron or electromagnetism. There are,
consequently, scientists who borrow and bend human evolution to construct
narratives of our origin and nature without a deep knowledge of, well, human
evolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Exhibit A, this book’s
antagonists, are the evolutionary psychologists, who came to prominence in the
1990s with glib science bites about human nature. Tattersall and DeSalle argue
that the evolutionary psychologists see too much determinism, and not enough
accident, in the evolution of our species.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The
first two chapters provide a very accessible introduction to statistical
quantitative genetics, which is just as difficult to achieve successfully as it
sounds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The authors then introduce the
possibility of associating quantitative continuous variation in normal human
traits to DNA variations, and the limitations<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>of trying to do so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, given
the difficulties in establishing a classical Mendelian basis for a “hard”
character like height, the difficulties are compounded in trying to do it for a
“soft” character like extroversion or sexual inclination. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The
middle of the book recounts the broad features of our ancestry, from the
bipedal apes of five or six million years ago, through their descendants a
million years ago, who had learned to cut things and burn things, to our
(geologically-speaking) recent ancestors, talking and drawing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The evolutionary novelties are biological,
technological, and communicative. In the evolution of apes into humans, we can
record alterations in the throat and mouth (permitting us to speak), and to the
extent that it can be accessed comparatively, in the mind (giving us something
to say). We often refer to these properties as symbolic thought, referring to
the construction of meaningful imaginary connections between things, as in
pointing. In pointing, there is no physical connection between the fingertip
and the object, just a metaphorical extension of the fingertip in the mind of
the pointer and of anyone with a similarly built brain. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">While
tools and art were certainly important products of the symbolic capacity, and
hugely important in the latterly success of our species, they figure
disproportionately in our narratives because they are preserved in the
archaeological record. Yet along with tools and art, humans imagined a new
social world into existence, which left no material traces yet certainly aided
our survival in the material world. This was kinship, and its effects were very
far-reaching, if often downplayed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The
final turn of <i>The Accidental Homo sapiens</i> brings us back into the
present, trying to explain who we are and how we got here. Was there meaning
inherent in the transition from ape to human? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Where
the primary antagonists of Henry Gee’s similarly-titled book were those who
tried to read purpose or direction into the history of life (No! Our species
was <i>accidental</i>!), the targets here are principally modern scholars who
see our bodies and minds as finely-tuned machines, having been twiddled and
tweaked to precision over the ages by natural selection (No! Our species was <i>accidental</i>!).
Hardly anyone doubts today that natural selection has acted upon the human
species – the authors are not claiming that our ancestors’ brains grew by
accident, but rather by virtue of the persistent long-term survival and
proliferation of those bipedal apes that had bigger ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their claim is more specifically about how
universal and stringent natural selection has been. If natural selection is a
sieve, are its pores large or small in any particular case?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">When
it comes to human behavior, the authors argue that the pores are large. That is
to say, once we attained the biological ability to think, act, and speak
symbolically, our species was capable of thriving with many different
alternatives. This was arguably the “big discovery” of 20<sup>th</sup> century
anthropology: that people all over the world are smart and can survive in
places that you can’t, so if you find yourself among them, you had better hope
they help you, because you’ll die if they don’t. While this may not sound like
much, it was different from the knowledge brought by the early English settlers
to America, with often tragic consequences for them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The
modern view, then, is that natural selection worked stringently on the pre-human
brain up to a few hundred thousand years ago, when the adaptive value of the
collective intelligence of cultures began to overwhelm the adaptive value of
individual minds, and classical natural selection accordingly diminished. Nearly
all of what people do consequently has negligible relative survival or
reproductive value and is not the result of natural selection, but of
historical contingency, or accident. That is as well the view of Tattersall and
DeSalle, but not of their antagonists, the sociobiologists and evolutionary
psychologists. These latter scholars generally assume that natural selection
acts on individual human behaviors, and consequently they generate
biologically-based narratives for each one. By so promiscuously invoking
natural selection, which is a genetic process, these scholars imagine the genes
to be doing an awful lot of heavy lifting; but since they are mostly drawn from
ethology and psychology, not genetics, it generally doesn’t bother them. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tattersall and DeSalle are bothered, however,
and argue against analytically atomizing human behaviors, against ascribing
biological bases to the behaviors, and against invoking natural selection
wantonly as their cause. That obviously leaves the sociobiologists and
evolutionary psychologists in a limbo of bad evolutionary theory.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The
criticism is welcome, as the abuse of evolution has a long and embarrassing
history. The central problem that Tattersall and DeSalle highlight is the
difficulty in reconciling binary Mendelian alleles (wrinkled/round,
green/yellow, tall/short) to the quantitative and developmentally sensitive
human organism, much less to its context-specific behaviors.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">This
problem has existed since the dawn of Mendelian genetics. In the early 20<sup>th</sup>
century, America’s leading geneticists generally adhered to the proposition
that people came in two Mendelian flavors, smart and “feebleminded”. Their
arguments helped pass legislation to restrict the immigration of Italians and
Jews into the US (1924) and to sterilize the poor involuntarily (1927), before
the Germans even got the idea. Today’s abusers of Mendel are only slightly less
crude, with genes “for” homosexuality, schizophrenia, aggression, or
religiosity regularly touted, although with remarkably short scientific
shelf-lives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Tattersall
and DeSalle rather favor a model in which genes could not do that much work,
because they do not “code for traits” but set a range of possibilities, often
quite broad, that can be expressed in various ways, dependent upon various
factors. The pedagogical model we most often rely on imagines the phenotype
(i.e, detectable physiology) to be readily predictable from the genotype (i.e,
genetic status).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And sometimes that is
true. If you have the alleles for cystic fibrosis, you will generally express
the disease.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you don’t, you generally
won’t. If you have the alleles for lactate dehydrogenase A, you will generally
express the enzyme. If you don’t, you generally won’t. But aside from
pathologies and biochemicals, one hardly ever finds binary patterns. Rather, we
find genes expressed in diverse ways (pleiotropy), genes affecting the
expression of other genes (epistasis), traits that may not appear in spite of
the genes (penetrance), and context-dependent gene expression (reaction norms).
This is an immensely valuable presentation of the way genetics actually
functions in human affairs, in contrast to the simplistic models underpinning
the evolutionary psychology literature.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Where
the authors come up just a bit shy, I think, is when they try to explain why
reductive, hereditarian ideas about behavior and intelligence persist in the
scholarly literature after all this time. They present a few possibilities :
“the human mind … seems naturally drawn to reductionist explanations” (p. 45);
“scientists may sometimes be uncomfortable with uncertainty, and … genetic and
genomic hypotheses promise clear-cut cause-and-effect explanations (pp.72-72);
and “when humans are told that something is very difficult or even impossible
to do, the immediately attempt it anyway.” ( p. 73). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">There
is, however, something else at work, which scientists are generally loath to
confront, for it exposes an embarrassing side of the practice of science. The
sad fact is that arguments about genetic determinism take place upon a
biopolitical and moral ground as well as upon an empirical scientific one.<a href="file:///H:/Review%20of%20accidental.docx#_edn3" name="_ednref3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> The same philanthropies
and demagogues that promote hereditarianism also promote scientific racism
(i.e., the recruitment of authority of science in support of the evil politics
of racism).<a href="file:///H:/Review%20of%20accidental.docx#_edn4" name="_ednref4" style="mso-endnote-id: edn4;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> The hereditarian
psychologists Arthur Jensen and Thomas Bouchard, the racist psychologist
Philippe Rushton, and the hereditarian political scientist Charles Murray are
all linked through networks of right-wing interests. And a lot of money has
been spent to get wacko ideas into the scientific mainstream, with distressing
levels of success.<a href="file:///H:/Review%20of%20accidental.docx#_edn5" name="_ednref5" style="mso-endnote-id: edn5;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Classically,
the argument looked like this: <i>Blacks are inherently dumber than whites,
therefore they do not deserve equal rights</i>.<a href="file:///H:/Review%20of%20accidental.docx#_edn6" name="_ednref6" style="mso-endnote-id: edn6;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The updated, subtler version goes: <i>Low-IQ
people are inherently dumber than high-IQ people; IQ determines social and
political status; therefore social programs intended to ameliorate extreme
social stratification are doomed to failure, and federal funding should be
directed elsewhere</i>.<a href="file:///H:/Review%20of%20accidental.docx#_edn7" name="_ednref7" style="mso-endnote-id: edn7;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">This
is not a scientific problem, but a problem for science, and one that scientists
are not trained to resolve – the problem of evil. The problem is social,
political, and moral, and requires the constant vigilance of the scientific
community to avoid sullying the good names of Darwin and Mendel. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">After
challenging the reification of genes, the attribution of human behaviors to
them, and the blithe assumption by the evolutionary psychologists that acts are
adaptive and governed by natural selection, Tattersall and DeSalle’s narrative
winds down by engaging with our uniqueness as a species. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If, as the authors tell us, “no creature in
the world today is more unlike its ancestor of two or three million years ago
than we are,” then does that fact come with scientific implications? They toy
with the idea of such a newly-arisen evolutionary gulf implying that our
species alone ought to be placed in a new Subkingdom Psychozoa, as the
biologists Julian Huxley<a href="file:///H:/Review%20of%20accidental.docx#_edn8" name="_ednref8" style="mso-endnote-id: edn8;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> and Bernhard Rensch
suggested many years ago. But they quickly reject it, because modern scientific
sensibilities value phylogeny (how closely related we are to the apes) more
highly than divergence (how different from them we have become). I wish they
had pursued this point a bit further, because it is ultimately an arbitrary
decision, which is nevertheless imbued with scientific meaning in spite of
itself being largely “accidental”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>The Accidental Homo sapiens</i> is a short,
straightforward book that tells a very scientifically validated story of who we
are and how we got here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are
various classes of data and evidence to work with. But making up imaginary
genes as part of a narrative of human origins doesn’t do much credit to the
scientific endeavor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The authors
strongly discourage it, and so do I.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
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<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<a href="file:///H:/Review%20of%20accidental.docx#_ednref1" name="_edn1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Henry Gee, <i>The Accidental
Species: Misunderstandings of Human Evolution </i>(Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2014).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<br /></div>
</div>
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<a href="file:///H:/Review%20of%20accidental.docx#_ednref2" name="_edn2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Lauren Schroeder and Rebecca Rogers
Ackermann, "Evolutionary processes shaping diversity across the Homo
lineage." <i>Journal of Human Evolution</i> 111(2017):1-17.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="file:///H:/Review%20of%20accidental.docx#_ednref3" name="_edn3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">John P. Jackson and David J Depew, <i>Darwinism,
Democracy, and Race: American Anthropology and Evolutionary Biology in the
Twentieth Century. </i>(New York: Taylor & Francis, 2017).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="file:///H:/Review%20of%20accidental.docx#_ednref4" name="_edn4" style="mso-endnote-id: edn4;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">William H. Tucker, <i>The Funding
of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund. </i>(Urbana, IL:
University of Illinois Press, 2002).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="file:///H:/Review%20of%20accidental.docx#_ednref5" name="_edn5" style="mso-endnote-id: edn5;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Angela Saini, <i>Superior: The
Return of Race Science </i>(Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2019).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="file:///H:/Review%20of%20accidental.docx#_ednref6" name="_edn6" style="mso-endnote-id: edn6;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Carleton</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Putnam, <i>Race and Reason </i>(Washington,
D. C.: Public Affairs Press, 1961.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="file:///H:/Review%20of%20accidental.docx#_ednref7" name="_edn7" style="mso-endnote-id: edn7;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Richard</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Herrnstein and Charles Murray, <i>The
Bell Curve </i>(New York: Free Press, 1994).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="file:///H:/Review%20of%20accidental.docx#_ednref8" name="_edn8" style="mso-endnote-id: edn8;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Julian S.
Huxley, "Evolution, biological and cultural." <i>Yearbook of
Anthropology</i> [Continued as <i>Current Anthropology</i>] 0:2-25 (1955).</span>
<a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/yearanth.0.3031134">https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/yearanth.0.3031134</a>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-15977861321809887482018-09-02T08:18:00.001-07:002018-09-03T06:43:07.315-07:00Aretha Franklin, John McCain, Luca Cavalli-Sforza. They always go in threes.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I love Aretha. Got nothing to say about her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">John McCain I’m a little sick of. He was definitely a “flawed
human” and will be remembered primarily for his flaws, which is probably better
than being remembered for his political ideologies and for his complicity in
producing the present political situation. He’s probably really only a great
statesman in nostalgic comparison to the current administration. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza raises a similar question about
the relative value of the flaws that compose our overall assessment of the
scientist. On this side of the ledger, a
brilliant population geneticist who literally wrote the book on the subject. Yup, even once signed my copy of
Cavalli-Sforza and Bodmer.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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And on that side of the ledger, a scientist who felt that
ethics were obstacles, and maintained that the interests of the people whose
blood he craved were anti-science, and thus irrelevant.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Gregor Mendel with just a dash of Mengele. (Godwin’s Law is notoriously
hard to transcend in conversations about bioethics, isn’t it?) But I suppose that’s the big question: How
much pollution, and of what sort, does
it take to go from “flawed human” to “flaw in a human form”? <o:p></o:p></div>
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How does Cavalli’s bioethics flaw stack up against Paul Kammerer’s
data falsification or Francisco Ayala’s sexual harassment? Discuss amongst
yourselves. </div>
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There was also that little problem of Cavalli's insistence that "race doesn't exist" while simultaneously reifying it by color-coding the indigenous inhabitants of the continents. Same intellectual flaw as Linnaeus, but higher tech.</div>
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In the meantime, here is a
review I wrote of a flawed biography of Cavalli a few years ago. It originally appeared in the <i>Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute</i>, 12:1001-1002 (2006).</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">S</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">tone</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">, L</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">inda </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">& P</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">aul </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">F. L</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">urquin</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">. </span><i><span style="font-family: , sans-serif;">A genetic<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: , sans-serif;">and cultural odyssey: the life and work of L. Luca<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: , sans-serif;">Cavalli-Sforza</span></i><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">.
xxi, </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">227 </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">pp.,
maps, figs, illus.,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">bibliogr.
New York: Columbia Univ. Press, </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">2005</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">£</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">29</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">.</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">50
</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">(cloth)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;"> This book attempts an intellectual biography<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">of
the renowned and controversial Stanford<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">geneticist
Luca Cavalli-Sforza. There ha</span><span style="font-family: MinionPro-Regular;">d </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">been<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">many
earlier attempts to use genetic data to<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">study
human microevolution, with varying<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">degrees
of success (see, e.g., </span><i><span style="font-family: , sans-serif;">Man </span></i><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-SemiSC;">28</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">: </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">153 </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">and<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-SemiSC;">28</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">: </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">171</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">,
</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">1928</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">);
many attempts to model cultural<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">evolution;
many retrievals of blood samples as<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">objects
from the field; and certainly many<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">attempts
to identify ethnohistoric events in<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">genetic
patterns. This book, however, never<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">actually
tells us what made Cavalli’s work<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">necessarily
better; it unfortunately has little<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">interest
in situating Cavalli’s work within the<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">history
of human genetics, or of genetic-based<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">anthropology.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;"> In the </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">1960</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">s Cavalli-Sforza began to study the<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">genetics
of African pygmies, probably inspired<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">by
James Neel’s work on Amazonians. His early<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">work
involved applying multivariate statistical<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">techniques
to genetic data from human<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">populations
to see who was more closely related<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">to
whom (assuming that genetic distance was<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">proportional
to time since splitting; that splitting<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">was
all that populations did; and that culturally<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">defined
human groups could unproblematically<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">be
considered as natural taxa); later he began to<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">model
the transmission of ideas from person to<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">person
(assuming they stay reasonably intact<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">and
do not mean different things to different<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">people
in different contexts); and finally he<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">dreamed
up a big science project for human<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">population
genetics – the Human Genome<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">Diversity
Project (HGDP) – which ultimately<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">failed
for its insufficient attention to issues in the<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">relevant
cognate fields, notably anthropology<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">and
bioethics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;"> Cavalli-Sforza has been a grand dilettante,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">in
all the senses of that word, over his entire<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">professional
life. He visits Central Africa as an<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">explorer
and studies its pygmies as a geneticist,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">not
as an anthropologist. He reconstructs the<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">Neolithic
as an antiquarian, not as an<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">archaeologist.
He models cultural processes as a<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">statistician,
not as an ethnologist. In all of these<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">cases,
Cavalli’s work has been high-profile but<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">low-impact
in anthropology. Does this require<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">an
explanation, or is it simply to be expected,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">like
the work of a spectrum of anthropological<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">dilettantes,
from Sir Grafton Elliot Smith through<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">Thor
Heyerdahl, Robert Ardrey, and Erich von<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">Däniken,
and right on up to Richard Dawkins<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">and
Jared Diamond?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;"> Consistently opposing scientific racism,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">Cavalli-Sforza
has nevertheless never quite<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">understood
the fundamental issues that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">ultimately
undid his HGDP and which have<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">recently
been admirably analysed by Jenny<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">Reardon
in </span><i><span style="font-family: , sans-serif;">Race to the finish </span></i><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">(</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">2005</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">).
He still<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">regrets
his opponents’ politicizing the scientific<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">project
– as if the programme to take, store, and<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">study
the blood of </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">700 </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">groups
of native peoples<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">(which
needs to be done before they go extinct,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">he
constantly reminded us) did not constitute an<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">overtly
political act.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;"> Significantly, no great burst of insights or<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">discoveries
have followed Cavalli-Sforza’s work in<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">anthropology,
as it followed, say, the physicists’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">early
forays into molecular genetics. If we are to<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">believe
the authors, the explanation lies in<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">American
anthropology’s recent infatuation with<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">postmodernism,
and its stand against science. In<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">lieu
of a relevant citation, they provide an<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">anecdote:
at the American Anthropological<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">Association
meetings in New Orleans a few years<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">ago,
a sharp spike in submissions led to an<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">unprecedented
rejection rate of sessions and<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">abstracts.
The authors of some of the rejected<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">papers
decided (rather unscientifically) that this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">was
an expression of the well-known (or<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">perhaps
widely imagined) hostility of American<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">anthropology
to science, and stormed off to<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">found
their own society and have their own<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">meeting.
But I was there, and that episode<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">was
never about ‘science’ at all; it was about<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">power
and paranoia and too many submitted<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">abstracts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;"> In fact, I have always thought that the root<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">of
Cavalli-Sforza’s failure to connect with the<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">broader
anthropological community is simply<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">that
most anthropologists simply do not know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">how
seriously to take research that can contrast<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">the
DNA of </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">64 </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">samples
o</span><span style="font-family: MinionPro-Regular;">f </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">‘Chinese ... living in<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">the
San Francisco Bay Area’, </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">94 </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">samples
from<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">‘two
groups of African pygmies’, and </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">110<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">samples
from ‘individuals of European origin<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">from
ongoing studies in our laboratories or<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">reported
in the literature’, and conclude<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">sweepingly
that ‘ancestral Europeans are<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">estimated
to be an admixture of </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">65</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">%
ancestral<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">Chinese
and </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">35</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">%
ancestral Africans’ (</span><i><span style="font-family: , sans-serif;">Proceedings<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span style="font-family: , sans-serif;">of the National Academy of Sciences, USA</span></i><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">, </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-SemiSC;">88</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">839</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">, </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">1991</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">).
However sophisticated the statistics,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">they
simply cannot transcend the limitations of<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">unsophisticated
epistemologies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;"> More of a testimonial than a critical<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">intellectual
biography, then, the book resists<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">engaging
with anyone who has had anything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">critical
to say about any aspect of Cavalli-Sforza’s<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">oeuvre:
Robert Sokal, for example, who<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">contradicted
Cavalli’s interpretation of European<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">prehistory;
Rebecca Cann, whose genetic data<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">suggested
a very different global prehistory than<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">Cavalli’s;
Debra Harry, an American Indian<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">activist
who contradicted the promises and<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">predictions
of Cavalli’s HGDP; Bryan Sykes, who<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">contradicted
Cavalli’s ‘wave of advance’ model;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">Masatoshi
Nei, who applied a different statistical<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">technique
than Cavalli to global allele<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">frequencies
and got a different phylogenetic tree<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">and
different branching dates; Ranajit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">Chakraborty,
who raised questions early on<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">about
the HGDP’s navigation of a cultural and<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">political
minefield in the large-scale collection of<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">native
blood, and was quickly dropped from its<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">inner
circle; or the numerous archaeologists<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">(</span><i><span style="font-family: , sans-serif;">pace </span></i><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">Lord Renfrew) who
have been critical of<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">Cavalli’s
work on the spread of agriculture, and<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">the
tenuous relationship between cryptic genetic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">patterns
and ethnohistory.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;"> Very oddly, the influential Harvard
geneticist<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">Richard
Lewontin’s famous </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">1972 </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">‘apportionment<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">of
human diversity’ is even assigned to Cavalli,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">and
Lewontin himself becomes just ‘another<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">researcher
(who confirmed Cavalli’s observation)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">[and]
did make a big deal out of this finding six<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">years
later’ (p. </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">196</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">).
The only sense I can make<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">of
the statement is that it may result from<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">Lewontin’s
recently televised comment, ‘If I were<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">a
South American Indian, I wouldn’t have let<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">them
take my blood’ (www.pbs.org/race),<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">which
may have put him in the ‘enemy camp’, if<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">one
sees the community of science in a<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">sufficiently
Manichaean fashion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;"> All of which is not to say that
Cavalli-Sforza<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">does
not deserve the testimonial; only that this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">biography
seems to replicate the very criticism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">that
one could reasonably level at the<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">anthropological
corpus of its subject: an<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">uncritical
and cavalier approach to history, a lot<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">of
bluster, and rather too little reflection.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">J</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">onathan </span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-Medium;">M</span><span style="font-family: StoneSansITC-MediumSC;">arks </span><i><span style="font-family: , sans-serif;">University
of North Carolina<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">at
Charlotte</span></i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Rest in Peace, Luca Cavalli-Sforza. </span></span></h3>
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<span style="color: #cc0000;"><b><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></b></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><b><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Seriously, please don't rise from the grave and become the vampire geneticist that the </span></span>Musée <span style="font-family: inherit;">de l'Homme warned us about a few years ago, because unfortunately you were precisely the one they had in mind.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-49303451981210352132018-03-23T13:45:00.001-07:002018-03-23T16:34:12.531-07:00There's an arrogant anti-intellectual hereditarian at Harvard who isn't Steven Pinker! Who would have thunk it?<div class="MsoNormal">
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Harvard geneticist David Reich had an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html" target="_blank">op-ed in the New York Times today</a> that I find stimulating. As <a href="http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/Leroi/" target="_blank">stupid genetics rants about human variation</a> go, actually this one is better than many of them. Reich positions
himself against <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/henry-harpending" target="_blank">Henry Harpending</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/01/dna-james-watson-scientist-selling-nobel-prize-medal" target="_blank">James Watson</a>, <a href="https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/humbiol/vol86/iss3/6/" target="_blank">Nicholas Wade</a>, and Hitler. So
far, so good.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But
Reich, like many geneticists writing about race, does not really know what he
is talking about. One of the major scientific accomplishments of the 20<sup>th</sup>
century was to distinguish the study of race from the study of human variation.
Reich works on the latter. But he writes about the former because (1) it’s more
interesting; and (2) he doesn’t understand the difference.<o:p></o:p></div>
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He
argues against two groups of non-existent scholars: Those who believe everyone
is the same, and those who believe genetics has no effect on cognition or behavior.
He condescendingly refers to the first category of strawmen as “well-meaning
people who deny the possibility of substantial biological differences among
human populations.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Anthropologists
have in fact been studying the differences among populations <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Histories-American-Physical-Anthropology-Twentieth/dp/0739135120" target="_blank">for a long time</a>.
At issue are its patterns. They are, in order: (1) cultural; (2) quantitative;
(3) clinal; and (4) local. If there were
no differences among populations, we would not have been able to find that.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The
other category of strawman involves the denial of genetic “influences on
behavior and cognition”. Once again,
nobody denies it; at issue are its patterns.
Time was, when geneticists were taught to distinguish between the causes
of variation within groups and between groups. The old Harvard geneticist
Richard <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00963402.1970.11457774" target="_blank">Lewontin </a>explained it back in the days of the racist psychologist
Arthur Jensen and the racist physicist <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Broken-Genius-Shockley-Electronic-Macmillan/dp/1403988153" target="_blank">William Shockley</a>. Suffice it to say that
Reich’s examples are all within-group examples.
(They are also correlations, which he implies are causative. Time was when geneticists were taught that
distinction as well.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 10.0pt;">This is why it is
important, even urgent, that we develop a candid and scientifically up-to-date
way of discussing any such differences, instead of sticking our heads in the
sand and being caught unprepared when they are found.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Yes, indeed. The
problem is that apparently he has not read widely enough to encounter such a
framework.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 10.0pt;">This is why knowledgeable
scientists must speak out. If we abstain from laying out a rational framework
for discussing differences among populations, we risk losing the trust of the
public and we actively contribute to the distrust of expertise that is now so
prevalent. We leave a vacuum that gets filled by pseudoscience, an outcome that
is far worse than anything we could achieve by talking openly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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I generally don’t use the word pseudoscience, since it’s
usually being propounded by scientists, and only visible in retrospect, like
phrenology and eugenics. Unfortunately
the biggest boost that racial pseudoscience has traditionally gotten is the
combination of arrogance and ignorance that geneticists have brought. Remember Bruce Lahn, who identified the genes
responsible for the backwardness of Africans in <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/309/5741/1720.full" target="_blank"><i>Science</i> </a>in 2005? It’s <u>not</u>
that, as Reich says, “discoveries could be misused to justify racism.” It’s
that racism inheres in the research, because the people doing it have often
been ignorant and myopic. They are technologists, not scholars; that is the
danger. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Reich fears, like <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/461726a" target="_blank">Lahn</a>, that the rest of us may be “anxious
about any research into genetic differences among populations.” Again, no, that’s not the problem at all. It’s
that we don’t want racists studying human variation any more than we would want
creationists studying bipedalism. We know that their intellectual prejudices
corrupt their research. It’s been going
on for a long, long time.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I can’t wait to read his new <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Who-Are-How-Got-Here/dp/110187032X" target="_blank">book </a>on
the racial invasions throughout prehistory.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And so I guess this reinforces that the answer to the question I posed last year is still "yes". It's a newer and more benign scientific racism - not the scientific racism of Harpending, Watson, and Wade - but whether it's ankle-deep or hip-deep, racist bullshit is still racist bullshit.</div>
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Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-90260813417521509122017-11-03T17:21:00.000-07:002017-11-03T17:33:31.196-07:00G. G. Simpson story #4<br />
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<a href="http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)31245-9" target="_blank">There's a new "species" of orangutan.</a> I hope it's very successful, because I love orangutans. But of course there is no discovery of a new species here; what's new is the recognition of between-group differences. In other words, we have a new highly endangered species of orangutan, and the old highly endangered species now has 800 fewer members than it had the other day. What it really means is that we have changed what we mean by "species" as primatology has become increasingly driven by conservation concerns. I've <a href="https://webpages.uncc.edu/~jmarks/pubs/MarksAT2007.pdf" target="_blank">written</a> about this (and in actual print, not in a fucking blog). In a nutshell, it represents <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1Uyl4YM_-rZOXA5UVpGbjdvNXM/view" target="_blank">the species as a biopolitical unit</a>.</div>
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Anyway, this got me thinking about a conversation I had with Dr. Simpson in 1983. </div>
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<br /></div>
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So one day I got him talking about the famous Classification and Human Evolution conference sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and
organized by Sherry Washburn in 1962. (Boy, talk about a manel! Click <a href="http://www.wennergren.org/history/classification-and-human-evolution" target="_blank">here</a> to see the participant list!) On
the one hand, Simpson and Mayr were there, and Simpson had just published <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Taxonomy-Biological-Gaylord-Simpson/dp/023109650X" target="_blank">Principles of Animal Taxonomy</a></i>. On the
other hand there was a lot of weird stuff said in front of these ostensible experts.
Simpson recalled being particularly agitated by Louis Leakey’s comment,
which seemed to suggest that there was no reason to even try and do animal
taxonomy well. From Leakey’s published
text, <o:p></o:p></div>
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<h4>
Since the names which we apply, <i>at any and every level in the taxonomic sequence</i> are inevitably
arbitrary and artificial, it does not, I believe, matter what we decide to do,
provided only that the majority of those who are concerned in the classification,
at any given time, are agreed as to how
they will use the classification system that is set up and provided they are
clear as to what they mean by the different names that are applied [italics in
original].</h4>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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“I thought that was about the most foolish thing I had ever
heard anyone say about taxonomy,” recalled Simpson. I expected a punch line, and waited for it. “Then,”
he continued, “Morris Goodman spoke.” </div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Relevant Literature</div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Hagen, J. B. "Descended from Darwin? George Gaylord Simpson, Morris Goodman, and Primate Systematics." In <i>Descended from Darwin: Insights into the History of Evolutionary Studies</i>, 1900-1970, edited by Joe Cain and Michael Ruse, 93-109. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2009.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Leakey, L. "East African Fossil
Hominoidea and the Classification within This Super-Family." In <i>Classification
and Human Evolution</i>, edited by S. L. Washburn, 32-49. Chicago: Aldine,
1963.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Simpson, G. G. <i>Principles of Animal Taxonomy</i>. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Sommer, M. "History in the Gene: Negotiations between Molecular and Organismal Anthropology." <i>Journal of the History of Biology</i> 41, no. 3 (2008): 473-528.</span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 0px;">And always consult </span><a href="http://anthropomics.blogspot.com/2011/04/first-lecture-on-primate-taxonomy-with.html" target="_blank">this</a><span style="text-indent: 0px;"><a href="http://anthropomics.blogspot.com/2011/04/first-lecture-on-primate-taxonomy-with.html" target="_blank"> blog post</a> before teaching primate taxonomy, you ex-ape!</span></div>
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Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-16755474920617999432017-04-04T02:13:00.001-07:002018-03-24T08:55:47.856-07:00Who wants Charles Murray to speak, and why?<div class="MsoNormal">
Some years ago, I wrote a broad <a href="http://webpages.uncc.edu/~jmarks/pubs/bellcurve.pdf" target="_blank">critique </a>of <i>The Bell Curve</i>, that old Social
Darwinist psychology tome from 1994 by the hereditarian psychologist Richard
Herrnstein and conservative political theorist Charles Murray. It was in a very
nice collection edited by Besteman and Gusterson (who ought to be a law firm,
but are actually cultural anthropologists), called <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Why-Americas-Pundits-Wrong-Anthropologists/dp/0520243560"><i>Why America’s Top Pundits are Wrong</i>. </a><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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A few
years later, Paul Erickson and Liam Murphy included it in their reader on the
history of anthropological theory. In fact, the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Readings-History-Anthropological-Theory-Third/dp/1442600691" target="_blank">third edition of that reader</a> (2010)
actually began with Marx and ended with Marks.
That was pretty cool. The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Readings-History-Anthropological-Theory-Fourth/dp/1442606568" target="_blank">fourth edition</a>
(2013) also started with Marx and included Marks, but had a couple of more
readings after Marks. <o:p></o:p></div>
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They
kicked me out of the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Readings-History-Anthropological-Theory-Fifth/dp/1442636874/" target="_blank">fifth edition</a> (2016). No hard feelings, though, because I’m cited in
their companion volume, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/History-Anthropological-Theory-Erickson-2016-10-21/dp/B01MT30XKP" target="_blank">A History ofAnthropological Theory</a></i>. But I know
why they did it, too. My essay was very dated.
It was criticizing a twenty-year-old bit of pseudoscience, which only old
people remember. Richard Herrnstein is
dead. Charles Murray is just a distant
irrelevancy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Well,
the joke’s on them. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Charles Murray is back again. He had surfaced briefly a couple of years
ago, when Nicholas Wade’s racist anti-science bullshit called <i>A Troublesome Inheritance</i> was published.
That’s the book that stimulated an issue
of critical, negative reviews in the scholarly journal <i>Human Biology</i>, by the
likes of <a href="http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.13110/humanbiology.86.3.0215" target="_blank">Agustin Fuentes</a>, <a href="http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.13110/humanbiology.86.3.0227" target="_blank">Jennifer Raff</a>, <a href="http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.13110/humanbiology.86.3.0233" target="_blank">Charles Roseman</a>, <a href="http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.13110/humanbiology.86.3.0241" target="_blank">Laura Stein</a>, and your
humble <a href="http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.13110/humanbiology.86.3.0221" target="_blank">narrator</a>. It also stimulated a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/books/review/letters-a-troublesome-inheritance.html" target="_blank">letter in the New York Times</a> by nearly 150
geneticists repudiating Wade’s invocation of their scientific field. And they ought to know.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In fact, pretty much the only
mainstream review of Nicholas Wade that was positive was the one in the Wall
Street Journal, by Charles Murray. So on
this side, we have the biological anthropologists and human geneticists in
accord that Wade’s racist screed is a perversion of the relevant sciences, in
which they are, for all intents and purposes, experts. And on the other side, the political
theorist Charles Murray, who seems to
wish that the "science" in Wade’s book were true, regardless of what the data show and
the experts think. That’s pretty
anti-science. It’s just like the
creationists, anti-vaxxers, and climate-change-deniers. What do they all have
in common? They like to argue the science with the scientists.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
It’s like mansplaining, only less
gendered. Moronsplaining.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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So Charles Murray is still out
there, still sponsored by the right-wing think-tank called the American
Enterprise Institute, and ever ready to publicly hawk a book of pseudoscience
that the scientific community repudiates. Still ready to peddle his own antiquated
ideologies about rich people being genetically smarter than poor people. And
since social programs designed to assist the poor are doomed to failure because
the poor are innately stupid, they should be abolished.<o:p></o:p></div>
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To the
extent that class and race are correlated in the US, Murray’s ideas about the
poor being genetically stupid make an easy transition into the world of scientific
racism. And it wasn’t accidental. <i>The
Bell Curve</i> cited literature from <i>The
Mankind Quarterly</i>, which no mainstream scholar cites, because it is an
unscholarly racist journal, supported by <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Funding-Scientific-Racism-Wickliffe-Pioneer/dp/0252074637/" target="_blank">the Pioneer Fund, that wacko right-wing philanthropy</a> that has thrown money at wacko eugenicists, racists,
segregationists, and hereditarians of all stripes, since its inception in 1937
under the aegis of the wacko eugenicist Harry Laughlin. <i>The Bell Curve</i> also cited the work of that racist wacko
psychologist Philippe Rushton – who believed that the mean IQ of Africans is
genetically set at 70, and that Africans had been r-selected for high
reproductive rate and low intelligence – and then pre-emptively defended his
wacko racist ideas in an appendix. Even
the wacko evolutionary psychologists distanced themselves from Rushton,
appreciating the toxicity of his ideas: “Bad science and virulent racial
prejudice drip like pus from nearly every page of this despicable book,” wrote David Barash in the journal <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347285701431" target="_blank"><i>Animal Behaviour</i>.</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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But Charles
Murray wasn’t smart enough to see it. He
couldn’t see the virulent racial prejudice in the work he was defending. Or else he was blinded by his own
prejudices. It’s age-old bind: ideologue
or idiot?<o:p></o:p></div>
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And now
the alt-right has gained political ascendancy, and Charles Murray is on a
speaking tour. And he gets shouted down
and driven off of Middlebury College.
But he gets invited to other colleges and his message is heard. <o:p></o:p></div>
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He is invited to Notre Dame by a
political science professor named Vincent Phillip Muñoz, and is civilly and effectively rebutted by <span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Agustín </span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVDeBL6FuP0" target="_blank">Fuentes</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
But let’s back up a clause or
two. Who is inviting Charles Murray to
speak at their college, and why? At
Middlebury, he was invited by Allison Stanger, a professor of international
politics and economics, who told her story in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/13/opinion/understanding-the-angry-mob-that-gave-me-a-concussion.html" target="_blank">New York Times</a>, as wanting to
engage with his ideas. Likewise, <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/03/22/why_i_invited_charles_murray_to_speak_at_notre_dame_133401.html" target="_blank">Mu<span style="color: black;">ñ</span>oz</a> argues that “Murray makes an important
argument that should be heard”. Even the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/opinion/smothering-speech-at-middlebury.html" target="_blank">New York Times agrees</a> he should say
his piece.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’m
going to disagree. Charles Murray talks
science that is bogus, and political philosophy that is evil, and uses one to
justify the other. He doesn’t need to be
heard by anybody, any more than a creationist, or a pedophile, or an
anti-vaxxer deserves to be heard. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So this
is what I find confusing. In the free marketplace of ideas in contemporary
political science, we still entertain the scientific hypothesis that the poor
deserve what little they have because they are genetically stupider than the
rich? First of all, I don’t know any geneticist who agrees to the the second
clause. A hundred years ago, geneticists
believed that. Since the Great Depression, however (which democratized poverty),
not too many geneticists have believed it.
(The late <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/henry-harpending" target="_blank">Henry Harpending</a> did. That was probably an example of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle" target="_blank">Planck’s Principle</a>.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Rather,
nearly all contemporary geneticists seem to think that the old lefty J. B. S.
Haldane more or less got it right when he said, “The average degree of
resemblance between father and son is too small to justify the waste of human
potentialities which an hereditary aristocratic system entails.” Let me translate:
You inherit a lot of stuff, and some of that stuff is genetic. But a lot of the most important stuff – like,
privilege – is not. And it is a big mistake to confuse the two categories. Consequently,
if you are committed to the proposition that genetic properties are more
important than everything else, that is a moral proposition not supported by
genetics itself, you smug bastard.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Class advantages are very real, but they aren’t genetic. Doesn’t everybody know that?<o:p></o:p></div>
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I think
it’s kind of weird that political scientists would be willing to entertain
ostensibly scientific ideas – in this case about human genetics – that the
relevant scientists themselves do not take seriously.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> But Charles
Murray isn’t a geneticist. He is a
genetics fanboy. Imagine that you were a professional magician, with a
three-year-old child trying to convince you, and everyone else around, that
everything important in life is caused by magic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> That
said, however, don’t think I’m going to let geneticists off the hook so easily.
Sad to say, there are, and always have been, opportunistic geneticists who
recognize the self-interest in telling the public that everything important in
their lives is genetic. Over a century ago, there was Reginald C. Punnett,
inventor of the eponymous Square, who ended the first English textbook on
Mendelian genetics with the conclusion that <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=PH4ZAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">“progress is question of breeding rather than of pedagogics; a matter of gametes, not training…. [T]he creature is not made, but born.”</a> The American
geneticist Charles Davenport jumped on the Mendelian bandwagon, and soon
explained class differences just as Charles Murray does. But rather than speak of cryptic factors, as
Murray does, Davenport isolated the
cause of those class differences in the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=OFAQAAAAYAAJ" target="_blank">gene for feeblemindedness</a>. Rich white people from northern Europe had
one allele; everybody else had another. But whether you speak of specific genes
for feebleminded or cryptic genetic factors that cause the poor to be stupid,
it’s still fake science.</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div>
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<i style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="font-family: inherit;"> The Bell Curve</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">
capitalized on the popularity of the Human Genome Project in putting forth its
thesis about the genetic stupidity of poor people in the 1990s. Some geneticists repudiated it, but others
recognized, as the geneticists of the 1920s did, that it was good for the
business of genetics. When </span><a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/48/1243/419" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">Science</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">
reviewed Madison Grant’s </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">The Passing of
the Great Race</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> – a classic of American racist thought, which was read in defense
of Karl Brandt at the Nuremberg trials to show that the Germans had simply been
doing what the Americans were advocating – it concluded with a sobering
thought: “This is a book that will … help to disseminate the ever-growing
conviction among scientific men of the supreme importance of heredity.” Sure, the
genetic theory in question might be inane, might be evil, and it might be
false, but it definitely is good for business. More recently, the Human Genome
Project was backed up with all sorts of purple prose about how your DNA
sequence was the most important thing about you: </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">The Code of Codes</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Book-Man-Project-Discover-Heritage/dp/0195114876" target="_blank">The Book of Man</a></i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, and the like. They knew it
was bullshit then, and that’s why there is such interest in epigenetics </span><a href="http://anthropomics2.blogspot.com/2016/05/epigenetics-as-epiphenomenal.html" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">now</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> These geneticists are reprehensible, because they
provide the hereditarian soil for scientific racism. The geneticists may not themselves be
racists, but their idiotic statements about what they think their knowledge
applies to have indeed sometimes crossed over.
James D. Watson, who knows more about DNA than you do, caused a stir a
decade ago, </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Avoid-Boring-People-Lessons-Science/dp/0375727140" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">when he said</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> that different groups of people have different “powers
of reason”. The rest of the genetics
community disagreed, and challenged his own powers of reason.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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And here
is the newest exhibit. A video from the famous mouse genetics lab in Bar
Harbor, Maine. It tells you about
genetics and genomics, and how genetics controls things like your eye color and good taste. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/C9aykwOpxns/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/C9aykwOpxns?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Wait, what? (It’s at 0:15). Good
taste is genetic?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Well she was a bit coy about it,
wasn’t she? She delivered the line with
a giggle, and the disclaimer, “maybe even good taste”.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Geneticists know that good taste is
not genetic, because good taste is context-dependent and locally-specific.
Geneticists of the 1920s knew that it was in their short term interests to have
the public believe that any and all shit was innate. But the field evolved, and can’t afford to
devolve.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
It would be nice if we could get
beyond genetics-vs-culture, so we could talk more comprehensively about “embodiment”. But the hereditarians and racists won’t allow
it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<b>We should not be debating the
innate intelligence of black people, or of the poor, on college campuses or
anywhere. It is a morally corrupt
pseudoscientific proposition. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
It's like inviting a creationist or an inventor of a perpetual motion machine. The university should not be a censor, but it sure as hell is a gatekeeper. At this point, sometimes they go all radical epistemological relativist and and say that all ideas deserve a hearing. But all ideas don't deserve a hearing. The universe of things that do get discussed and debated on college campuses is rather small in proportion to the ideas that people have debated over the years. Should we stone witches? No. Might the speed of light be 140,000 miles per second, rather than 186,000? No. Might the universe just be made up of earth, air, water, and fire? No. Might Africans just be genetically stupid? Might people who want to debate this point have their fundamental civic morality called into question instead?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bell-Curve-Wars-Intelligence-Republic/dp/0465006930" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FvGE9fkxiwM/WOLzDaS_ewI/AAAAAAAAARg/Y2Sl8K1nzoMbqdEuQqIQY_00M9lh6HXDwCLcB/s200/bwll%2Bcurve%2Bwars.jpg" width="125" /></a><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bell-Curve-Debate-Russell-Jacoby/dp/0812925874" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0RDS869FUNQ/WOLz1RsU8uI/AAAAAAAAARo/VWrM2wxkHeIO2zk-u_UrQVPEPWubjRaXgCLcB/s200/bell%2Bcurve%2Bdebate.jpg" width="126" /></a>This also raises bigger
problems. Geneticists that mislead the
public about what human genetics explains. College faculty that can’t identify
pseudoscience. There were, after all,
any number of serious refutations of every aspect of <i>The Bell Curve</i>. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Let me give the last word, then, to
Allison Stanger, who invited Charles Murray out to Middlebury College and got
roughed up a bit, because she thinks that the innate intelligence of black people
ought to be a debatable topic; which apparently ruined the pleasure she ordinarily
derives from tormenting marginalized people. As she casually explained it in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/03/education/edlife/middlebury-divided-campus-charles-murray-free-speech.html" target="_blank">New York Times</a>:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">I had tough questions on both the
controversial “Bell Curve,” in which he partly blames genetics for test score
differences among races ... But the event had to be shut down, lest the ensuing
dialogue inflict pain on the marginalized.</span></blockquote>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
-----------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
[Note: Apparently Stanger herself did not invite Murray, but “welcomed
the opportunity to moderate a talk with him on campus.” In any case, we still disagree on the central issue of whether the innate intellectual capacities of non-white people should be a subject
open for debate on campuses in 2017.]<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-16574103730400064042016-09-18T04:12:00.001-07:002016-09-18T05:31:47.921-07:00Annoying books, cont'd: Matt Ridley's "The Evolution of Everything"<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Matt Ridley's book, <i>The
Evolution of Everything</i>, answers the question, “What if everything in the
universe were to be understood as differentially-replicating elements, whose
bestest alternatives have been tested in free competition and have thrived to
produce all the good stuff in the world?” The first few chapters deal primarily
with the evolution of the natural order, and the remaining dozen with the
evolution of socio-cultural forms, and the big message is: Systems
spontaneously create and maintain themselves efficiently without governmental
interference.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The meaning of evolution is that all social planning is bad.
In fact, it’s creationist. Leave it all
alone, and the cream will rise naturally to the top, as it always has, and the
future will be as rosy as the past.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the midst of all this cry for freedom and deregulation –
<a href="http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2015/11/30/matt-ridley-and-benny-peisers-misleading-guide-to-the-climate-debate/">including the environment</a>, by the way, which the author <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4443252.ece">apparently believes</a> can
also <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/15/matt-ridley-accused-of-lobbying-uk-government-on-behalf-of-coal-industry">take care of itself</a> – we encounter the occasional grudging admission that such
freedom might not actually evolve the best of all possible worlds. “The right
thing to do about poor, hungry and fecund people is to give them hope,
opportunity, freedom, education, food and medicine, including of course
contraception” (p. 214). But Ridley never mentions how this “doing” and “giving”
will come about, when his entire social desideratum involves allowing the free
market of natural selection to work without any centralized plan. Perhaps I can
be forgiven, then, if I doubt the author’s sincerity when he sheds a few tears
on behalf of common folk.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Paleontologist <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Jay-Gould-Politics-Evolution/dp/1591027187">Stephen Jay Gould</a> and historian <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Darwinism-American-Thought-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0807055034">Richard Hofstadter</a> are helpfully identified as Marxists, although the latter’s identity
is merged with that of the cognitive scientist <a href="https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567">Douglas Hofstadter</a>, who may or
may not be a Marxist. Just in case you’re worried about who the Marxists
are. <br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Apparently
the author is.</span><span style="line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="line-height: 107%;">Perhaps his obsession
with Marxists arises from the fact that he is a Conservative member of the
House of Lords, holding the rank of Viscount.</span><span style="line-height: 107%;">
</span><span style="line-height: 107%;">Much of the book consists of historical vignettes, but Ridley’s history
is notably bloodless; one without colonialism, slavery, destitution, or
exploitation, on which Marxist histories tend to harp.</span><span style="line-height: 107%;"> </span> It’s a happy history, of free trade, free
markets, and free progress. In other
words, someone whose ancestors were busily rigging the system so that your
ancestors</span> and mine would suffer, now wants to tell you that the system works
fine, so leave it alone. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I actually found myself trying to suppress a sense of moral
outrage as I worked my way through this book. Ridley idealizes a system of
social behavior that runs on greed, maximizes inequality, and fails to engage
with issues like justice and fairness.
It is a troubling caricature of Darwinism, and I frankly came to see the
book as an abuse of science, as an attempt to rationalize an evil social
philosophy by recourse to nature. “The whole idea of social mobility,” he
explains, “is to find talent in the disadvantaged, to find people who have the
nature but have missed the nurture” (p. 166). Well, no. Actually the idea of social mobility is to
reduce the overall proportion of privileged, wealthy douchebags who think that they owe
their station in life to their inherent virtues.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You know what? Fuck him. Fuck his ancestors too. What some inbred twit thinks the about the
evolution of human society is about as relevant as what a raccoon thinks. The
reason this kind of pervy-Darwinistic thought was repudiated many decades ago
is that it was recognized as the vulgar self-interested bio-politics of the
rich and powerful. If there is a Darwinian lesson to be extracted from the
history of the 20<sup>th</sup> century, it is probably that the poor require constant
protection from the ideologies of the overwealthy and underpigmented. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-62366427483785164082016-09-10T04:49:00.003-07:002016-09-10T04:52:04.988-07:00Brief review of Tom Wolfe's "The Kingdom of Speech"<div class="MsoNormal">
I really wanted to like this book, for the simple reason that any book that the obnoxious fruifly geneticist <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/his-white-suit-unsullied-by-research-tom-wolfe-tries-to-take-down-charles-darwin/2016/08/31/8ee6d4ee-4936-11e6-90a8-fb84201e0645_story.html">Jerry Coyne is that contempuous of</a>, can't be all bad. But sadly, it really is all bad.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Tom Wolfe's new book is indeed as bad as advertised, but it
isn't creationist. His big idea is taken from linguist Daniel Everett
(<i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Language-Cultural-Daniel-L-Everett/dp/0307473805">Language: The Cultural Tool</a></i>), that language isn't a biological
autapomorphy, like eyebrows or valgus knees, but a discovery or invention, like
bifacial handaxes. The possibility that the dichotomy might be a false one
apparently occurs to neither of them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If it were not in some sense a biological feature, then it is
difficult to explain why our vocal tract differs from a chimpanzee’s; and why
you can’t teach a chimp to talk, as psychologists from Robert Yerkes on down
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Simian-Tongue-Debate-Animal-Language/dp/0226702243">have tried and failed to do</a>. And if it
were not a cultural feature, then it is difficult to explain why people speak
so many different more-or-less equivalent languages, rather than just <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+11:1&version=KJV">one really good language</a>. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first half of the book is a child’s romp through the
career of Charles Darwin, written in an overtly anachronistic, and frankly
sophomoric, style. The second half of the book leaps to savage <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1?ie=UTF8&text=Noam+Chomsky&search-alias=books&field-author=Noam+Chomsky&sort=relevancerank">Noam Chomsky</a>. You
can get distracted by Wolfe giving Ian Tattersall a post at MIT (p. 149), or awarding
Joseph Dalton Hooker a knighthood 20 years before Queen Victoria did (p. 32), or
his antiquated use of “<a href="http://www.jstor.org/journal/man">man</a>” as a generic term for the species, but it really
isn’t even worth the time. “Even the smartest
apes don’t have thoughts, “ he writes on p. 162, “so much as conditioned
responses to certain primal pressures.” Who knew there were any real Cartesians left?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What ties the two halves of this short book together is not
so much the history of linguistics (no <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Course-General-Linguistics-Classic-Reprint/dp/B0087EXMME">Saussure</a>, and a passing mention of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Language-Introduction-Study-Speech-Guides/dp/0486437442">Edward Sapir</a>), but the foregrounded information that science is a social activity,
with rhetoric, persuasion, and alliance as components. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Why-Not-Scientist-Anthropology-Knowledge/dp/0520259602">Somebody</a> really ought to
write a book about that.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Wolfe’s rhetoric is mainly deployed to boost the work of Everett,
who seems to be rather a better linguist than ethnographer. He says that the Pirahã language lacks the
feature of recursion, which Chomsky believes that all languages have. This ought to be little more than classic “Bongo-Bongoism”
– the ethnographic demonstration that the mythical people of “Bongo-Bongo” lack
whatever facet of human behavior all people are supposed to have, as
first-generation ethnographers aggressively liked to point out a century ago. But when
Everett writes about the overall simplicity and primitiveness of the Pirahã language
and lifeways, Wolfe notes that the published comments in <i><a href="http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/431525">Current Anthropology</a></i> were dubious. “They all had their reservations
about this and that,” Wolfe writes (p. 119). But “this and that” were actually the articulated
doubts about the basic competence of Everett’s ethnography. That is serious, because it means that the
stuff being said about the Pirahã is not quite reliable enough to be considered
as anthropological data. They “had preserved a civilization virtually unchanged
for thousands, godknew-how-many-thousands, of years” (p. 113). When Wolfe calls
them “the most primit – <i>er</i>,
indigenous – tribe known to exist on earth” (p. 142), the sophisticated reader may
be forgiven for reading it as romanticized pseudo-anthropological nonsense. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After all, every sophisticated reader knows that the most primit - <i>er</i>, indigenous tribe known to exist on earth are really the <strike>KhoiSan</strike></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<strike>Yanomamo </strike></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<strike>Hadza </strike></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<strike>Ache</strike></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<strike>Tasaday</strike>. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Oh shit, maybe these guys really <i>are</i>!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Anyway, without differentiating between (vocal) speech and (cognitive)
language, Wolfe eventually deduces that speech is what made us significantly
different from other animals, something that “no licensed savant had ever
pointed ... out before”. So you had
better not look too hard for licensed <a href="https://archive.org/details/orangoutangsiveh00tyso">savants pointing it out</a>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Wolfe concludes with a radical taxonomic proposition: that
humans are cognitively so distinct that we should be alone in a higher
taxonomic category. If you don’t know
that <a href="http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/yearanth.0.3031134">Julian Huxley</a> said as much in the 1950s, and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Symbolic-Species-Co-evolution-Language-Brain/dp/0393317544">Terry Deacon</a> (1997) more
recently – at the subkingdom and phylum levels, respectively – then you might
find the suggestion original or threatening. It’s actually neither. It’s just a
matter of how much or how little you choose to privilege phylogeny when
classifying. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">All in all, the wrong stuff. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-1829075075562074142016-05-11T06:23:00.001-07:002016-05-11T06:55:29.213-07:00Epigenetics as epiphenomenal<div class="MsoNormal">
There is
an interesting intellectual war going on right now, between scientist/author
Siddhartha Mukherjee and molecular geneticists.
It was precipitated by Mukherjee’s recent <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/02/breakthroughs-in-epigenetics">article </a>in The New Yorker on the
wonderful world of epigenetics.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Geneticist
Jerry Coyne <a href="https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/05/05/the-new-yorker-screws-up-big-time-with-science-researchers-criticize-the-mukherjee-piece-on-epigenetics/">objected stridently</a> to the
New Yorker essay. Now, Coyne is one of those people who thinks that a real
scientist should not be able to tell a human from an ape, and has <a href="https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/11/02/wrongheaded-anthropologist-claims-that-humans-arent-apes/">chastised me</a>
in the past for being able to. Such
people are either <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95xn400sdC8">deaf, dumb, and blind</a>, or else they don’t think that the
choice to privilege genetic relations (which make it hard to tell humans from
apes) over ecological relations (where it is really, really easy to tell humans
from apes) requires a justification. In fact, in the 1960s, <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/146/3651/1535">G. G. Simpson</a> demanded such a justification, and never got one. Historians like Marianne <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10739-008-9150-3#page-1">Sommer</a>, Joel <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10739-009-9219-7">Hagen</a>, and Michael <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1004257523100?LI=true">Dietrich</a> have been writing about it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mukherjee
is <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/researcher-under-fire-for-new-yorker-epigenetics-article-1.19874">responding </a>to his critics.
Anyway, since I already knew that Coyne is apparently not very good at
confronting his intellectual prejudices, I thought it might be a good time to reconsider
just what is at stake intellectually in this epigenetics business. I talked about this a little in my <i>Annual Review of Anthropology</i> <a href="http://webpages.uncc.edu/~jmarks/pubs/2013AnnRevAnth.pdf">article</a> a
few years ago. But actually it’s a nice
example of how understanding the science can be helped by asking the lawyerly
question “Cui bono?” (who benefits?). And
further, it helps to show that this isn’t a controversy of biology, but of biopolitics.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Point
#1</b>: Human genetics is invariably biopolitical. To see this point, you must
grapple with the history of human genetics.
Not the history as told by scientists, the time-line approach that
begins, “Once upon a time there was Archibald Garrod...” – but the history as
told by historians. That’s the history
that looks at what scientists said to the public, and at the associated social relations. The twentieth century, after all, began with
<a href="https://archive.org/details/heredityinrelati00dave">eugenics </a>and ended with “<a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/286/5439/409">genohype</a>” – which no sensible geneticist wants to
defend today.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And we
nearly span the century when we compare the concluding statement of the first
textbook of <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=PH4ZAAAAYAAJ">Mendelism </a>(1905) with the director of the Human Genome Project’s
comment to <a href="http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,957263,00.html">Time Magazine</a> in 1989. First, the eponymous Reginald C. Punnett,
remembered in science today for his square:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
“As our knowledge of heredity clears
and the mists of superstition are dispelled, there grows upon us with an ever
increasing and relentless force the conviction that the creature is not made
but born.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ummm,
WTF? Granted, genetics was important
enough to him to write a book about, but the message that “the creature is not
made but born” is certainly not its central message. Its central message is about <i><u>how</u></i> the creature gets born – not that
the facts of birth are the only important things about it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Compare
James Watson: “We used to think our fate was in the stars. Now we know, in large measure, our fate is in
our genes.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now, I
know, throwing out Watson quotes is hardly even fun any more, and nobody in
science really believes him. But let me
just remind you that he knows more about DNA than you do, and he has a fucking
Nobel Prize. What have you got?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What these two thoughts have in common, 84 years and a whole
lot of data and theory apart, is their biopolitics. They are saying something very important, and
it’s not about fruitflies, nor is it about the ABO blood group. It’s about your lot in life. It’s about who you are, and what you can aspire
to become. And it’s a fairly pessimistic note, if your origins are humble: You
can never transcend you ancestors. Read it:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
The creature is not
made, but born.</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Our fate is in our
genes.</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Your personal
development is strictly limited by your ancestry.</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now, that is a message that resonates far beyond genetics. It is familiar to readers of 1994's <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bell-Curve-Intelligence-Structure-Paperbacks/dp/0684824299">The Bell Curve</a></i>,
for instance, whose authors were a psychologist and a political theorist. It is there in the 19<sup>th</sup> century political
writings of <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=JeM_1BCeffAC">Arthur de Gobineau</a>. It is
also familiar to readers of pre-modern geneticists, such as August Weismann and
Francis <a href="https://archive.org/details/hereditarygeniu03galtgoog">Galton</a>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What is
interesting in the present context is the broad opposition to that pessimistic
statement, and the alternative scientific venues for studying how the creature
is indeed made, our fates are not in our genes, and we can become different
from our ancestors.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One such
venue, which was popular in the late 19<sup>th</sup> and early 20<sup>th</sup>
centuries, was the inheritance of acquired characteristics, often known as
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Political-Biology-Heredity-Eugenics-Epigenetics/dp/1137377712">Lamarckism</a>. This of course petered out with the suicide of Paul Kammerer in the 1920s, but has <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dialectical-Biologist-Richard-Levins/dp/067420283X">never been entirely buried</a>. Bipedalism, after all, was a behavioral choice made by our ancestors, for which we no longer have a choice.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another venue for studying how we are made is <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=4tUKAAAAIAAJ">culture</a>, which eventually superseded eugenics as the favored mode of
improving society in the 20<sup>th</sup> century.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And
still another is <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1954.56.5.02a00050/pdf">human adaptability</a>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So over
the course of the 20<sup>th</sup> century, we actually learned that, despite
the biopolitical rhetoric of geneticists, there were in fact several significant ways in
which you could become different from your ancestors and not necessarily be
limited by them.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The scientistic
rhetoric turned once again with the Human Genome Project in the 1980s. To get
that program off the ground, molecular geneticists groomed the public with
sound-bites like James Watson’s. Then
(like the eugenicists of the 1920s) they embarked on a wildly successful public education program,
to convince taxpayers that three billion dollars to sequence the human genome would
be the best three billion dollars we ever spent.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And a
wave of purple scientific prose flowed in its wake. Remember “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mapping-Code-Project-Choices-Editions/dp/0471503835">Mapping the Code</a>”? That’s still my favorite mixed metaphor. And “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mapping-Our-Genes-Project-Medicine/dp/0525248773">Mapping our Genes</a>”? And “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Human-Blueprint-Unlock-Secret-Genetic/dp/B002E0R3AE">The Human Blueprint</a>”? And “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Book-Man-Discover-Genetic-Heritage/dp/0349106207">The Book of Man</a>”? How
about “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Code-Codes-Scientific-Social-Project/dp/0674136462">The Code of Codes</a>”? (I still don't know what that actually means, except that it is vaguely evocative of Jesus as "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNlzMcOT8P0">King of Kings</a>," and of The Godfather, as "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Godfather-Signet-Mario-Puzo/dp/0451167716/">capo di tutti capi</a>".) Remember how
the Human Genome Project was the most important scientific revolution since
Galileo and we were going to know what it meant to be human and cure all genetic
diseases and stuff?</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ah well,
the important thing is, they got the money.
So what if the public transiently believed that your DNA code was the
most important thing about you? Hey, it's just a hypothesis. And it might be true, right?</div>
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</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let’s
now answer the question “Cui bono?” Who
benefits by having the educated public misbelieve that your DNA code is the
most important thing about you? Two principal
groups – just as in the 1920s. First
off, the one percent – those now favored by nature, not merely by avarice or luck or unscrupulousness - and who are inclined
to try and give their own kids a financial leg up in this dog-eat-dog world, rather than redistribute the wealth in the form of public goods and services that
might permit others to compete more fairly in that world. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And
second, the molecular geneticists – the ones now studying the most important
thing about you. Your DNA code. In fact, anything’s DNA code. It’s also The Frog Blueprint and The Book of
Frog. That is <b>Point #2</b>: It is in the interests of the molecular geneticists to have you believe that everything important about you lies in the field of molecular genetics.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That is a significant convergence of interests with the one percent. Back to
history.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By the
late 1930s, the developmental geneticist C. H. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=QpbDCwAAQBAJ">Waddington</a> was distinguishing between
the kind of information in a human cell that distinguishes one person from
another (genetic) and the kind of information that distinguishes one cell type
from another, with identical DNA sequences (epigenetic). Waddington’s
reputation had been all but eclipsed in genetics, when Stephen Jay Gould
revived him in evolutionary biology, specifically in the call for an
evolutionary science of organismal form, rather than the reductive evolutionary
science that was normative in the 1980s.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Epigenetics
is a label for the non-reductive study of heredity. You are no longer just your ancestors’ DNA
sequences, but also their methylation and transcriptional regulation
patterns. But more significantly, your genetics
is far more conservative than your epigenetics.
Your “epigenome” is responsive to the environment; that is to say, it adapts. And it does so far more rapidly and directly
than your genome does. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That extends
our list of alternative scientific venues for studying your non-DNA-sequence-based self just a bit. In addition to the study of possible Lamarckian
inheritance, culture, and human adaptability, there is now epigenetics. In other words, the significance of
epigenetics lies in its biopolitical role as a reaction against the genetic
determinism, or <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=64jdjwEACAAJ">hereditarianism</a>, that accompanied the Human Genome Project.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There
is, in fact, a lot more at stake than just transcription factors. The smart geneticists already know that.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Waddington,
it turns out, was a very smart one. He
was a broad intellectual, and actually wrote a book about <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=7nNQAAAAMAAJ">art</a> at the end of his
life. I don’t think he was that big of a
Marxist, as Mukherjee suggests, although he was certainly left of center
politically, and was instrumental in getting the famous University of Edinburgh
science studies program going (known as the “strong programme”). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Waddington’s
biology was also always very well-informed anthropologically. When he and his wife visited New York they
always stayed with Margaret Mead. Why?
Because Waddington’s BFF from college days at Cambridge was Mead’s third
husband, Gregory <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=HewJbnQmn1gC">Bateson</a>. (Waddington’s
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Humphrey">daughter </a>is a distinguished Cambridge social anthropologist.) The major influence on Bateson and on
Waddington was not the philosopher Marx, but the philosopher Alfred North
<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=pQcWfIZSqyQC">Whitehead</a>, also very much the anti-reductionist, but a bit more spiritual.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
At least
I think so. He may have been less
impenetrable in person. He’s fucking tough in print. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Gregory Bateson’s 1936 ethnography <i>Naven</i> acknowledges some influence of
Waddington and Whitehead in a <a href="https://archive.org/stream/naven033591mbp#page/n289">footnote</a>.</div>
Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-5140087653471400162016-03-05T09:27:00.001-08:002016-03-05T09:27:18.871-08:00The time Simpson sounded like Carlin<h3>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> G. G. Simpson loved words, and used them exceedingly well. He kept the multi-volume Oxford English Dictionary behind his writing desk. He also subscribed to the updates that the OED regularly published.</span></span></h3>
<h3>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">One day when I arrived, he was particularly gleeful because he had gotten a volume of the updates, which included slang usages. He showed me the book, which was the volume S.</span></span></h3>
<h3>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I smiled politely, and he explained that this was the first volume of the OED updates that he had received. I smiled politely again. And he said, and I’ll swear to this on a stack of first editions of <i>The Origin of Species</i>, “It means that I have ‘shit’ but I haven’t gotten ‘fuck’ yet!”</span></span></h3>
<div>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-16558044253884932462016-01-11T04:01:00.001-08:002016-01-11T04:04:00.044-08:00Homo naledi shows how biological anthropology is not biology, and can't be, and shouldn't be <div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> I once read somewhere that the most interesting thing about human evolution is how everbody thinks they understand it.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> I suspect it'</span>s because <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/did-this-extinct-human-species-commit-homicide1/">everyone thinks they own a piece of it</a>. It's the story of where we came from, after all! And not just any story of where we came from - it's the authoritative, scientific story.<br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> The authoritative origin stories are not like other stories. They are value-laden in ways that other scientific stories are not. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Facts-Ground-Archaeological-Territorial-Self-Fashioning/dp/0226001954">Archaeology is routinely used in the service of nationalism</a>, for example. Rather moreso, at least, than fruitfly genetics is, so a fruitfly geneticist, or a general biologist, might be excused for <a href="https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/11/02/wrongheaded-anthropologist-claims-that-humans-arent-apes/">not being an appropriately critical reader of the literature on human evolution</a> or <a href="https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/02/28/are-there-human-races/">diversity</a>, where there is rather more at stake. It is a <a href="https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/05/14/new-book-on-race-by-nicholas-wade-professor-ceiling-cat-says-paws-down/">different and unfamiliar literature</a> to them, and consequently requires some additional intellectual effort for a trained biologist to make sense of. Some don't bother.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> Now, there have been some very insightful contributions to the scholarly literature on human variation and evolution from biologists, even fruitfly geneticists, over the years. I can think of three off the top of my head.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k3tfHFtYaSk/VpJn2qogpAI/AAAAAAAAAN0/OqGC5V7Zw5Y/s1600/we%2Beuropeans.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k3tfHFtYaSk/VpJn2qogpAI/AAAAAAAAAN0/OqGC5V7Zw5Y/s200/we%2Beuropeans.jpg" width="135" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1935</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nVI7_N-PKaY/VpJpA_4koYI/AAAAAAAAAOE/kg2aILoDHUk/s1600/race%2Bdebunking.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nVI7_N-PKaY/VpJpA_4koYI/AAAAAAAAAOE/kg2aILoDHUk/s200/race%2Bdebunking.jpg" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">2011</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bTalMAhGyOk/VpJo89p3FEI/AAAAAAAAAN8/blYv2xjvnQ4/s1600/doby.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bTalMAhGyOk/VpJo89p3FEI/AAAAAAAAAN8/blYv2xjvnQ4/s200/doby.jpg" width="130" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1962</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Julian Huxley collaborated with the Cambridge social anthropologist Alfred Cort Haddon for this important early critique of race, <i>We Europeans</i>. Rob DeSalle collaborated with biological anthropologist Ian Tattersall on their recent book, <i>Race? Debunking a Scientific Myth</i>. And Doby was a friend and collaborator of several anthropologists, including <a href="http://symposium.cshlp.org/site/misc/topic15.xhtml">Sherwood Washburn</a>, <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/105/2736/587.extract?sid=3ddf01f6-0524-42c2-92ae-819a3d294728">Ashley Montagu</a>, and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Science-Concept-Race-Margaret-Mead/dp/B00BN1B5C2">Margaret Mead</a>.<br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">In science,
our answers to the question of where we came from are stories that center
around a descent from the apes. And our characters are already there for us: The human lineage is composed of species,
just like the units of paleontology and ecology.</span></span> A <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.12286/abstract">recent ethnographic paper</a> by Eben Kirksey begins, "Taxonomists, who describe new species, are acutely aware of how political, economic, and ecological forces bring new forms of life into being." That is probably true, but I think generally not in the first person. That is to say, the taxonomist working with "political, economic, and ecological forces" is usually somebody else; <a href="http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102313-030232">I'm the taxonomist who is uncovering raw nature.</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> Back in 1945, paleontologist George Gaylord
Simpson was <a href="http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/handle/2246/1104">reviewing the literature on mammal taxonomy</a>, but when he got to humans, he found it impenetrable. He had an idea why it was so
impenetrable to him, as well: “A major reason for this confusion is that much
of the work on primates has been done by students who had no experience in
taxonomy and who were completely incompetent to enter this field, however
competent they may have been in other respects”.<a href="file:///C:/Jonfiles/Why%20is%20Science%20Racist%204.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FzFUUqiYvt4/VpGw6aKjh0I/AAAAAAAAANI/N2W6iAP8Tao/s1600/ggs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="216" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FzFUUqiYvt4/VpGw6aKjh0I/AAAAAAAAANI/N2W6iAP8Tao/s320/ggs.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">GGS in 1983</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> Granted that
many of the workers in the field may have been trained principally in medical
anatomy rather than in evolutionary paleontology, Simpson thought it was
reasonable to expect that an expert on
the species of other kinds of mammals should be able to translate freely
to the literature on human evolution, because the units ought to be the
same. But he misunderstood the species in our own lineage, for these
taxonomic entities are not like the taxa of biology. Simpson hoped to study his ancestors
dispassionately and rationally, as perhaps Vulcans contemplate their ancestors.<a href="file:///C:/Jonfiles/Why%20is%20Science%20Racist%204.docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
But a purely rational and logical Vulcan approach to ancestry involves not dividing people into
relatives and non-relatives, for they acknowledge that rationally and logically,
everyone is related. They also do not consider ancestry beyond the twelfth
generation (approximately 300 earth-years, because in the 12<sup>th</sup>
generation, every sexually-reproducing organism had 4096 ancestors, which is rather a lot to track;
and each contributed less than 1/40 of 1% of the genome, so none of them on average is
particularly genetically significant). But
we aren’t Vulcans, we are Earthlings, and we treat our <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ancestors-Relatives-Genealogy-Identity-Community-ebook/dp/B005WSNPMK">kinship and descent</a> in
all kinds of meaningfully irrational (but nevertheless <a href="https://archive.org/details/systemsofconsang00morgrich">coherent and logical</a>!) ways, even in science.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6251/931.summary?sid=03a3c5c2-4a54-475b-8719-492b9ba9c94c">The classification of our ancestors is still vexed.</a> Sure, scientists acknowledge some of our colleagues
to be “lumpers” or “splitters” – interpreting anatomical diversity among the
fossils to be the result of age, sex, pathology, deformation, and
microevolution, thus “lumping” the
fossils into few species; or conversely “splitting” them into many species by
interpreting the anatomical diversity taxonomically. <a href="http://webpages.uncc.edu/~jmarks/pubs/MarksAT2007.pdf">But there is something else going on here.</a> This is participation in the
construction of an authoritative story of our ancestry. There is simply more at stake than in the
narrative of clam or deer ancestry. The units here, the species, are not
comparable to the species the zoologist is familiar with, for these are not
units of ecological genetics, but units of story. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-d74os3lIsyc/VpGxTAaT_HI/AAAAAAAAANM/uI_X-zGqIAY/s320/bjhs.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">[from a forthcoming paper in <i>Philosophy, Theology, and the Sciences</i>]</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-d74os3lIsyc/VpGxTAaT_HI/AAAAAAAAANM/uI_X-zGqIAY/s1600/bjhs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></a><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The lumper story is one of the continuity and
survival of the lineage; the splitter story is one of diversity and extinction
of different lineages.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> Is the story
of our ancestry like a tree trunk, or like a bush? The lumper inclines to the
former; the splitter inclines to the latter. But those are significantly
different shrubbery metaphors to be imposing upon the same sample of
fossils. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> Some decades
after Simpson lodged his complaint, paleobiologist Tim White reiterated it,
while <a href="http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/586931">reviewing a book</a> on the history of "the" 22 species in our lineage: “Many
of the putative species are chronotaxa; others are not even valid species in
that sense. No one really thinks that available hominid fossils represent 22
separate species lineages in the last six million years.”</span><a href="file:///C:/Jonfiles/Why%20is%20Science%20Racist%204.docx#_ftn3">[3]</a> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> Except, possibly, for the authors of the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Last-Human-Twenty-Two-Species-Extinct/dp/0300100477">book under review</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> Or perhaps
they didn’t really believe it either.
The assumption here that needs to be interrogated is that the fossil
taxa of other groups of animals are
comparable – are made the same way, for the same reasons, of the same elements
– as the fossil taxa of our own ancestors.
And that is the key error: Fossil animal species are units of biology;
fossil human ancestors are bio-cultural units of narrative. This is not to say that they don’t overlap,
and that there were no zoological species in our ancestry. The problem is that <b>those zoological species
are inaccessible to us</b>, and so – rather like the angels sitting on the pinheads
– we can see different numbers of species and tell quite different stories from
the same empirical database. This is
consequently not an empirical issue at all, but a hermeneutic issue.</span></div>
<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gl5i2m9vXOg/VpGiIzYCLqI/AAAAAAAAAMs/Qeks1bNlkkw/s1600/sapiens1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="50" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gl5i2m9vXOg/VpGiIzYCLqI/AAAAAAAAAMs/Qeks1bNlkkw/s320/sapiens1.jpg" width="320" /></a><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LLFEgF6WBVc/VpGiFhFgtBI/AAAAAAAAAMk/SGZoJJX1tY8/s1600/sapiens2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LLFEgF6WBVc/VpGiFhFgtBI/AAAAAAAAAMk/SGZoJJX1tY8/s200/sapiens2.jpg" width="133" /></a><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A recent
book by a historian tells readers on its cover that 100,000 years ago “at least
six human species inhabited the earth.” </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Yet few practicing biological anthropologists would
come up with the number six as the target number of species in the human
lineage that inhabited the earth 100,000 years ago; and far fewer would
acknowledge the particular six that the author does: <i>Homo sapiens</i>, <i>H.
neanderthalensis</i>, <i>H. erectus</i>, <i>H. soloensis</i>, <i>H. denisova</i>, and <i>H.
floresiensis</i>. After all, “<i>H. denisova</i>” has not been formally
named, and is based on the genome of a Siberian finger bone, which is itself
simply a <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6104/222.abstract">variant of the Neanderthal genome</a></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">, which is not
clearly a different species in the first place, since <a href="https://www.23andme.com/service/">recreational genomic ancestry services (for about $200) will now identify the circa 5% of your genome that ostensibly comes from Neanderthals</a>, </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">which
sounds very un-species-like.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> Is the tally
right or wrong, then? It is actually neither.
We can’t say, because the zoological answer is inaccessible to us. These are units of mythology, not of zoology.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> Another of
the six presumptive species 100,000 years ago is <i>Homo soloensis</i>. That name is
a linguistic marker, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solo_Man">denoting a particular set of Indonesian fossils</a>,
anatomically continuous with <i>Homo erectus</i>
before and with <i>Homo sapiens</i>
after. </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">As such, it is a named place-saver for a part of
the human lineage – a rivulet, or capillary, or rhizome that better represents its elements metaphorically than a tree-limb does.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">But in the words of Tim White, “no
one really thinks” that this set of fossils represents a valid zoological species of their
own. There is no <i>Homo soloensis</i>. <b>In other words, the ontological
status of <i>Homo soloensis</i> is the same
as that of Mother Corn Spirit. </b>Neither is a unit of nature, but a unit of
meaning or narrative which, to a believer, is perfectly sensible in the context
of a story about origins. </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Homo soloensis</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"> is something, but it
is not a zoologically familiar species, a fact of nature, so to speak. It is a named
fictive ancestor, with more symbolic than naturalistic properties. In the most fundamental way, human ancestry
is self-consciously a story, and taxa like <i>Homo soloensis</i> and <i>H. denisova</i>
are the components of this particular historical account.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> And
likewise, <i>Homo naledi</i>, <a href="http://elifesciences.org/content/4/e09560">the newest major addition to our family tree.</a> “But is it real?“ some journalists queried. <a href="http://johnhawks.net/weblog/fossils/naledi/homo-naledi-homo-erectus-2015.html">Of course it’s real</a>, you didn’t
just imagine it. “But is it real
biologically?” they persist. And that is
my point: It doesn’t matter; <i>Homo naledi</i>
is not an element of biology; it is an element of our origin story. It is part of the bricolage of origin
story-making.<a href="file:///C:/Jonfiles/Why%20is%20Science%20Racist%204.docx#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> There is no true or false answer to <i>Homo naledi</i> as a zoological species; for
the category of zoological species does not apply to things like <i>Homo naledi</i>. The mistake here lies in assuming that <i>Homo naledi</i> designates a unit of
zoology; that there is an underlying natural taxonomy in human ancestry that will
be revealed by the proper ratiocination. </span><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/evan.20049/epdf">If you're looking for zoological reality, look for it at the genus level.</a> It isn't there at the species level.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> Such is the
long-standing taxonomic fallacy in grappling with the science of who we are and
where we come from. On a bio-political
terrain, a preparation in biology is inadequate to comprehend the taxonomy, for
it is not biological taxonomy. To the
extent that our ancestry is populated by species, those species are attempts to
impose a taxonomic structure, which we assume ought to be there, upon an
assortment of fossils from various times and places, with diverse anatomies,
<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alex_Mackay3/publication/282588995_The_Hybrid_Origin_of_Modern_Humans/links/5615ac2308aed47facefecec.pdf">representing distinct lineages different from one another and yet connected in complex ways</a>. There are a lot of ways of doing it, and they are all very sensitive
to the conditions under which the science itself is practiced.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-I4mfldhxP-4/U4JXu5N2b1I/AAAAAAAAAD4/qmyZTy6RzA0/s1600/linnaues%2B100Ksm.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="101" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-I4mfldhxP-4/U4JXu5N2b1I/AAAAAAAAAD4/qmyZTy6RzA0/s200/linnaues%2B100Ksm.JPG" width="200" /></a><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> If the Neanderthals
and the Denisovans are not like zoological species, then what might they be
like? And here we return to Linnaeus. They would be at most subspecies, as
Linnaeus considered unfamiliar peoples to be.
In other words, the classification of extinct humans intergrades into
the classification of extant humans. This fallacy – imposing taxonomic
structure upon our ancestry, and mistaking the bio-political categories of our
story for natural units – is the same fallacy we find at the heart of
race. For race, the meaningful story is
“Who are we?” rather than “Where did we come from?” but the problem is the
same, mistaking bio-political units of people for zoological units of people. And those two questions are invariably
intertwined, whether the answer comes from science or from any other system of
explanatory narrative.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vEe0g_qaBYU/VpG9Vr_-t7I/AAAAAAAAANk/S_tAjxA7yTU/s1600/jon2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vEe0g_qaBYU/VpG9Vr_-t7I/AAAAAAAAANk/S_tAjxA7yTU/s200/jon2.gif" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">* This blog post is cobbled together from some forthcoming work, mostly <i>Why is Science Racist?</i> (Polity Press, 2017).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="file:///C:/Jonfiles/Why%20is%20Science%20Racist%204.docx#_ftnref1">[1]</a> Simpson, G. G. (1945) The principles of classification and a classification of mammals Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 85:1-349, quotation from p. 181.
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="file:///C:/Jonfiles/Why%20is%20Science%20Racist%204.docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Vulcan is the “Star Trek” planet, notable for the overbearing rationality of its inhabitants.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="file:///C:/Jonfiles/Why%20is%20Science%20Racist%204.docx#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[</span>3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">White, T. D. (2008) Review of <i>The Last Human: A Guide to Twenty-Two Species of Extinct Humans</i>, by
G J Sawyer and Viktor Deak. <i>Quarterly Review of Biology</i> 83:105-106,
quotation from p. 105.</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Mind-Nature-Human-Society/dp/0226474844/">Claude Lévi-Strauss (1962)</a> used the term “bricolage” to refer to the available
elements a mythmaker draws on, while tinkering with them to construct a resonant story. It was borrowed by molecular biologist
<a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/196/4295/1161.extract">François Jacob (1977)</a> to argue that evolution is more like a tinkerer than like
an engineer. </span></div>
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Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-62929577935132957402014-06-05T09:02:00.000-07:002014-06-07T17:45:35.986-07:00Nazis love Nicholas Wade. Shouldn’t that be a problem for him?<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="background: white; color: #141823;"> The nutters at
<a href="http://www.amren.com/features/2014/03/attack-on-the-regime/">The American Renaissance</a> are promoting <i>A Troublesome Inheritance</i> like mad. Likewise at <a href="http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2014/05/reestablishing-the-significance-of-race-nicholas-wades-a-troublesome-inheritance-rebuts-the-pseudoscience-of-race-denial/">The Occidental Observer</a>. </span><span style="background: white;">According to the <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/05/28/troublesome-sources-nicholas-wades-embrace-of-scientific-racism/">Southern Poverty Law Center</a>,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="background: white;">Wade’s
book has been<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://davidduke.com/hear-dr-david-duke-nicholas-wade-race/"><span style="background: white; color: #ed2224; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">publicly
endorsed by former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke</span></a></b><b><span style="background: white;">, championed by noted white supremacists like<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://www.amren.com/features/2014/03/attack-on-the-regime/"><span style="background: white; color: #ed2224; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Jared Taylor</span></a></b><b><span style="background: white;">,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://www.vdare.com/articles/john-derbyshire-on-nicholas-wade-s-a-troublesome-inheritance-a-small-but-significant-step-f"><span style="background: white; color: #ed2224; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">John
Derbyshire</span></a></b><b><span style="background: white;">, and<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://takimag.com/article/the_liberal_creationists_steve_sailer/print"><span style="background: white; color: #ed2224; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Steve Sailer</span></a></b><b><span style="background: white;">, and tirelessly promoted on the neo-Nazi forum
Stormfront .... For all of Wade’s supposed concerns about the politicization of
science, his book is entirely a phenomenon of the racist, far-right fringe.</span></b></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #141823;"> I wonder whether Nicholas Wade
comes home and says, "My book is a best-seller, and the Nazis love me.
Life is good."</span>. </div>
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Of course that’s not an argument against the book. That’s just data about who likes the book
very much. Now let’s recap Wade's arguments (slightly modified from my last post).</div>
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<ul>
<li>Modern scientific views about human variation are politically correct myths produced by Marxist anthropologists, who are stifling serious discussion of human variation.</li>
<li>The human species really does come naturally divisible into a fairly small number of fairly discrete kinds of people, or “races”. Human groups are fundamentally products of biological history.</li>
<li>These groups have genetic distinctions that cause personality distinctions. These include “genetic adaptations” of the Chinese to obedience, Jews to capitalism, and Africans to violence.</li>
<li>Economic strata and nations are also fundamentally biological entities, with their own natural proclivities.</li>
<li>Global geo-political history can be understood and explained by its significant genetic component.</li>
</ul>
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In Wade’s own words, he is exploring “the possibility that human behavior has a genetic basis that varies from one race to another”; “trust has a genetic basis”; and “national disparities in wealth arise from differences in intelligence”. <b>Wade’s scholarship is poor, his arguments are
spurious, his science is cherry-picked and misrepresented, he dismisses the real science, and the ideas he promotes are
racist fictions. </b> </div>
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Context is important for understanding Wade's new book. Some of what follows is derived from my essays in <a href="http://inthesetimes.com/article/16674/the_genes_made_us_do_it">In These Times</a> and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/american-anthropological-association/review-of-a-troublesome-i_b_5316217.html">The Huffington Post</a>. A lot isn't. </div>
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I</div>
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Perhaps
the most important discovery of early anthropology was that social inequality
was inherited, but not in the same way that natural features were. You pass on your complexion to your children
and you pass on your social status to your children, but you do so by very
different modes. The first would
eventually come to be called “genetics” and the second, “culture” – and their
relationship is that, although they are often correlated, the microevolutionary
processes of genetics and the historical processes of culture are
phenomenologically distinct.</div>
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The
birth pangs of this discovery occurred in the mid-19<sup>th</sup> century, in
the works of the near-contemporaries Arthur de Gobineau and Karl Marx. Marx, of course, recognized the fact that
human misery was the result of political economy and wrote an influential
critique of it. Gobineau’s work was
easier to understand, because he posited that civilization was the result of
biology. There were better and worser
peoples, and in the ten places he thought that civilization arose, it was
brought by the better peoples (“Aryans”), who eventually interbred with the
local yokels, thus bringing forth a decline of said civilization.</div>
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Gobineau’s
idiotic theory impressed few scholars, even in an age where civilization and
race had not yet been well problematized.
It was seen as a transparent attempt to rationalize the existence of the
hereditary aristocracy in an age when all manner of traditional class distinctions
were breaking down, and people of humble origins were becoming wealthy and
powerful, and republican institutions were supplanting monarchial ones. The early physical anthropologist (and
polygenist, pro-slavery physician) Josiah Nott had it translated into English
in 1856, but it wasn’t widely read, being mooted by the Civil War. A second English edition in the UK, during
World War I, did a bit better, until it too was mooted by politics, this time
by World War II. <a href="http://www.thechristianidentityforum.net/downloads/Inequality-Races.pdf">You can get it online</a>,
by the way, thanks to “The Christian Identity Forum”. (Whoever they are, the folks at the <a href="http://carm.org/christian-identity-movement">Christian Apologetics and Research Ministries</a> don’t want to have anything to do with
them, and identify the Christian Identity movement as “centered on a
racist/anti-Semitic and white supremacy”.) </div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> <span style="line-height: 16.866666793823242px;">In 1969, the right-wing plant geneticist Cyril Darlington published a genetic history of the human species , called </span><i style="line-height: 16.866666793823242px;">The Evolution of Man and Society</i><span style="line-height: 16.866666793823242px;">.</span><span style="line-height: 16.866666793823242px;"> </span><span style="line-height: 16.866666793823242px;">The trick, of course, is that you know a little bit of the history, but you just get to make up the racial and class genetics.</span><span style="line-height: 16.866666793823242px;"> </span><span style="line-height: 16.866666793823242px;">So ancient Greece gets a make-believe genetic treatment, in terms of Aryan invaders subjugating local peoples and admixing with them.</span><span style="line-height: 16.866666793823242px;"> </span></span></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 16.866666793823242px;">It was something created and maintained by a stratified society, a society built up by the working together of many peoples, Minoan merchants, Mycenean scribes, Egyptian masons and artists, Aegean sailors, Phoenician boat builders and also priests, each caste except the slaves preserving its own genetic independence, and hence its own separate traditions, while learning, some readily, some reluctantly, to speak the common Semitic language on which the society depended for its well-being.</span><span style="line-height: 16.866666793823242px;"> </span><span style="line-height: 16.866666793823242px;">(p. 155)</span></span></blockquote>
<div>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Later,
non-Aryan </span></span></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">[i]nvaders from the northern Balkans burst into the Mediterranean
world. They penetrated Anatolia…. Later
under the name of Dorians they invaded the centre and south of Greece….. [T] he
same invaders attacked the Egyptians who threw them back. But they were able as Philistines to settle
in and give their name to Palestine; and to set up colonies in Crete, Libya,
Sicily, and Italy. These maritime
achievements, could not, however, have been the work of the inland Aryans who
knew nothing of the sea. Rather they
represent the fragments of Anatolian and Balkan peoples already subjugated by
Aryan invaders. (p. 155).</span></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Each city arose from the fusion of
several racial stocks speaking their own dialects and worshipping their own
gods. (p. 157).</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Obviously people moved around sometimes, but the idea that
they remained genetically stable, much less had particular aptitudes that
determined their place in a stable, rigid genetic caste system is at best
non-empirical, and at worst racist bullshit. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
The Homeric society… was ruled by
kings who were advised by nobles (or men with ancestors) and applauded by
ordinary freemen. This limitation of
arbitrary government by custom was derived from the racial character and social
structure of the Aryan invader of Greece.
It distinguished them from most of the ancient peoples who however
provided the genetic elements…. (p. 163)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">And
to cap it off, “The result of these developments was to make the Spartan aristocracy
a pure race.” To which Darlington
appended a clarifying footnote “We are
often told by popular writers that there are no examples of pure races of men.
We shall be noting many examples and observing the predictable
similarity in their history” (p. 165). </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Darlington’s work had its predecessors, like Hans F. K. Gunther’s <i>Rassenkunde
Europas</i>, which was translated by Nazi assholes in 1927 as <i>The Racial Elements of European History</i>
and has been digitized by modern Nazi assholes and is available <a href="http://www.theapricity.com/earlson/reeh/index.htm">here</a>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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And Darlington’s work has its successors as well. In particular, a newish dopey genetic history of the human species, called <i>The 10,000 Year Explosion</i>, by a physicist, Gregory Cochran, and an anthropologist, Henry Harpending. The theme is pretty much the same as Darlington’s: The authors know a bit of genetics, and they’re going make that about 10% of the story they want to tell, and creatively imagine the other 90%, but not take too much trouble to distinguish them for readers. Cochran and Harpending begin with the proposition that the human gene pools have been tweaked by things like malaria resistance and lactase persistence over the last 10,000 years, from which they conclude that many aspects of our gene pool have been tweaked as well over much shorter spans of time, for psychological traits, resulting in the major outlines of history, such as the agricultural revolution, scientific revolution, and industrial revolution.<br />
<br />
There are differences between <i>The Evolution of Man and Society</i> and <i>The 10,000 Year Revolution</i>, to be sure. Darlington’s work was over 750 pages of small font, erudite, tightly-spaced bullshit, while The 10,000 Year Explosion is 288 pages of ignorant, widely-spaced bullshit. Where Darlington’s bullshit about the ancient Greeks ran to scores of pages of make-believe genetics, Cochran and Harpending dispense with them in just a couple of paragraphs, noting that the ancient Greeks had colonies and that their gene pools fought off malaria. Of rather more interest to them are the Etruscans, “a somewhat mysterious people who spoke a non-Indo-European language that we have not yet deciphered.” But undeterred by such agnotological issues, they explain that the “Etruscans added a healthy dose of Middle eastern, agriculture-shaped alleles into the Roman mix. We have reason to suspect that those alleles shaped attitudes as well as affecting metabolism and disease resistance” (p. 144).<br />
<br />
Not surprisingly, also unconstrained by relevant data, Darlington blows a bigger bag of genetic gas about the Etruscans. According to Darlington, they had a “genetic particularism [which caused] a lack of political unity” and connected them with Hittite ancestors, thus demonstrating that “the genetic continuity overrides the cultural discontinuity” (p. 238).<br />
<br />
And there are similarities too. Darlington is very interested in the Jews. He devotes two chapters to them, and “Jews” is the longest entry in his copious index. But although he is obviously a bit too creepily interested in them, he remarks only in passing that some of them have been smart, and at least stops short of geneticizing that. The first on board that ship was actually C. P. Snow – of “The Two Cultures”, according to a <a href="http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1969/04/01/78334708.html">New York Times article in 1969</a>. Unsurprisingly, it generated a <a href="http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1969/04/08/90087750.html">bit</a> of <a href="http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1969/04/06/90085966.html">correspondence</a>.<br />
<br />
And that’s really what <i>The 10,000 Year Explosion</i> is really all about – asserting that the idosyncracies of the Ashkenazi Jewish gene pool, which most geneticists today attribute to genetic drift, is really due to natural selection for intelligence. In the same way that some populations are genetically shielded from the worst aspects of malaria, the Ashkenazi Jews are shielded from the worst aspects of stupidity. And although the Cochran-Harpending book is not cited in Nicholas Wade’s brand-new book, <i>A Troublesome Inheritance</i>, their other work is, and his arguments are heavily derivative upon theirs. <br />
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
II</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Nicholas Wade is one of the premier science
journalists in America, and an avid promoter of molecular genetics,
particularly as applied to anthropological questions. But his professional idiosyncrasies are
well known; the <i>Anthropology News</i> did a story on him in 2007, and he told them,
“Anyone who’s interested in cultural anthropology should escape as quickly as
they can from their cultural anthropology department and go and learn some
genetics, which will be the foundation of cultural anthropology in the future.”
A discussion of his new book about
genetics and anthropology, then, should probably begin
with a recollection of his last book on the subject, <i>Before the Dawn</i> (2007).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was
reviewed in the journal <i>Science</i> by
Rebecca Cann, who did not exactly gush. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
As a graduate student, I was amazed by the number of books
popularizing human paleontology that ignored human genetics, and I often wished
that there were science writers energized to follow the new insights from
geneticists as closely and rapidly as others reported interpretations of
fragmentary fossils. Well, be careful what you wish for. </blockquote>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was also reviewed in <i>Nature</i>,
where he was deemed to be “in step with a long march of social darwinists”. And
to gauge from the new book, he still is.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The
theme of <i>A Troublesome Inheritance</i> is
an unusual one for a science journalist, namely that the scientists themselves
are all wrong about the things that they are experts in, and it will take a
naïf like the author, unprejudiced by experience, judgment, or actual knowledge, to straighten them
out. If this sounds like a template for
a debate with a creationist, well, yes, I suppose it does. That is because the nature of the
intellectual terrain – the authoritative story of where we came from and who we
are – lies on the contested turf of human kinship, and everybody thinks they
own a piece of it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Wade’s
ambition, then, is not to popularize the science, but to invalidate the
science. He explains that anthropologists, who have been studying human
variation for a while, and who think they have learned something about it, have
actually been blinded by their prejudices – politically-correct prejudices,
that is. And his message to them egghead
perfessers is that he believes the science of 250 years ago was better than
that of today: There are just a few
basic kinds of people, and economic stratification is just an expression of an
underlying genetic stratification.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Lest you think the author is an
exponent of racism or social Darwinism, he is quick to tell you that he
isn’t. He’s read a book or two on each
of those subjects. He doesn’t think he
is a racist because a racist believes that natural groups of people are
universally or transcendently rankable, whereas he only believes they are
rankable intellectually. And he doesn’t
think he is a social Darwinist because that was an ideologically-driven
“perversion of science” to be laid at the feet of Herbert Spencer, and he is quite
certain that he is not an ideologue. He
is simply exploring a few propositions, such as: “the possibility that human behavior
has a genetic basis that varies from one race to another”; “trust has a genetic
basis”; and “national disparities in wealth arise from differences in
intelligence”. Eventually he even comes
around to “the adaptation of the Jews to capitalism.” And lest you think that he is using the term
adaptation in the broad sense of “fit to the environment” he explains that he
only uses the term in the narrow sense of tweaking the gene pool - “a
genetically based evolutionary response to circumstances”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The punch
line of the book, however, is not really about anthropology at all, but about
history. Towards the end of the book,
Wade finally confronts his bête-noire, the biologist Jared Diamond, whose 1997
best-seller, <i>Guns, Germs, and Steel</i>,
took a self-consciously anti-racist approach to the subject of human history,
and concluded that the answers to the big questions about how the modern social-political-economic world came to be as
it is lie in the domains of geology and ecology. Wade rejects this, because he believes the
answers lie in the domain of genetics. Actually, though, they’re both wrong, for the
answers to those questions lie in the domain of history. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Guns, Germs and Steel</i> was admired by
biologists, but generally ignored by historians. Why?
Because it wasn’t a very modern approach to history. If history is reducible to nature (ecology
and geography in one case, genetics in the other), then history doesn’t really happen. You just wait long enough, and eventually it
merely unfolds. Why? Because the
explanations for things lie outside of the relations among the things
themselves, but lie instead in nature.
The historian William McNeill pointed that out in his review of Diamond
in the <i>New York Review of Books</i>, judging that book to be “a clever caricature
rather than a serious effort to understand what happened across the centuries
and millennia of world history.” And
finally, McNeill lowered the boom on Diamond’s politically correct, biologized
history: “I conclude that Diamond … has
never condescended to become seriously engaged with the repeated surprises of
world history, unfolding lifetime after lifetime and turning, every so often,
upon single, deliberate acts.” When
Diamond objected that his book was profound and scientific, McNeill reiterated,
arguing that historians have “more respect for natural history than Diamond has
for the conscious level of human history. He wants simple answers to processes
far more complex than he has patience to investigate.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For the
most part, though, historians were dazzled by Diamond’s erudition, relieved
that he wasn’t a racist, impressed by the story he told, and they treated the
book politely and deferentially. And <i>A Troublesome Inheritance</i> is the racist chicken
that has come home to roost. Wade
explicitly opposes his book to Diamond’s, and attempts to explain the big
picture of human history not in terms of the shapes of the continents, but in
terms of the innate qualities of the people inhabiting the continents. History is not history, you see, it is genetics.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the
heart of <i>A Troublesome Inheritance</i> is
a simple dissimulation. Wade repeatedly
asserts that his interlocutors are mixing their politics with their science,
but he isn’t, for he is just promoting value-neutral, ideology-free science. And yet the primary sources for Wade’s
discussion of the history of human society are Francis Fukuyama and Samuel
Huntington. One gets the impression that
either Wade is lying, or he wouldn’t be able to recognize ideology if looked
him dead in the eye and slapped him silly.</div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
III</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Before
advancing his thesis, Wade prepares the way, explaining that – unlike what
anthropologists have concluded – first, race is biologically real; second, the
course of human history is biology; and third, this is all ideologically
neutral. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The
problem, he believes, lies with the anthropologists, who have been
ideologically corrupted, sometimes by their Marxism, sometimes by their desire
to be politically correct, sometimes by their persecuted Jewish origins. There is no indication that Wade realizes it,
but this argument was originally put forward by a segregationist activist in
the early 1960s named Carleton Putnam.
It was bullshit then, and it’s bullshit now. Moreover, it was political then, and it’s
political now. In fact you can download
it from the friendly folks at the <a href="http://www.thechristianidentityforum.net/downloads/Race-Reason.pdf">Christian Identity Forum for free</a>, or <a href="http://store.amren.com/catalog/books/race-and-reason/">buy a copy for just $12.95 from Nicholas Wade’s supporters at the American Renaissance.</a> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But that raises the question: When Wade makes the argument that the topic is so political that anthropological
science has been ideologically corrupted by anthropological politics, how do we
know that Wade’s vision is not also political?
If you have already acknowledged that you are on political terrain, we
should have some evidence that your own science is less politicized, especially
when your views are so convergent with those of certain political extremists. And when you consider that the <a href="http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1609">most genetically knowledgeable reviewers of Wade’s work</a> have <a href="http://violentmetaphors.com/2014/05/21/nicholas-wade-and-race-building-a-scientific-facade/">found remarkably little value</a> in <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/jun/05/stretch-genes/">his ideas about the subject</a>, it does seem that Wade is rather <u>more</u> politicized than
the anthropologists, not less.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But this
raises the odd question of just how a science journalist can position himself
so self-consciously against the science he reports on. Imagine a journalist writing a book claiming
that chemists are all wrong about chemistry.
Would such a lunatic even find a publisher? But anthropology is a special science, and he does find a
publisher. Why? Because, contrary to his own misbegotten
contention, it is indeed political; it’s politics all the way down. That doesn’t mean that there is no knowledge,
of course, only that we have to be extra careful in evaluating the diverse
kinds of data and conclusions, because there are more variables at work.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Wade
quickly notes that IQs differ geographically, and doesn’t question the
assumption that this is a precise measure of small differences in innate brain
power, but does reassure his readers that “a higher IQ score doesn’t make East
Asians morally superior to other races.”
But moral ranking isn’t the issue; intellectual ranking is at
issue. And if you believe, as Wade does,
that Africans have less of this innate brain power, on the average, than
Europeans do – which implies that a randomly chosen African is likely to be constitutionally
dumber than a randomly chosen European - well, that made you a racist in 1962,
and that makes you a racist now.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Wade
lays out his ideas about race in Chapter 5, as a rhetorical exercise in
selective and mis-reporting. His
centerpiece is a 2002 paper, published in <i>Science</i>
by a group led by Stanford geneticist Marcus Feldman, which used a computer
program called Structure to cluster populations of the world by their DNA
similarities. When they asked the
computer to cluster peoples of the world into two groups, the computer gave
them EurAfrica and Asia-Oceania-America.
When they asked the computer for three groups, the computer gave them
Europe, Africa, and Asia-Oceania-America.
When they asked the computer for four groups, it gave them Europe,
Africa, Asia-Oceania, and America. When
they asked it for five groups, it gave them essentially the continents. And when it asked the computer for six, it
gave them the continents and the Kalash people of Pakistan. (They asked the computer for many more clusters, but only published the results up to six.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Wade
misreported these results as validating the five races in <i>The New York Times</i> back in 2002.
In an important edited volume from 2008 called <i>Revisiting Race In a Genomic Age</i>, Deborah Bolnick explained the
misinterpretation of the results from Structure, and the senior author of that
study, Marcus Feldman, also explained those results quite differently than Wade
does. <i>In fact, I’ve heard Feldman say
that Wade has totally misrepresented his work and misquoted him. </i> Why, then, does Wade persist in this genetic
misreporting? Perhaps for the same
reason he persists in his anthropological misreporting. In Chapter 6, Wade casually explains that
among “the Yanomamo of Venezuela and Brazil, aggressive men are valued as
defenders in the incessant warfare between villages, and those who have killed
in battle – the <i>unokais</i> – have on the
average 2.5 more children than men who
have not killed, according to the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon,” citing
Chagnon’s 1988 paper that indeed made that claim. And yet, although that claim has been
definitively shown to be bunk – that is to say, not robustly derivable from the
data – Wade continues to repeat it, most recently in <i>The New York Times</i> last year.
There is, again, a direct parallel to arguing with creationists here:
they have their story and they will stick to it, and reality just doesn’t matter to them. (And
just between you and me, I’d be very interested to find out what Napoleon
Chagnon thinks of this book!)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
IV</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“History is bunk” said Henry Ford,
and Wade is not too keen to worry about getting his history right, either. He presents the reader with Linnaeus’s 1735
classification of humans into species, rather than his 1758 classification of
humans into subspecies (which is more important, since that is the work with
which biological systematics officially begins). He also says that “Linnaeus did not perceive
a hierarchy of races,” although that is hard to reconcile with Linnaeus's terse
descriptions of Europeans, Asians, Americans, and Africans for either covering
(wears tight-fitting clothes, wears loose-fitting clothes, paints himself with
fine red lines, anoints himself with grease) or governance (law, custom,
opinion, caprice). Sounds pretty
hierarchical to me.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Moreover, says Wade, the 18<sup>th</sup>
century American craniologist Samuel George Morton “did not in fact believe …
that intelligence was correlated with brain size.” Nevertheless Morton does characterize “The
Caucasian Race” in <i>Crania Americana</i>
(1839) as follows: “The skull is large and oval…. This race is endowed for the facility
with which it attains the highest intellectual endowments.” And for “The American Race,” Morton records, “The skull is small…. In
their mental character the Americans are averse to cultivation, and slow in
acquiring knowledge….” Sure sounds like
he thought they were correlated.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Wade’s admiration for Morton seems
to be based in large part on his uncritical reading of a bizarre 2011
article that made some unfounded claims
against the late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould. Wade actually quotes approvingly an
especially false statement from that paper, “Morton, in the hands of Stephen
Jay Gould, has served for 30 years as a textbook example of scientific
misconduct.” But that statement is
doubly false: Morton’s work is not at all presented as a paradigmatic example
of misconduct, and indeed, even Gould
explicitly said it was unconscious bias, not scientific misconduct. The paper quoted by Wade had bogus citations
in support of that statement: a book of
mine that did not cite Morton at all on the subject of scientific misconduct,
and a book by C. Loring Brace that explicitly cited it as <u>not</u> scientific
misconduct. I’ll let Gould speak for himself here: “Yet through all this juggling, I detect no
sign of fraud or conscious manipulation.” [S. J. Gould, <i>The Mismeasure of Man</i>, 1981: 69].</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
When Wade gets around to Darwin, he
makes some impressive misstatements as well.
Darwin of course wrote <i>The Origin
of Species</i> in 1859 and avoided the topic of people (which is probably why
the book is still readable today). But
Wade keeps on: “Humans were covered in
his second volume, <i>The Descent of Man</i>,
which appeared 12 years later.” It’s
hard to imagine <i>The Descent of Man</i> being
Darwin’s “second volume” of anything, since he published two books (<i>On the Various Contrivances by which British
and Foreign Orchids are Fertilised by Insects </i>and <i>The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication</i>) in between
them. And frankly, <i>The Descent of Man</i> was two
volumes by itself. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Wade’s treatment of social Darwinists
is surprisingly cursory, given that he had been accused of being one of them in
the pages of the leading science journal in the world. Historians today appreciate that only in
hindsight was social Darwinism monolithic and nameable, and it was
significantly different from eugenics, at very least because the social
Darwinists wanted less government interference, and the eugenicists wanted
more. The movements are united by the
fact that they both assumed that the (visible) social hierarchy was an
expression of an underlying (invisible) natural hierarchy; the “haves” were
simply constitutionally better suited to “having” than were the
“have-nots”. As will become clear, Wade
really does fall in with them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Perhaps the most unhistorical
aspect of Wade’s racial theory, presented at the end of Chapter 4, is that he
seems to be oblivious to its origins and antecedents. Wade claims to speak on behalf of Darwinism
to legitimize his ideas, like many of the discarded ideologies he discusses
early in the book. But when he tells us
that there are three great races associated with the continents of the Old
World, and intermediate hybrid races at their zones of overlap, he is merely
repackaging the pre-Darwinian Biblical myth of Ham, Shem and Japheth, the sons
of Noah, who went forth, became fruitful, and multiplied. The
people Wade thinks are the least pure live precisely where the oldest fossil
representatives of our species are known – East Africa and West Asia. The idea that the human populations of Lagos,
Oslo, and Seoul are primordial and pure is wrong (and creationist); those are
simply the furthest, most extreme, and most different from one another. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
On p. 58, Wade names his
adversaries for the first time: “Marxist academics”. On p. 68, he goes after Ashley Montagu,
attributing his anti-racist writings significantly to his Jewish origins. (And for what it’s worth, Montagu fit
nobody’s definition of a Marxist.) On p.
119, Wade tells us that Montagu’s book, <i>Man’s
Most Dangerous Myth</i>, relied heavily on Richard Lewontin’s 1972 genetic
work. Perhaps the edition Wade skimmed
indeed cited Lewontin’s work, but the first edition of <i>Man’s Most Dangerous Myth</i> was published in 1942, so I suspect that it
was based on other data and arguments. For
a book about the engagement of race and genetics, it’s kind of odd that Wade
seems to be oblivious to all work in the area prior to Lewontin’s. And for a book that takes race as its central
subject, it’s kind of odd that Wade doesn’t seem to be familiar with the source
of Montagu’s campaign against the word “race” – which was derived from <i>We Europeans</i>, the 1935 book by the
British biologist Julian Huxley and anthropologist Alfred Cort Haddon. Neither of them was Jewish, and not much in
the way of Marxists, either.</div>
</div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
V</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
It is when Wade ventures into
evolutionary waters that his scholarly weaknesses become most evident. His presentation of the evolutionary theory
is reductive and freshman-level; it is hard to find a book on evolution today
that fails to mention epigenetics, but this is one such book. But to acknowledge the plasticity or
adaptability of the human organism would be to undermine the theme of the
independent, unforgiving external world exacting its selective toll on the
human gene pool. Flexibility and
reactivity are not in Wade’s evolutionary arsenal – he constructs evolution as
gene pools adapting to given external circumstances. That is only a few decades out of date.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Similarly, he explains that “The
words adapt and adaptation are always used here in the biological sense of a
genetically based evolutionary response to circumstances” (p. 58). Sure,
except that that defines most adaptation (which really refers to the fit between
an organism and its surroundings, of which a small subset is actually genetic)
out of existence.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Evolutionary biology perhaps takes
its biggest beating when Wade breezily tells us about ants. “In the case of ants, evolution has generated
their many different kinds of society by keeping the ant body much the same and
altering principally the behavior of each society’s members. People too live in many different types of
society, and evolution seems to have constructed these with the same strategy –
keep the human body much the same but change the social behavior.” Of course he is comparing one species of
humans with over 20,000 species of ants – that is to say, an orchard of apples
with an orange. By the next page (66),
Wade actually appreciates the idiocy of the comparison, and concedes, “With
human societies, institutions are largely cultural and based on a much smaller
genetic component.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Wade also places a lot of emphasis
on “in-groups” and “out-groups,” repeatedly asserting that we have an innate
desire to support the ins, and to distrust, despise, or harm the outs. Some data on domestic violence might
disabuse naive readers about the validity of such a facile generalization. So might some data on the flexibility of
group membership, not to mention the constructed nature of the groups
themselves. Here’s a glib thought
from p. 50: “...an inbuilt sense of morality evolved, one that gave people an
instinctive aversion to murder and other crimes, at least against members of
their own group.” If you think there’s
an instinctive aversion to “murder and other crimes,” you need to watch “The
Godfather” again. (Sure, that was fiction, but then so is <i>A Troublesome Inheritance</i>, although less honestly labeled.) If you try to weasel
through with the phrase “your own group” then you need to think about the formlessness,
situation-dependence, and segmentary nature of the “group” – What is Michael
Corleone’s group? The Corleone family, the New York mob, Sicilian-Americans,
urban immigrants, Americans, or Earthlings?
Group membership is actually quite flexible and, as we now say,
constructed. And there certainly doesn’t
appear to be any inborn aversion to lying, embezzling, insider trading,
fraud, graft, or usury – so on what
basis can we reliably assert anything inborn about other particular crimes?</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
On p. 49, we learn that “The urge
to punish deviants from social norms is a distinctive feature of human societies.” Except that societies don’t have urges, of
course. And the people who compose
societies can rationalize, or get away with, all kinds of things. It is not
merely that human social life involves rule-governed behavior; it is that rules
are also there to be bent and circumvented, so that people can be both obedient
and pragmatic simultaneously—which is why more thoughtful and knowledgeable
writers don’t go quite so easily from the punishment of deviants to the
invention of a simple genetic/mental module for it. Moreover, if you remember first-wave
sociobiology from the 1980s, one of the things the sociobiologists used to say
was that there could be no group selection in humans since it requires coercive
mechanisms in order to be a stable evolutionary strategy. Apparently those coercive mechanisms were there
after all, and those sociobiologists were all wet. (As an ironic aside, first-wave sociobiology
also cast itself consciously against anthropology, and Wade’s only blurb on the
jacket for this awful book comes from E. O. Wilson, himself.)</div>
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<br /></div>
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Perhaps the most appalling feature
of all is that Wade hasn’t even got the guts to own his thoughts, sprinkling
the prose with disclaimers like, “Given the vast power of culture to shape
human social behavior....” Or, “a
society’s achievements … are largely cultural in essence.” And, “culture is a mighty force, and people
are not slaves to innate propensities.” If the influence of culture has been so
mighty and vast, then it stands to reason that that is what you should be
reading books about; not this one. At
best, Wade’s labor has effectively been to fabricate a small tail to wag a
mighty big dog.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Wade’s neuroendocrinology is just
as bad. His representations of hormones
and their actions and regulation are what one would expect to see in <i>Cosmopolitan</i>: oxytocin is the hormone of
social trust: monoamine oxidase is an aggression gene. Wade clearly wants readers to believe that
their activities are set by natural selection, in spite of disclaimers
like “It is not yet by what specific
mechanism the oxytocin levels in people are controlled” (p. 53). And he has no reluctance to invoke science
fiction where there is no science: after explaining to readers that he thinks
African-Americans have a higher frequency of a violence gene, he mollifies them
with the thought that other violence genes (that he hasn’t invented yet) may be higher in whites. “It is therefore impossible,” he intones, to
say on genetic grounds that one race is genetically more prone to violence than
another.” But in the very next
paragraph, he clarifies, "that important
aspects of human social behavior are shaped by the genes and that these
behavior traits are likely to vary from one race to another”.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
It does seem to me that the focus
on the ontology of race is a red herring in this book. Wade relies a lot more on other inaccurate
invocations of genetics that are even more radical, and more importantly,
political. He overstates the isolation
of prehistoric populations. More
importantly, what scholars think are changes in ways of life, Wade thinks are
changes in genes and brains that lead to changes in ways of life. Thus, “a
deep genetic change in social behavior underlay …. the transition from an agrarian
to a modern society.... Most likely a shift in social behavior was required, a
genetic change that reduced the level of aggressivity common in hunter-gatherer
groups.” </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
And for all his rhetorical interest
in races as natural categories, somehow the only group that merits their own
chapter are ... the Jews! The Jews seem to
be central to the book’s meta-narrative, as <a href="http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2014/05/some-aspects-of-political-correctness-in-reviews-of-nicholas-wades-a-troublesome-inheritance/">one very sympathetic blogger on "White Identity, Interests, and Culture"</a> explained: "I can’t
think of any prominent race denial figures who are not Jewish. The backbone of
the race denial movement was a specific radical Jewish subculture that had
become entirely within the mainstream of the American Jewish community by the
early twentieth century.... There is excellent evidence for their strong Jewish
identifications, their concern with specific Jewish issues such as
anti-Semitism, and for their hostility and sense of moral and intellectual
superiority toward the traditional people and culture of America. Jonathan
Marks is a contemporary example of this long and dishonorable tradition. The
rise of the left to elite status in American society, beginning with universities,
is key to understanding the race denial movement and the stifling political
correctness that is all around us today."</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Why is Wade so interested in the
Jews, anyway? His staunchest defenders
sure are, too. But the nature of their
interest is highly anachronistic. (Actually
the Jews are of some legitimate scholarly interest today in what we might call “the anthropology
of genetics” – for example, in the recent excellent work of anthropologist <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Genealogical-Science-Epistemology-Practices/dp/022615470X">Nadia Abu el-Haj</a>, and historian <a href="http://www.palgrave-journals.com/biosoc/journal/v5/n3/full/biosoc201016a.html">Veronika Lipphardt</a>.)</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
And finally, his view of the origin
of the industrial revolution in England involves mutations in the upper
economic classes for “nonviolence, literacy, thrift and patience” and their
diffusion by gene flow into the lower classes in Late Medieval times. This
is a slightly new spin on a set of old prejudices, but hardly science, much
less modern or value-free science. Wade
doubles down on this a few pages later, too: “The burden of proof is surely
shifted to those who might wish to assert that the English population was
miraculously exempt from the very forces of natural selection whose existence
it had suggested to Darwin.”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Afraid not. The burden of proof still lies with the
disseminator of outmoded, racist ideologies masquerading as science. Wade simply believes he can construct his own
reality by selective reading, misrepresentation, and continuous
repetition. This is a golem of science
journalism, a powerful monster running amok under its own impetus, burdened by
neither responsibility nor wisdom. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
We write books for a reason. So, given the abysmal quality of the scholarship, misrepresentation and dismissal of the relevant science, and the embrace by the most reprehensible elements in modern politics, what do you suppose was Nicholas Wade's motivation for writing <i>A Troublesome Inheritance</i>? Does he really believe his own lies, or is he merely pandering?</div>
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Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-27973419677825416132014-05-31T15:45:00.001-07:002014-05-31T16:45:27.648-07:00Wade, weighed<div class="MsoNormal">
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There are three interesting differences between Nicholas
Wade’s new book <i>A Troublesome Inheritance</i> and <i>The Bell Curve</i> by Herrnstein
and Murray twenty years ago. The first
is that <i>The Bell Curve</i> really did try to make itself look like science. Herrnstein was a real psychologist, and it
was a big fat book with statistics and graphs.
And several <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Measured-Lies-Bell-Curve-Examined/dp/0312172281/">critical</a> volumes later, we <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Genes-Success-Scientists-Statistics/dp/0387949860/">know</a> that it was <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Inequality-Design-Cracking-Bell-Curve/dp/0691028982/">bullshit</a> from
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bell-Curve-Debate-Russell-Jacoby/dp/0812925874/">top</a> to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Bell-Curve-Wars-Intelligence/dp/0465006930">bottom</a>.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Nicholas Wade’s <i>A Troublesome Inheritance</i>, by contrast,
doesn’t even try to pretend to be science or to look like science. It is purely a work of the second- (and
sometimes third-) hand: Here is a scientific conclusion I heard about. Wade even tells the reader that the second half is "speculative," which makes it sound as if the book belongs in the genre of racist sci-fi.</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6zruMHuLN60/U4pPXQbiZNI/AAAAAAAAAI4/kA47lRVaA5M/s1600/bellcurve3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6zruMHuLN60/U4pPXQbiZNI/AAAAAAAAAI4/kA47lRVaA5M/s1600/bellcurve3.JPG" height="200" style="cursor: move;" width="131" /></a> The
second difference is that <i>The Bell Curve</i> took us all more or less by surprise,
because we thought that we had put to rest the nested set of falsehoods that
ideologue psychologists like Arthur Jensen had been saying even earlier in the
century: that IQ measures an innate, linear and generalized brain force that
some people have more of and some people have less of; that IQ is largely determined by one’s
genetic constitution; that since some groups score worse than other
groups on IQ tests, it means that they are genetically condemned, on average,
to be less intelligent. Actually, it
turns out that although isolated for decades in an intellectual racist ghetto, those kinds of things
were still being said; and <i>The Bell Curve
</i>cited over twenty papers each by Arthur Jensen, and by that new scientific
racist on the block, Phil Rushton. <i>A Troublesome Inheritance</i>, by contrast,
was being promoted months in advance; and although the scientific community
didn’t get advance copies as quickly as the white supremacists did, we did have
some prep time, so that we didn’t have to be totally reactive after its publication. </div>
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The
third difference is possibly the most important, and it is that Nicholas Wade’s
book is coming out in the age of the internet and social media. Back in 1994 there were a lot of naive
reviewers who said, “Well, this sounds fishy, but it seems true, and these guys
seem to know that they’re talking about....”
But in 2014, any reviewer who wants to be minimally conscientious has
ready access to some quick and strong critical responses to the book. I wrote two of them: one for <a href="http://inthesetimes.com/article/16674/the_genes_made_us_do_it">In These Times</a>,
and one for the American Anthropological Association, which came out in the
<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/american-anthropological-association/review-of-a-troublesome-i_b_5316217.html">Huffington Post</a>.</div>
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</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">Agustín </span>F</span>uentes had his critical comments in <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/busting-myths-about-human-nature/201405/things-know-when-talking-about-race-and-genetics">Psychology Today</a> and the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/agustin-fuentes/the-troublesome-ignorance-of-nicholas-wade_b_5344248.html">Huffington Post</a>,
and debated against Wade on a <a href="https://aaanetevents.webex.com/ec0606l/eventcenter/recording/recordAction.do?theAction=poprecord&AT=pb&internalRecordTicket=00000001fcaac3649dadd2c6e78a2511ed436c75acea0fcceaf7ff0731dc4216dec6996b&isurlact=true&renewticket=0&recordID=8614987&apiname=lsr.php&needFilter=false&format=short&&SP=EC&rID=8614987&RCID=e801bfd96855006077205e3d2e023699&siteurl=aaanetevents&actappname=ec0606l&actname=%2Feventcenter%2Fframe%2Fg.do&rnd=9243870753&entactname=%2FnbrRecordingURL.do&entappname=url0108l">AAA podcast</a>, showing pretty clearly that Wade did
not know what he was talking about, and has egregiously misrepresented the state
of scientific knowledge about human diversity.
Alan Goodman had his critical
comments published in <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/23/a-troublesome-racial-smog/">Counterpunch</a>.
And Jennifer Raff, a post-doc who actually works on the DNA of ancient
human populations, wrote a strong critique on <a href="http://violentmetaphors.com/2014/05/21/nicholas-wade-and-race-building-a-scientific-facade/">her blog</a> and the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-raff/nicholas-wade-and-race-building-a-scientific-facade_b_5375137.html">HuffPost</a>. The point is that there are substantive
criticisms out there on the web for naive, or just curious, reviewers and readers
to draw on – which weren’t so easily accessible immediately after the
publication of <i>The Bell Curve</i>.<br />
<br /></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8cKa9iP2as4/U4pYru_tamI/AAAAAAAAAJ4/Olbxe4Kx0ZM/s1600/Ashley.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8cKa9iP2as4/U4pYru_tamI/AAAAAAAAAJ4/Olbxe4Kx0ZM/s1600/Ashley.jpg" height="208" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Yes, conspiracy nuts. That would be me and Alan Goodman presenting Ashley Montagu <br />with the Darwin Award from the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, circa 1994.</span></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
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I think
this has had an effect, because there aren’t too many reviews out there saying
that Wade’s rubbish is erudite and sounds possible and darn it all, just might
be true. There was one early one, I
think. You’ve got the positive reviews
by <a href="http://www.amren.com/features/2014/03/attack-on-the-regime/">political radicals</a> and by <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303380004579521482247869874">the political theorist who co-authored <i>The Bell Curve</i></a>, and a couple of <a href="http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/EP1205090520.pdf">graduate students in evolutionary psychology</a> who will
probably be wishing they had known a lot more about the subject before posting that review, when they eventually hit the job market. And then you’ve got the negative reviews by everyone
else. Geneticist <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/jun/05/stretch-genes/">H. Allen Orr</a>. Geneticist <a href="http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/05/14/new-book-on-race-by-nicholas-wade-professor-ceiling-cat-says-paws-down/">Jerry Coyne</a>. Sci-tech writer <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/future-proof/2014/05/jews-are-adapted-capitalism-and-other-nonsenses-new-scientific-racism">Ian Steadman</a>. Biological anthropologist <a href="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/primate-diaries/2014/05/21/on-the-origin-of-white-power/">Eric Michael Johnson</a>. Biologist <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/05/11/the-hbd-delusion/">P. Z. Myers</a>. Writer <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/05/11/the-hbd-delusion/">Patrick Appel.</a> Science writer <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/genetic-crossroads/201405/nicholas-wade-genes-race-and-anthropology">Pete Shanks</a>. Editor <a href="http://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/a-controversial-new-book-argues-race-is-real/">Brian Bethune</a>. <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/05/23/1301334/-The-Troublesome-Racism-of-Nicholas-Wade#">The X</a>. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/books/nicholas-wades-a-troublesome-inheritance.html">Arthur Allen</a>. Science historian <a href="http://genotopia.scienceblog.com/441/hail-britannia-review-of-wades-a-troublesome-inheritance/">Nathaniel Comfort</a>. </div>
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Now, in
an act of apparent desperation, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicholas-wade/in-defense-of-a-troublesome-inheritance_b_5413333.html">Mr. Wade is taking on his critics</a>.</div>
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Let us
review the main points of the book, shall we?</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
</div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -0.25in;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Racism is bad, and there have been abuses of
science in the past.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -0.25in;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Everybody else sees human variation as a
bio-political issue, but it really isn’t.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -0.25in;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Modern scientific views about human variation
are politically correct myths produced by Marxist anthropologists, who are
stifling serious discussion of human variation.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -0.25in;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">The human species really does come naturally
divisible into a fairly small number of fairly discrete kinds of people, or “races”.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -0.25in;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">These races have genetic distinctions that cause
personality distinctions.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -0.25in;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">So do economic strata and nations.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -0.25in;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Global geo-political history has a significant
genetic component.</span></li>
</ul>
<!--[if !supportLists]--><br />
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(Just to show you I’m not making this up, Wade actually purports
to be exploring “the possibility that human behavior has a genetic basis that
varies from one race to another”; “trust has a genetic basis”; and “national
disparities in wealth arise from differences in intelligence”.) </div>
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The idea
that there is a conspiracy to prevent discussing human diversity within the
academy is particularly bizarre, since that has been a regular – indeed,
central – part of the curriculum of biological anthropology for many decades. After <i>The
Bell Curve</i>, the <a href="http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm">American Anthropological Association </a>and the <a href="http://www.physanth.org/association/position-statements/biological-aspects-of-race">American Association of Physical Anthropologists</a> produced position papers on race, so
that the public could know what we have learned about it, the state of the
science of human variation, so we can move on.</div>
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Wade
dismisses both statements categorically.
Even if they summarize the data and scientific knowledge that we
possess, they are, says Wade, the products of politically deluded minds. Unlike
his.</div>
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Wait a minute, isn't that a political statement?</div>
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Interestingly,
though, the most positive reviews of Wade’s book have come from political
extremists, of the sort that you wouldn’t want to invite to family reunions. </div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-O7wwZLasNnk/U4pPLwaid8I/AAAAAAAAAIw/-VieeY44CMU/s1600/entine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-O7wwZLasNnk/U4pPLwaid8I/AAAAAAAAAIw/-VieeY44CMU/s1600/entine.jpg" height="200" width="135" /></a> Makes me
wonder whether his claim to political neutrality is just amazingly stupid, or a
simple lie. For what it’s worth, history
can sometimes be illuminating: the
paranoid claim that you can’t talk about human variation on campus because of
the commie thought-police was put out there first in the early 1960s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Science-Segregation-against-Education-Critical/dp/0814742718/">by the segregationists</a>; then revived by Jon Entine in his <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/08/opinion/a-feckless-quest-for-the-basketball-gene.html">horrid 2000 book</a>, <i>Taboo:
Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid To Talk About It</i>;
it isn’t even original with Wade. </div>
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The
taboo on race in the study of human variation is directly parallel to the taboo
on creationism in the study of human origins.
We used to think it was true, we now know differently, and to talk about
it today marks you as someone who is ignorant of the science, and is irrationally
committed to an outmoded and false understanding of biological anthropology. </div>
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What
does Wade have to say in his defense?</div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 9pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It takes only a few
vigilantes to cow the whole campus. Academic researchers won't touch the
subject of human race for fear that their careers will be ruined. Only the most
courageous will publicly declare that race has a biological basis. ... The
understanding of recent human evolution has been seriously impeded, in my view,
because if you can't study the genetics of race (a subject of no special
interest in itself), you cannot explore the independent evolutionary histories
of Africans, East Asians and Europeans.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZbJq4MSXy7U/U4pTaY3347I/AAAAAAAAAJk/cFo7UxVT6Sc/s1600/wolf+europe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZbJq4MSXy7U/U4pTaY3347I/AAAAAAAAAJk/cFo7UxVT6Sc/s1600/wolf+europe.jpg" height="200" width="133" /></a>There is an element of truth to that. It’s not in the accusation of vigilantism,
since the position opposite to Wade's is the normative position of the community of scholarly
experts. It’s not in the courage to talk
about race as a natural category (“has a biological basis” is a vacuous
statement, since there is a biological basis for everything; the scholarly issue
is whether races are primarily categories of nature or of social history). It’s the last statement that contains the
element of truth. And it’s not in the
first clause; the study of the genetics of race is an old research program in biological
anthropology, and <a href="http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/pubs/2012CA.pdf">I’ve written</a> about how it killed itself off. No, it’s in the thought that “you cannot
explore the independent evolutionary histories of Africans, East Asians and
Europeans.” If you believe that there <u>are</u>
“independent evolutionary histories of Africans, East Asians and Europeans”
then you misunderstand human evolution, for <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Europe-People-Without-History-Eric/dp/0520268180">human histories are not independent</a> of one another. They may be separate to varying extents, but they are
also biologically connected in all kinds of interesting ways, and if you aren’t
prepared to acknowledge that, then you don’t know enough to be taken seriously. Nor are they units of nature, to be taken for
granted. The idea that the continents somehow
represent natural units of human biology is empirically false, and when you
read up on the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Continents-Critique-Metageography/dp/0520207432">history of the continents</a> – the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Racisms-From-Crusades-Twentieth-Century/dp/0691155267">intellectual </a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Racisms-From-Crusades-Twentieth-Century/dp/0691155267">history</a>, not the
geological history – you quickly see how it could not be otherwise.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 9pt;">The attacks on my
book come from authors who espouse the social science position that there is no
biological basis to race. It is because they are defending an
ideological position with a counterfactual scientific basis that their language
is so excessive. If you don't have the facts, pound the table. My three
Huffington Post critics --</span><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> <span style="color: #333333;"><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-raff/nicholas-wade-and-race-building-a-scientific-facade_b_5375137.html" target="_hplink"><span style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Jennifer Raff</span></a>,</span> <span style="color: #333333;"><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/agustin-fuentes/the-troublesome-ignorance-of-nicholas-wade_b_5344248.html" target="_hplink"><span style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Agustín Fuentes</span></a></span> <span style="color: #333333;">and</span> <span style="color: #333333;"><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/american-anthropological-association/review-of-a-troublesome-i_b_5316217.html" target="_hplink"><span style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Jonathan Marks</span></a></span> <span style="color: #333333;">-- are
heavy on unsupported condemnations of the book, and less generous with specific
evidence.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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Speaking
just for myself, all of my condemnations of the book were entirely
supported. There is hardly anything I’ve
enjoyed more in the last few months than quoting this horrid anti-intellectual book to my friends. Why?
Because I think Wade can speak for himself, and when he does, you hear
words that are familiarly ignorant and racist. I
don’t like ignorance and racism, and correcting them is kind of my job.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 12.6pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 9pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Despite their
confident assertions that I have misrepresented the science, which I've been
writing about for years in a major newspaper, none of these authors has any
standing in statistical genetics, the relevant discipline. Raff is a
postdoctoral student in genetics and anthropology. Fuentes and Marks are both
anthropologists who, to judge by their webpages, do little primary research.
Most of their recent publications are reviews or essays, many of them about
race. Their academic reputations, not exactly outsize to begin with, might
shrink substantially if their view that race had no biological basis were to be
widely repudiated. Both therefore have a strong personal interest (though
neither thought it worth declaring to the reader) in attempting to trash my
book.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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There is
a self-interest at work, but it’s the same self-interest that we have vis-a-vis
a creationist. We have devoted our adult
lives to understanding the subject of human origins and diversity. The only appropriate way for you, as an
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0922915652">amateur, to challenge the authority of science on the subject</a> is to show that
you know more than your biological anthropology interlocutors, not to impugn
their scholarly credentials (that you have none of, in any event). It’s
also weird, again, coming from the standpoint of scholarship, that Mr. Wade is
first discovering our work, from our webpages, and that “many of [our
publications] are about race”. Then I
must say that I find it odd that he didn’t read them <u>before</u> he published a book
on the <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v377/n6550/pdf/377589a0.pdf">subject</a>. </div>
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And hey,
when did statistical genetics – which Mr. Wade doesn’t speak for, anyhow –
suddenly become the only relevant intellectual area? The fact is that statistical genetics doesn’t
support Wade – as indeed the <a href="http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/pubs/2012CA.pdf">history of the statistical genetical study of human diversity</a>, and the <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/content/298/5602/2381">work Wade himself cites</a>, both show. Wade makes reference to the <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/content/298/5602/2381">2002 study in <i>Science</i></a> that used a computer program
called Structure on the human gene pool. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 12.6pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 9pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Raff and Marks take
issue with <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/content/298/5602/2381" target="_hplink"><span style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">one of these surveys</span></a>, which used a computer program to analyze
the clusters of genetic variation. The program doesn't know how many clusters
there should be; it just groups its data into whatever target number of
clusters it is given. When the assigned number of clusters is either greater or
less than five, the results made no genetic or geographical sense. But when
asked for five clusters, the program showed that everyone was assigned to their
continent of origin. Raff and Marks seem to think that the preference for this
result was wholly arbitrary and that any other number of clusters could have
been favored just as logically. But the grouping of human genetic variation
into five continent-based clusters is the most reasonable and is consistent
with previous findings. As the senior author told me at the time, the Rosenberg
study essentially confirmed the popular notion of race.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Two fairly big things wrong there. First, Wade's unscientific reasoning, which is quite
different from that of the authors. Wade
says that since the runs for K<5 and K>5 yield racial nonsense, then we
should accept the run at K=5 as being racially meaningful simply because it
fits in with his <u>a priori</u> notion of human diversity. If that logic had been used in the paper
itself, it would not have been publishable. The correct conclusion is that
unless you have a better (i.e., independent) reason, you have to assume that
the result at K=5 is just as racially nonsensical as the rest of them. In science, we don’t juggle variables until we
find a result that we like and then say that it is correct because we like it. Second, “the senior author” was Marcus
Feldman of Stanford, whom Wade indeed quoted in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/20/health/20GENE.html">2002 in the Times</a>: "Dr. Feldman
said the finding essentially confirmed the popular conception of race.” Except that I’ve heard Feldman specifically
deny having said that to Wade, claiming he was abjectly misquoted there. <br />
<br /></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QaFfUZlcL0M/U4pRckiI4cI/AAAAAAAAAJE/wejNMsc0P9A/s1600/structure.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QaFfUZlcL0M/U4pRckiI4cI/AAAAAAAAAJE/wejNMsc0P9A/s1600/structure.jpg" height="224" width="640" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h033BjHXvq0/U4pR2-oHTYI/AAAAAAAAAJM/Z5lgeHfZ2Hk/s1600/koenig+race.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h033BjHXvq0/U4pR2-oHTYI/AAAAAAAAAJM/Z5lgeHfZ2Hk/s1600/koenig+race.jpg" height="200" width="132" /></a> In fact, it was at the very conference that inspired
Deborah Bolnick to write her <a href="http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=FNFmrK-2UpQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA70&dq=deborah+bolnick+structure&ots=7012LAulc3&sig=mYJryDpj6Z4GjlI9eRvbkJ-IgxI#v=onepage&q=deborah%20bolnick%20structure&f=false">trenchant critique</a> of the racial abuse of
Structure. So I don’t think Wade knows
the statistical genetics, quite frankly, any more than he knows the biological
anthropology. Geneticist <a href="http://www.molecularecologist.com/2014/05/troublesome-inheritance/">Jeremy Yoder</a> is none too satisfied with Wade's treatment of the Structure work, either.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
I honestly also don’t think that the ontology of race
is the most important stupid idea in the
book – it’s kind of a red herring beside the stupider idea that the industrial
revolution in England was driven by the genes for “nonviolence, literacy,
thrift, and patience” that Wade imagines to have arisen as mutation in the upper
classes in the Middle Ages, and then diffused by gene flow into the lower
classes. As I mentioned above, even Wade tells the reader that he's speculating, in which case we either judge it as science fiction, or place it in context of all of the other genetic theories of history that have been proposed and rejected. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
But let’s return to try and make some
sense of what Wade means by “race” in his rebuttal. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 12.6pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 9pt;">[R]aces are not and
cannot be discrete .... In fact, the
races are not demarcated at all. They differ only in relative allele frequency,
meaning that a given allele may be more common in one race than in another.</span> ...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 12.6pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> <span style="color: #333333; font-size: 9pt;"> Humans cluster into five continental groups or
races, and within each race there are further subclusters. So the number of
human races depends on the number of clusters one wishes to recognize.... [T]his
has no bearing on whether or not races exist.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Once again, there is truth here, but Wade can't identify it. There is
geographic structure in the human gene pool, but that is not race. There, I said it. I’ve said that every semester for thirty
years. Nobody denies that there is
geographic structure in the human gene pool. But if you call that “race” then you are using
the word “race” in a new and heretofore unprecedented way. It's similar to the way some geneticists were redefining it in the 1960s, but then realized it was intractable. Why? Because if the only factor that determines the number
and kinds of clusters that you see in the human gene pool is how closely you
examine it, then race (as genetic cluster) is not a natural feature, but a bio-cultural construction. The most relevant variable is simply the
scope of your analysis, which is arbitrary. The genetic clusters are real, but there's no sense in calling them races. They're just arbitrarily-sized clumps of allele frequencies. Or, for lack of a better word, "populations". </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
What’s the alternative? That the human gene pool is homogeneous? No anthropologist has ever thought that.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
The lesson here is a basic one at the undergraduate level in biological anthropology: Discovering difference is not race; discovering geographic
difference is not race; and if race is all you can think about, then you aren’t
going to get very far in understanding the nature of the human gene pool.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hqAksrkQXSo/U4pSjD6hchI/AAAAAAAAAJU/fppodbBIkdg/s1600/jewjokes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hqAksrkQXSo/U4pSjD6hchI/AAAAAAAAAJU/fppodbBIkdg/s1600/jewjokes.jpg" height="200" width="155" /></a> But as I said, I think race is a bit of a red herring here, since
when all is said and done, the only people who merit their own chapter in Wade’s
book are the Jews. And yes, we do have a
lot of familiarity in the history of anthropology with people who are <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/53056548/Hans-F-K-Gunther-1927-Racial-Elements-of-European-History">obsessed with race and with Jews</a>. We can just add Mr. Wade to that list of unscholarly writers who don’t know the modern data or
literature on human diversity, and who mistake their feelings and prejudices
for thoughts. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
So who actually likes Wade’s book anyway, aside from
Charles Murray, some snot-nosed evolutionary psychology students, and the white
supremacists? I suspect that even other elitist Etonians are running away at full stride, rather than be caught in <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/05/28/troublesome-sources-nicholas-wades-embrace-of-scientific-racism/">such company</a>.</div>
Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-84390924429189213592014-05-25T16:41:00.001-07:002014-05-26T06:20:55.602-07:00Science imitates art?<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-g68PgE7swzo/U4JVQQt1yTI/AAAAAAAAADo/RwLMmG6ni4w/s1600/bernier1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-g68PgE7swzo/U4JVQQt1yTI/AAAAAAAAADo/RwLMmG6ni4w/s1600/bernier1.jpg" height="320" width="192" /></a><span style="font-family: "GaramondThree","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondThree;">Once you deflect the accusation that a
cabal of Jewish commie anthropologists is stifling discourse on human variation
and that there really are just, like, four kinds of people – there really is an
interesting question lurking behind all the nonsense. Namely, if there
really are, say, four kinds of people out
there, then how come nobody noticed it until 1684? That’s the year that François Bernier, French
physician and traveler, anonymously published the idea, in an early scientific
journal, that there is a correspondence between a para-continental region and a
particular kind of person. Until then, European
scholars had been content to see human variation as patterned locally.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "GaramondThree","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondThree;"> Bernier’s
idea passed largely unnoticed, but within a few decades that is precisely what
the naturalist Carl Linnaeus and the philosopher Immanuel Kant were teaching
about the human species. What made the
previously hidden pattern within the human species suddenly so obvious?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "GaramondThree","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondThree;"> We generally point to three things that
combined to construct this scientific fact (in spite of its empirical falsehood). First, long voyages by sea, rather than over
land. By land, like Marco Polo, one
tends to be struck by human continuity and local variation. But by sea, one can be struck far more
readily by the discontinuity between the people you left behind three weeks ago
and the people you are encountering now, in the rest of the world in the 17<sup>th</sup>
century. This would promote seeing human
variation as discontinuous.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "GaramondThree","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondThree;"> Second,
the encounter with unfamiliar and fluid social and political forms, often
strikingly different from the carefully regulated borders and centralized
governments familiar to Europeans. This
would promote seeing large groups of people as essentially homogeneous.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "GaramondThree","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondThree; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> And third, the
development of science as a source of authoritative knowledge. Science, to some extent, begins with
collecting, organizing, and systematizing the diverse things one encounters in
the universe. The natural history that
swept across the European academy in the 18<sup>th</sup> century was predicated
on precisely that kind of work, spearheaded by the Swede, Carl Linnaeus. For Linnaeus, the most fundamental question
was always “How many kinds of something are there”? There were several kinds of mammals, of which
one was Primates; four kinds of Primates (<i>Homo</i>,
<i>Simia</i>, <i>Lemur</i>, and <i>Vespertilio</i> [the bat]), two kinds of <i>Homo</i> (<i>sapiens</i> and <i>troglodytes</i>), and four kinds of <i>Homo sapiens</i> (<i>americanus</i>, <i>europaeus</i>, <i>asiaticus</i>, and <i>afer</i>).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "GaramondThree","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondThree; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> </span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">Clearly, Linnaeus was wrong
about a lot of things.</span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">But he did develop
modern biology, which is why his face is on Swedish money, and yours isn’t.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 15.693333625793457px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-I4mfldhxP-4/U4JXu5N2b1I/AAAAAAAAAD0/tvYZan7AsMQ/s1600/linnaues+100Ksm.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-I4mfldhxP-4/U4JXu5N2b1I/AAAAAAAAAD0/tvYZan7AsMQ/s1600/linnaues+100Ksm.JPG" height="163" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "GaramondThree","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondThree; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "GaramondThree","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondThree; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> </span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">Yet of course the idea,
whether to Bernier, Linnaeus, or Kant, didn’t come out of nowhere.</span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">It turns out there was a sort of idea that
the people of a single continent could be embodied in a single image, except
that it was intended entirely allegorically, and not to be taken
literally.</span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">And that was 17</span><sup style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; line-height: 107%;">th</sup><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">
century cartography.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">Before the discovery of America,
world maps sometimes depicted the three known great landmasses.</span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">But they didn’t tell you that there was a
kind of person associated with each one.</span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">
</span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">The closest you could get was the idea that three sons of Noah – Ham,
Shem, and Japheth – went forth and founded the peoples of Africa, Asia, and
Europe, respectively.</span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">But that didn’t go
very far as a narrative of human differences, since they were all old Middle
Eastern men, and brothers, to boot. (Around the world are the winds, and to the left are monstrous peoples.)</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qlw6rzq24cY/U4JYj2bswmI/AAAAAAAAAD8/RLXYRVafUX0/s1600/schedel2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qlw6rzq24cY/U4JYj2bswmI/AAAAAAAAAD8/RLXYRVafUX0/s1600/schedel2.jpg" height="457" width="640" /></a> </div>
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<span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">By the late 16</span><sup style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; line-height: 107%;">th</sup><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">
century, after the discovery of America, mapmakers begin to embellish their
maps with images of people.</span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">In this 1577
map by Gerardus Mercator, the figures in the corners are actually allegories of the
elements of which the universe is composed: Earth, Air, Water, and Fire. </span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gnSpiGUrpoY/U4JZ9MaXXII/AAAAAAAAAEI/tAvog4wLIpQ/s1600/mercator+1577.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gnSpiGUrpoY/U4JZ9MaXXII/AAAAAAAAAEI/tAvog4wLIpQ/s1600/mercator+1577.jpg" height="468" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"> In fact, they are not just personifications of the elements, but embodied by the Roman gods, with Jupiter and Neptune on the left. (I'm guessing Juno and Ceres on the right.) </span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif;">But only a few years later, this 1592 map
by Petrus Plancius is filling the corners with different information.</span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif;"> </span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vMwLmCmb6VE/U4JcMGT4OAI/AAAAAAAAAEU/UMIQBAztn9g/s1600/plancius+1594+b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vMwLmCmb6VE/U4JcMGT4OAI/AAAAAAAAAEU/UMIQBAztn9g/s1600/plancius+1594+b.jpg" height="452" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif;"> Yes, those are images of women, symbolizing the continents, with some of the trappings of the continent, and some of its native beasts, one of which is a kind of chair for the Continent-person. America (which he calls Mexicana) sits on an armadillo, Africa is on a crocodile, Asia rides a rhino. Only Europe is not seated on an animal, but eats from the Horn of Plenty. (There are some bulls in the background, the bull associated with Zeus's visit to the continent's namesake.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">Likewise, in this 1602 map
by Hondius.</span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">Now the</span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">corners are filled with images of women representing the continents themselves.</span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DXp96oWTRqk/U4JjMG36qfI/AAAAAAAAAEo/s4cOBnHzOQs/s1600/1590_1602_Nova_Hondius+sm+%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DXp96oWTRqk/U4JjMG36qfI/AAAAAAAAAEo/s4cOBnHzOQs/s1600/1590_1602_Nova_Hondius+sm+%2529.jpg" height="458" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif;">And here are the women.</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3b4Ia-2SSsE/U4JjYIYIhWI/AAAAAAAAAEw/IcrlokvpFDA/s1600/1590_1602_Nova_Hondius+d.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3b4Ia-2SSsE/U4JjYIYIhWI/AAAAAAAAAEw/IcrlokvpFDA/s1600/1590_1602_Nova_Hondius+d.jpg" height="200" width="148" /></a><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-o-uiC5p_jrQ/U4JjaexCiDI/AAAAAAAAAFA/NqDAtuG2NVc/s1600/1590_1602_Nova_Hondius+a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-o-uiC5p_jrQ/U4JjaexCiDI/AAAAAAAAAFA/NqDAtuG2NVc/s1600/1590_1602_Nova_Hondius+a.jpg" height="200" width="137" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Bs3t786zyE4/U4JjYA35ANI/AAAAAAAAAEs/8Ji4oS8rduY/s1600/1590_1602_Nova_Hondius+c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Bs3t786zyE4/U4JjYA35ANI/AAAAAAAAAEs/8Ji4oS8rduY/s1600/1590_1602_Nova_Hondius+c.jpg" height="200" width="141" /></a><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GLwTHfaMm9c/U4JjauSNjeI/AAAAAAAAAE8/qOabfCf5c1c/s1600/1590_1602_Nova_Hondius+b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GLwTHfaMm9c/U4JjauSNjeI/AAAAAAAAAE8/qOabfCf5c1c/s1600/1590_1602_Nova_Hondius+b.jpg" height="200" width="152" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "GaramondThree","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondThree; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> Likewise, in this 1638 map
by his son, Hondius.</span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9OIvNHGfqWg/U4JktZvMi-I/AAAAAAAAAFQ/sf9XtWsjZUY/s1600/hondius+1636+sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9OIvNHGfqWg/U4JktZvMi-I/AAAAAAAAAFQ/sf9XtWsjZUY/s1600/hondius+1636+sm.jpg" height="440" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif;"> And close-ups of the people embodying the continents. There's Europe, with her horse, stag, and horn of plenty.</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_HYCCXgcHSo/U4JlB2JNquI/AAAAAAAAAFs/afKVfP9VBo0/s1600/hondius+1636d.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_HYCCXgcHSo/U4JlB2JNquI/AAAAAAAAAFs/afKVfP9VBo0/s1600/hondius+1636d.jpg" height="282" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif;">And Asia, with a camel, some incense, and the wealth of the orient.</span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VMsGLE9PEAc/U4Jk9el08nI/AAAAAAAAAFk/UVTUJ81aYPI/s1600/hondius+1636a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VMsGLE9PEAc/U4Jk9el08nI/AAAAAAAAAFk/UVTUJ81aYPI/s1600/hondius+1636a.jpg" height="308" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif;">And there's Africa, uncovered and with an elephant.</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-egKL6amOaBw/U4JlBtTLwwI/AAAAAAAAAFw/jQ51byEGUUY/s1600/hondius+1636c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-egKL6amOaBw/U4JlBtTLwwI/AAAAAAAAAFw/jQ51byEGUUY/s1600/hondius+1636c.jpg" height="330" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif;">And finally, America</span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif;">, feathered, and about to shoot an alligator with a bow and arrow.</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ez7MxvKJOUo/U4Jk9WBfn2I/AAAAAAAAAFg/y3dWXAdB2CU/s1600/hondius+1636b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ez7MxvKJOUo/U4Jk9WBfn2I/AAAAAAAAAFg/y3dWXAdB2CU/s1600/hondius+1636b.jpg" height="376" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif;"> That was kind of cool. Here's a 1652 map b</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">y <span style="background-color: #fbfbfb; color: #333333; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; white-space: nowrap;">Claes Janszoon Visscher</span>. He's got pictures of the Roman emperors at the top and bottom. In the corners are the female personifications of the continents.</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FcIr8ZFzsUs/U4JnhoTP1LI/AAAAAAAAAF8/NFzv_5W8wL8/s1600/visscher+1652+sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FcIr8ZFzsUs/U4JnhoTP1LI/AAAAAAAAAF8/NFzv_5W8wL8/s1600/visscher+1652+sm.jpg" height="518" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yRk7lg3RX00/U4Jn5PtwneI/AAAAAAAAAGI/4btHef13DyA/s1600/visscher+1652+b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yRk7lg3RX00/U4Jn5PtwneI/AAAAAAAAAGI/4btHef13DyA/s1600/visscher+1652+b.jpg" height="225" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mZTX1KB9tao/U4Jn7S-atjI/AAAAAAAAAGY/qDL-FALzAEg/s1600/visscher+1652+d.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mZTX1KB9tao/U4Jn7S-atjI/AAAAAAAAAGY/qDL-FALzAEg/s1600/visscher+1652+d.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4xDSLdgriWs/U4Jn7USPPqI/AAAAAAAAAGU/BFxJj_gzFm8/s1600/visscher+1652+c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4xDSLdgriWs/U4Jn7USPPqI/AAAAAAAAAGU/BFxJj_gzFm8/s1600/visscher+1652+c.jpg" height="235" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ts4xRFbU6IM/U4Jn5ISYKnI/AAAAAAAAAGE/OsDIl8Ky40w/s1600/visscher+1652+a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ts4xRFbU6IM/U4Jn5ISYKnI/AAAAAAAAAGE/OsDIl8Ky40w/s1600/visscher+1652+a.jpg" height="225" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jaGHDWfhyPQ/U4Jp04cNzaI/AAAAAAAAAG0/bbwTm-4nTMw/s1600/visscher+1652+f.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CJwp2pACuOo/U4Jp0_lw87I/AAAAAAAAAGo/gd3-s5lcFRU/s1600/visscher+1652+e.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CJwp2pACuOo/U4Jp0_lw87I/AAAAAAAAAGo/gd3-s5lcFRU/s1600/visscher+1652+e.jpg" /></a><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jaGHDWfhyPQ/U4Jp04cNzaI/AAAAAAAAAG0/bbwTm-4nTMw/s1600/visscher+1652+f.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jaGHDWfhyPQ/U4Jp04cNzaI/AAAAAAAAAG0/bbwTm-4nTMw/s1600/visscher+1652+f.jpg" /></a></div>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-97Y1_fa3ycQ/U4Jp0806SGI/AAAAAAAAAGs/o6TBlFw7JuY/s1600/visscher+1652+g.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-97Y1_fa3ycQ/U4Jp0806SGI/AAAAAAAAAGs/o6TBlFw7JuY/s1600/visscher+1652+g.jpg" height="195" width="200" /></a><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Interestingly, and quite uniquely, he doesn't stop there, for in addition to the female allegories, he also shows you what people look like. Here are the Europeans (from Amsterdam), Asians (from Jerusalem) , and Africans (from Tunis) on the left side of the map. And on the right are images of north, central, and south Americans. The point is that he is communicating two things simultaneously: allegorizing the continents as female figures, and showing you what the actual people on the continents ostensibly look like.</span><br />
Here is a 1670 map by Philipp Cluver, or Cluverius (who died in 1622; they reprinted these maps quite extensively.). Once again, you can see images in the corners embodying the continents and to some extent racializing them.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JXFJDsjkfSw/U4J23HEXY9I/AAAAAAAAAHI/8DmDiDJ_Av4/s1600/cluverius+1670+sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JXFJDsjkfSw/U4J23HEXY9I/AAAAAAAAAHI/8DmDiDJ_Av4/s1600/cluverius+1670+sm.jpg" height="346" width="640" /></a></div>
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Here are the corner images, personifying the continents. That would be Asia with her camel, Europe with her bull, America with something in a tree, and Africa with a lion.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MFM6cJg6tu0/U4J3HDaNZuI/AAAAAAAAAHQ/0lYyEnIxccw/s1600/cluverius+1670+a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MFM6cJg6tu0/U4J3HDaNZuI/AAAAAAAAAHQ/0lYyEnIxccw/s1600/cluverius+1670+a.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wUhwX0asaok/U4J3I_uldaI/AAAAAAAAAHo/9WESTV8ZT8k/s1600/cluverius+1670+c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wUhwX0asaok/U4J3I_uldaI/AAAAAAAAAHo/9WESTV8ZT8k/s1600/cluverius+1670+c.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Iw4rCOb-4Ko/U4J3HAGk2gI/AAAAAAAAAHc/MulFwhdLVKY/s1600/cluverius+1670+b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Iw4rCOb-4Ko/U4J3HAGk2gI/AAAAAAAAAHc/MulFwhdLVKY/s1600/cluverius+1670+b.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JM6xGTduxiU/U4J3I7KQQRI/AAAAAAAAAHs/5hQ2AuN1HI8/s1600/cluverius+1670+d.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JM6xGTduxiU/U4J3I7KQQRI/AAAAAAAAAHs/5hQ2AuN1HI8/s1600/cluverius+1670+d.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 15.693333625793457px; text-align: center;">One last one. This 1676 map by Robert Greene. </span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 15.693333625793457px; text-align: center;">Once again, the corners are images of the people of the continent.</span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XdWUQu1MumA/U4J4oW4etFI/AAAAAAAAAH0/3LNnqGuEmBs/s1600/greene+1676+sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XdWUQu1MumA/U4J4oW4etFI/AAAAAAAAAH0/3LNnqGuEmBs/s1600/greene+1676+sm.jpg" height="518" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0fURx22_dm4/U4J4yM3FV3I/AAAAAAAAAIA/NK2yrwqbcC0/s1600/greene+1676a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0fURx22_dm4/U4J4yM3FV3I/AAAAAAAAAIA/NK2yrwqbcC0/s1600/greene+1676a.jpg" height="181" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pe0K99J8o90/U4J4yAuzi6I/AAAAAAAAAH8/C-Xdhim7gk4/s1600/greene+1676b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pe0K99J8o90/U4J4yAuzi6I/AAAAAAAAAH8/C-Xdhim7gk4/s1600/greene+1676b.jpg" height="246" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YuqZeqLsfP0/U4J41agS0-I/AAAAAAAAAIQ/2FFuZuOPPPs/s1600/greene+1676c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YuqZeqLsfP0/U4J41agS0-I/AAAAAAAAAIQ/2FFuZuOPPPs/s1600/greene+1676c.jpg" height="189" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4iYAPX9yXEg/U4J41V2lfvI/AAAAAAAAAIM/-JAJrRMxPEY/s1600/greene+1676d.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4iYAPX9yXEg/U4J41V2lfvI/AAAAAAAAAIM/-JAJrRMxPEY/s1600/greene+1676d.jpg" height="200" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">Yet all of these maps are earlier
than </span><span style="font-family: "GaramondThree","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondThree; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">François </span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">Bernier’s 1684 scientific paper, on a new division of the earth, beginning
the unification of its continents and its human types.</span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">The difference is that the scientists
actually took it literally, while the mapmakers initially intended it as art – a simple allegory.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">By the time of Linnaeus’s
first go at it, in <i>System of Nature</i> (1735), the image was already a familiar
one.</span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">Four continents, four kinds of
people.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BZlSBKBCT3A/U4J6QYJF3pI/AAAAAAAAAIg/HbY2jmg3dRE/s1600/linnaeus+1+sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BZlSBKBCT3A/U4J6QYJF3pI/AAAAAAAAAIg/HbY2jmg3dRE/s1600/linnaeus+1+sm.jpg" height="74" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">That would be whitish Europeans, reddish Americans, dark Asians, and blackish Africans. He hasn't quite sorted out the color scheme, or the species - but he is pretty confident that there are four kinds of people, each associated with a continent. He'll have that done by the tenth edition of 1758. And this will become science, because of Linnaeus's vast influence over systematic biology.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"> But the image was there for the better part of a century in European cartography. Each continent had its own person. They just didn't intend for it to be taken so literally. I</span><span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"> think this is an example of science imitating art, by taking what was initially intended as an allegorical image, and having it become so familiar - and so reasonable, given the political historical relations I mentioned up top - that it could be literalized and incorporated into the science of the 18th century.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"> That is, of course, the scientific conception of the human species that Nicholas Wade promotes as modern, in his new book.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: GaramondThree, serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "GaramondThree","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondThree;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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On February 4, evangelist Ken Ham will debate television
personality Bill Nye (“The Science Guy”) on the subject of creationism, at the
Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky.
It will be streamed live, and should attract considerable attention
among those with an interest in the decline of modern civilization.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A public debate between non-experts is theater, not
scholarship. The debate is predicated on
a critical misrepresentation, as if Creationism/Evolution mapped cleanly on to
Religion/Science. But it doesn’t. Evolution is compatible with many
theologies. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Certainly creationism is religious, and evolution is
scientific. But aside from a bit of old
revisionist history, the judgment of modern
historians and anthropologists alike is that science and religion can, and do,
coexist peacefully for most people. The
reason is that science is a fairly narrow intellectual domain, consisting of a
series of methods for establishing reliable knowledge about the natural world;
while religion broadly encompasses social, experiential, and moral
domains. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Religion is so fundamentally an aspect of the human
condition that, as scholars have realized for many decades, most people
integrate religious beliefs and attitudes seamlessly into their daily
lives. The ancient Greeks had no word
for it. It’s not that they weren’t
religious, it’s just that they didn’t separate and label it, as we do. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ritual behaviors extend beyond religion. As football fans are well aware - with commercials
for Bud Light invoking the old Stevie Wonder song “Superstition” – religious
beliefs and attitudes hardly end at the outer side of the church door. And as anyone who as ever shouted “stupid
computer!” and smacked the side of their monitor knows, the attribution of
sentient properties to inanimate objects – loosely called “animism” – is not
limited to the formally demarcated religious domain.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Creationists today are a diverse lot. Ken Ham represents “young-earth creationism”,
rejecting not simply anthropology and biology, but geology and astrophysics as
well. That position existed back in
1925, when John T. Scopes was prosecuted for teaching evolution in Tennessee,
and William Jennings Bryan held center stage as the nation’s leading spokesman
for creationism. But young-earth
creationism was too dumb even for Bryan, who made it clear during the infamous
trial that he accepted the great antiquity of the heavens and the earth. He was an “old-earth” creationist.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A more recent version of creationism - “intelligent
design” - preaches neither an old cosmos
nor a young cosmos, but presents simply a theology of negativity, whose
adherents are united solely in their opposition to the naturalistic explanation
of human origins provided by modern science.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But the modern conflict is complicated by two other
factors. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First, the cultural prominence of evangelical atheists, who
would cast themselves not simply against creationism, but against religion more
generally. These people, however,
imagine that religion is as narrow as science is – simply a set of alternative
and false narratives about nature. But
these people do no favors for science, for its authority on natural matters
does not extend to the cultural, ethical, spiritual, or esthetic domains. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Second, the mistake of lumping anti-vaccinators,
climate-change deniers, and creationists into a single “anti-science” bin. Nobody is “anti-science” – that person exists
only in the mind of a paranoiac. After
all, Republican resistance to anthropogenic climate change is about business
and money, not about theology.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Creationism is a poor representation of religion, whose basis
is not merely an alternative narrative of our origins, but lies in the
construction of a complex and very human social, emotional, and moral
universe. And atheism is a poor
representation of science, whose methods were developed to study natural
processes and make no sense when extended beyond nature – if indeed there is
anything beyond nature, which science doesn’t, and can’t, know. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are individual exceptions, of course, but Judaism
holds that the Torah must be interpreted properly for every generation, and
that only a poltroon would take it at face value. The Catholic Church accepts the descent of
the human species from earlier nonhuman species. That leaves Biblical literalist creationism
as a sectarian theological dispute within Protestantism.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s time to separate science from atheism, and religion
from Biblical literalism. The atheists
and the literalists can slug it out, but the rest of us will continue trying to
make decent intellectual sense of the things in our lives that science does
explain and the things it doesn’t.</div>
Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-11309068231410064652013-11-24T15:41:00.000-08:002013-11-24T15:41:13.247-08:00NultureSomething I wrote for popanth - Hot Buttered Humanity...<br />
<br />
<a href="http://popanth.com/article/nulture/">http://popanth.com/article/nulture/</a>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-22346542727574216032013-11-02T20:01:00.001-07:002013-11-02T20:01:06.379-07:00Heads, We Win!<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt;">
<span style="line-height: 18px;"> The relationship between the head and the mind is a subtle one, and it has led generations of scientists into difficult straits. The brain is inside the head. Aside from Aristotle and his most devout followers (who thought the brain's primary function was to cool the body), nearly all ancient and modern European scholars have understood the brain's primary function to be in producing thoughts. Yet different people have different thoughts - some bad, some good. And some people have mental gifts - for mathematics, for art, for socializing. Is it because they have different kinds of brains? Is it because they have different kinds of heads?</span><br />
<span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 18px;"> Perhaps we should look to science to find out.</span><br />
<span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 18px;"> In the first half of the 19th century, one of the most popular applied sciences was known as phrenology, developed by medical anatomists. It answered the question, "Why do people have such different personalities?" by recourse to medical anatomy. The logic, primitive if comprehensible, was that people have different personalities because they have different brains; the brain is composed of various modules for music, love, fidelity, and the like, and since the skull encloses the brain, we can read one's personal talents and abilities from the overdeveloped or underdeveloped parts of their brain, which are inscribed upon the surface of the skull. Just as a home-wrapped Christmas present might contain a bulge for a part that is a bit too large for its box, so too does the skull have bulges corresponding to the overdeveloped parts of the brain governing particular personality attributes. All we need to do, then, is to feel the bumps on your skull, and we can tell you about your latent abilities.</span><br />
<span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 18px;"> By the latter part of the 19th century, this was generally looked upon scornfully by the mainstream anatomical community, which had its own crude logical practice. Just as a large pancreas secretes more insulin, it stands to reason that a large brain secretes more thoughts. Thus, people with large brains are more intellectually gifted than people with smaller brains.<span style="font-size: xx-small;">[1]</span> One of the strongest early advocates of this idea, Samuel George Morton of Philadelphia in the 1840s, was also a believer in phrenology. And yet, it was not too difficult to find small-brained geniuses and big-brained dummies.</span><br />
<span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 18px;"> Perhaps, then, the head's gross shape had something to do with it, in addition to the head's gross size and surface details, or perhaps instead of them. Some people (and populations) had long heads; others had short, broad heads. Standardized measurements and a pompous scientific vocabulary developed in the middle of the 19th century described long-heads as dolichocephalic and broad-heads as brachycephalic. As descriptions of people, of course, they were fine, but as explanations for their histories and social conditions, they were nonsensical, even if scientifically mainstream.<span style="font-size: xx-small;">[2]</span> </span><br />
<span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 18px;"> The early anthropologist Franz Boas began to debunk the value of head shape, for any other purpose than descriptive, by empirically contrasting the head shapes of immigrants with the heads of their children and other family members, and showing that this trait was heavily influenced by the environment.<span style="font-size: xx-small;">[3] </span> On the other hand, the early physical anthropologist Aleš Hrdlička wrote with dismissive condescension about phrenology, but when given the chance to examine the brain of a recently deceased Eskimo (Inuit) from Greenland, he leapt at the opportunity. His 1901 paper on "An Eskimo Brain" was not followed by one on "An Eskimo Arm" or "An Eskimo Liver," so he clearly regarded the organ as one of especially great scientific interest. It is not clear, though, just what he expected to learn from it, although he quite ghoulishly concludes, "The marked differences ... from those of the whites ... makes a future acquisition of Eskimo brains very desirable."<span style="font-size: xx-small;">[4]</span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 18px;"> By the 1920s, it had become clear that culture was not to be found inside people's brains, but rather, constituted a part of the environment that imposed itself upon people's brains. This is not to say that all brains are identical, but like arms and livers, their differences are largely irrelevant to the question of why different groups of people behave as they do, or have the histories that they do. In pathological cases, the structure of a brain might be interesting, but it functions pretty much the same way in all normal people, whatever language they speak, and whatever their social background, class, diet, traditions, or values may be.</span><br />
<span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 18px;"> By the 1950s, the physical anthropologists had come around as well - to the recognition that measuring head size and shape had its uses, but none of them involved the question of why different groups of people think and act as they do. The eventual apprehension of this fact was doubtless a consequence of the fact that the physical anthropology of the Nazis, like their human genetics, was not all that different from its American counterpart, and had to be fundamentally reconceptualized after World War II.<span style="font-size: xx-small;">[5]</span> </span><br />
<span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 18px;"> The head studies, however, required admitting an exception to the guiding principle of anatomy: that form follows function. The new physical anthropology,<span style="font-size: xx-small;">[6]</span> christened by Sherwood Washburn in 1951, would finally follow the cultural anthropologists, and hold as axiomatic that variation in mental properties and functions is disconnected from physical variation in head form. There is a wide range of variation in normal human heads, and a wide range of variation in normal human thoughts, and they only map on to one another in the grossest or crudest of ways. You can't legitimately infer cultural difference from the observation of cranial difference, nor cultural similarity from the observation of cranial similarity. The reason is that they are epistemologically disconnected, for cultural differences are the products of history, not biology. </span><br />
<span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 18px;"> Thus, heads are more-or-less interchangeable across the great bulk of our species, and the brains inside them can do pretty much what anyone else's brain can do, except in pathological or exceedingly unusual cases. Consequently, when we encounter a modern human skull in the ethnographic, archaeological, or fossil record, we are going to assume that it housed a normal modern human brain, just like yours and mine, and consequently was capable of thinking the full range of normal modern human thoughts, just like yours and mine. That seems to be the best inference we can draw from two centuries of studying the anthropology of heads.</span></div>
<br />
<div>
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<br />
<div id="edn1">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="file:///F:/How%20to%20think%20Chapter%204.docx#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> There are still a few psychologists who maintain this. Actually, however, the correlation of IQ with brain size is far lower than the correlation of brain size with body size. In other words, big people tend to have big brains. If it were true that brain size were a significant determinant of intelligence, then the smartest people on earth would be football linemen.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="file:///F:/How%20to%20think%20Chapter%204.docx#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Gould SJ (1981) <i>The Mismeasure of Man</i>. New York: W W
Norton.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="file:///F:/How%20to%20think%20Chapter%204.docx#_ednref3">[3]</a> Boas F (1912) Changes in the bodily form of descendants of immigrants. American Anthropologist 14: 530-562</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn4">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="file:///F:/How%20to%20think%20Chapter%204.docx#_ednref4" name="_edn4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Hrdlicka A (1901) An Eskimo brain. <i>American Anthropologist</i> 3: 454-500. This was the brain of Qisuk, one of the
"New York Eskimos" whom Franz Boas convinced Robert Peary to bring to
the Big Apple from the Arctic. All but Qisuk's
son died within a few months. I
discussed this in Chapter 8 of <i>Why I Am Not
a Scientist</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn5">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="file:///F:/How%20to%20think%20Chapter%204.docx#_ednref5" name="_edn5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Marks J (2010) The two 20th century
crises of racial anthropology. In: Little MA, Kennedy KAR, eds. <i>History of Physical Anthropology in the
Twentieth Century</i>. Lexington Books Lanham, MD: pp. 187-206.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn6">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="file:///F:/How%20to%20think%20Chapter%204.docx#_ednref6" name="_edn6" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Washburn SL (1951) The new physical
anthropology. <i>Transactions of the New
York Academy of Sciences</i>, Series II 13: 298-304</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
</div>
Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-20868339107316882602013-10-28T13:06:00.001-07:002013-10-28T17:23:46.984-07:00Scars of human evolution, part deux<div class="MsoNormal">
Physical anthropologist Wilton Krogman wrote a classic
article in 1951 for <i>Scientific American</i>
called “The Scars of Human Evolution,” back when you could actually make sense
of the stuff in <i>Scientific American</i>. It addressed
half of human evolution: bipedalism.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hard as it may be to believe, the evolution of our other most
basic adaptation is under-theorized. I
refer to our symbolic mode of communication, language. Language,
which is coterminous with symbolic thought – if you can think it, you can say
it – was an unusual and apparently very good evolutionary innovation. It was so good, indeed, that it created
physical problems that the human body had to solve secondarily in order to make
it work, and to some extent never did solve fully.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First, it expanded our heads. Symbolic communication requires a big brain,
as well as an extended period of immaturity in order to learn how to do it
properly. It is so difficult that we
hardly even appreciate how difficult it is.
From the bottom up, we learn what sounds make sense. Are “s” and “sh” variants of the same sound,
or different sounds? What about “l” and
r”? Or “r” and “rr”? Or the “Ch” in “Chanukah”
or the “Zs” in “Zsa-Zsa”? Are they their
own sounds, or some weird variants of “Hanukah” and “Cha-Cha”? We also learn how to combine those sounds,
and use them to refer to objects, or acts, or states. We could call those combinations of sounds “lexemes,”
but for the sake of simplicity, let’s just call them “words”. We also learn how to combine those words in
meaningful ways – to state, inquire, praise, predict, recall, using any of the myriad
grammatical forms at our disposal. And
on top of all that, we learn intonation, sarcasm, and bodily gestures to go
along with the rules of sounds, their correspondences, and combinations. The price for all of this was a brain inside
a baby’s skull that hardly fits through the birth canal. And the solution to that problem was to make
birthing social. Where an ape squats and
delivers, a human almost always needs to have someone else around.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Second, language reorganized our throats. To make all of those sounds, our larynx is
positioned lower down in the throat than it is in apes and babies, who cannot
make those sounds. The price we pay is that
the passage of air into our lungs and of food into our bellies now criss-cross,
which they do not in apes, which means that we can choke on our food far more
readily than a chimpanzee can. The
solution is: Don’t eat so fast, and try not to breathe while you are
swallowing.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Third, language not only worked over our throats and brains,
but our teeth as well. Catarrhine
primates often have large, sexually dimorphic canine teeth, which they use as
social threats and in the occasional actual fight. Classic sexual selection theory holds that in
species in which males actively compete for mates, they do so using their
canine teeth. In species where there is less competition for
mates, because males and females pair off, the males and females have equal-sized
canine teeth, as in the monogamous gibbons.
This is often invoked as evidence that sexual selection has been reduced
in the human species, which may well be true.
The problem is that those gibbon canines, which are non-dimorphic, are
also actually quite large. Ours are
non-dimorphic, but small. Why? Because it is really hard to speak
intelligibly through large, interlocking canine teeth. Ask any vampire (and see if you can
understand their response). The price
for the reduction of the canine teeth was that our canine teeth are not going
to intimidate other members of our own species, nor defend us against member of
other species. Good thing we started
using tools. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And fourth, in addition to reshaping our brains, throats,
and teeth, language also reshaped our tongue.
To make the sounds we do, our
tongue became more muscular, rounded, and enervated than an ape’s tongue. For this the cost was quite severe. An ape dissipates heat, as most mammals do,
by panting. But to use your tongue
primarily for talking, it will require that your body produce another way of
dissipating heat. Our ancestors did that
by loading up our skin with sweat glands, for evaporative cooling. But evaporative cooling only works efficiently
with bare skin; so our body hair had to get shorter and wispier than that of an
ape. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Walking and talking are what are most fundamentally human,
and it is quite extraordinary that they rhyme. So the next time you choke, sweat, scream for
an epidural, or reach for a weapon to protect yourself because you lack
confidence in your teeth to protect you, reflect on the fact that our body
parts are interconnected, and that language was such a good way to communicate
that it screwed you up in so many other ways.
I didn’t mention it, but there is
a fifth price as well for language:
having to listen to people who don’t know when to shut the fuck up.<o:p></o:p></div>
Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6296902161996746404.post-35742965969366303112013-08-19T14:20:00.000-07:002013-08-19T14:20:16.407-07:00The Empire Strikes Back<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white;">Some of you older folks may
remember the case in which geneticist Therese Markow (then of Arizona State, now
of UC-San Diego) bled a Native American tribe on the promise of studying diabetes,
and then piggybacked some research on schizophrenia and population structure
and history onto that promise; except that she didn't tell them about it and they
didn't consent to it. This had been "situation
normal" in the field for decades, but in the wake of the Native American
Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA, born 1990) and the Human Genome
Diversity Project (HGDP, died 1996), it is no longer acceptable practice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">The Havasupai case helped <a href="http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/pubs/Marks&Harry.pdf">to reframe the relationship between scientists and Native peoples</a>, which had been
tested by the HGDP, and which had relied for decades on the assumption that
there was a gentleman's agreement between the geneticist and the tribe, and
that the geneticist could say anything to get the genetic samples from the
tribe, and after it was out of their bodies, it was the property of the
scientist, who could then do pretty much anything with it, including research
that the tribe had not agreed to, and trading samples to other labs for other
research. But no more. </span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">In April 2010, the lawsuit
brought by the Havasupai against Markow's institution was settled out of court,
and the tribe, the university, and the bioethics community were all satisfied
with the results. <a href="http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/pubs/ATeditorial.pdf">I wrote it up</a> for <i>Anthropology Today </i>shortly afterwards.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">Now that we have blown up the
Death Star, however, the Empire is striking back. Ricki Lewis, the author of a major textbook
on human genetics, and thus with the potential to miseducate thousands of
students in human genetics,<a href="http://blogs.plos.org/dnascience/2013/08/15/is-the-havasupai-indian-case-a-fairy-tale"> now says that Teri Markow did not actually study schizophren</a>ia, the investigation and report commissioned on behalf of ASU and
the Havasupai was a smear job, and the charges against her were entirely false.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">So we are compelled to
revisit the case once more. Think of Teri
Markow as Alex Rodriguez, and yourself as Bud Selig.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">Ricki Lewis carried out a
literature search and discovered that Teri Markow never published on the
genetics of Havasupai schizophrenia.
From this, she concludes that Markow never actually studied it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">Like
the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the narrative that the geneticist
sought schizophrenia genes in Havasupai DNA became established fact with the
repeating. Soon the accounts of the case began quoting and citing each other,
as if the original documents that held the truth didn’t even exist.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">The trail of original
documents is actually rather interesting.
The most significant document is the one produced by Arizona State's
investigation at the end of 2003, known as the Hart Report. Ricki Lewis dismisses it, because she has
additional secret information: </span> </div>
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<span style="background: white;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">I’ve
got more background than went into the blog, and based on it, I wouldn’t trust
the Hart report.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">Be that as it may, the Hart
report was based on extensive interviews and paper trails, and was as
comprehensive as could be expected, to the satisfaction of both the Havasupai and the
university. It discusses lots of other original
documents, such as consent forms. In
fact, it tells us that in an interview with Markow in 2003, "Markow had
indicated, during the course of the interview, that she had lost or misplaced the
file containing the informed consents from 1991 on ...". <b>The
dog ate my consent forms.</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">Another original document is a
story that appeared in <a href="http://www.phoenixmag.com/lifestyle/200811/arizona-s-broken-arrow/1/">Phoenix Magazine in 2008 by Jana Bommersbac</a>h</span>, which says, </div>
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<span style="background: white;">Markow
maintains to this day that she had permission to test for things other than
diabetes and that her “proof” is the consent forms signed by some of the
Havasupai who donated blood. She insists the project had two focuses: diabetes
and schizophrenia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">So in 2008, Markow was saying
that schizophrenia had been a research focus of hers, and in 2013 she is saying
that it wasn't? Or more precisely, in
2013 Markow is enlisting a shill in the genetics blogosphere to deny that
schizophrenia in the Havasupai had ever been a research focus of hers?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">Further, the Hart Report says:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">Dr.
Markow was funded by NlMH and NARSAD to study the role of genetic factors in
schizophrenia, a psychiatric disorder "which occurs at a significantly
greater rate among the Havasupai (7%) than in any other population (1 %). Interestingly,
all cases of schizophrenia occur in lineages tracing back to a single man (a
shaman or medicine man) who lived in the 1880's."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">NIMH is the National Institutes
of Mental Health, not a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Secret-of-NIMH/dp/B000IZUX7">cartoon</a>. </span><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">NARSAD is th<span style="font-family: inherit;">e </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 115%;">National Alliance for the Research of
Schizophrenia and Depression</span>, now ca</span>lled the Brain and Behavior Research
Foundation. In other words, <b>among the original documents are funded
grant proposals for research on schizophrenia</b>.</div>
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<span style="background: white;">The NARSAD grant for
1990-1991 was a big one, but unfortunately, <b>the dog ate that, too</b>. According
to the Hart report, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">Information
was hard to obtain on this grant. It is our understanding that it was funded in
the amount of $92,880.00 and provided funds for the blood collection,
processing and analysis that led to the genetics studies undertaken at Arizona
State University (and elsewhere)....<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">Dr.
Markow submitted the letter of intent for this grant, which requested funds to
"initiate a major research program on the etiology of schizophrenia in a unique
patient population in Arizona," the Havasupai. ... She proposed conducting
the research in two stages. The first stage was to involve the collection of
data, and it was for this stage that she was asking NARSAD, the National
Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, for funding. She
indicated that support for the second, more extensive stage would be sought
from NIMH, the National Institute of Mental Health. We have uncovered no
evidence to establish that this letter of intent, or other documentation
associated with this grant proposal, was presented to the Havasupai.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">The NIMH grant was for "Genetic
Analysis of the Dopamine Receptor Gene Family" and provided funding for
Markow from 1992 through 1995. The Hart
report says, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">the
two primary goals of the project were, first, to determine the amount of
genetic variation present in the dopamine receptor gene family in the Havasupai
and, second, to statistically analyze the data to determine if any genetic
variation was associated with the development of schizophrenia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">Unfortunately, <b>the dog ate that grant proposal as well</b>. Teri Markow had a very hungry dog.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">So what of this bizarre blog post by
this textbook author? The research
didn't get very far, and didn't come up with anything publishable, which is why
Ricki Lewis did not find any publications on it. But how on earth can anyone claim that there
was no research? When she asks
rhetorically, "Why did articles twist events to seem as if she had
intended all along to study schizophrenia?</span>" the obvious answer is
that because Markow had indeed been interested in studying schizophrenia, and
had received grants to do it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="background: white;">So I pointed that out to Ricki
Lewis, and she responded: "just
because you are funded from a certain source with a disease name in its title
does not mean that you are or are intending to do research on that particular
disease." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">Read that again, slowly. A major science textbook author is telling
human genetics students that they can apply for cancer funding from, say, the
National Cancer Institute, and get it, while not actually having any interest
in cancer or performing any research relevant to cancer. I think she's wrong. In fact, I think the National Cancer
Institute would consider that fraudulent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">Teri Markow herself jumped in,
but didn't say, "No, we did not study schizophrenia" - which was
presumably the point under contention. Instead,
she said blah blah blah:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">First
of all, the consent forms speak for themselves with respect to the breadth of
studies. However, without sufficient and appropriate genetic variants,
association studies of any disease are not possible. The first step therefore,
with our funding, was to seek genetic variability that could be useful in
studies of disease. While we did not find sufficient variability with the
techniques available at that time to perform association studies, we at least were
able to provide people with feedback about their health status with respect to
diabetes, because the test for this is simple. Had there been sufficient
variability for stringent association studies for any disorder, we could have
proceeded. </span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">However, even if there had been the requisite variability, stringent
diagnostic testing for schizophrenia would require a major effort, including
lengthy interviews, that never could have gone undetected by the participants.
This fact, plus the fact that I have never published a paper on schizophrenia
in the Havasupai, answer your question quite definitively.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">This is from someone who received
hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant money to study the genetics of schizophrenia
in the Havasupai, but came up with nothing publishable. But <b>whether
they came up with anything publishable is not the issue</b>, this issue was <b>whether research was carried out</b> on the
topic, without the knowledge or consent of the Havasupai. The latter clause has not been challenged;
the Havasupai were not aware that their blood was being used for any studies
other than diabetes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">Those of us of a certain age
can remember<a href="http://www.amazon.com/All-Presidents-Men-Bob-Woodward/dp/0671894412"> the "non-denial denial" from Richard Nixon's office </a>in
the old days of Watergate.</span> </div>
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So I tried again: "What I am hearing is that Dr. Markow
sought and received funding from an agency that focuses on schizophrenia,
without any intention of actually studying schizophrenia, and ultimately
performing no science related to that illness." Neither Ricki Lewis nor Teri Markow responded
to that. I suspect that if Markow publicly
agreed with it, she might be incriminating herself.</div>
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Teri Markow seems to have had little difficulty in obtaining
research grants or faculty positions subsequent to the Havasupai case, and <a href="http://biology.ucsd.edu/faculty/markow.html">now studies Drosophila</a>. She is probably very
nice, and I've never thought that she did anything worse than what was common
practice at the time. It was the common
practice that was being challenged.</div>
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One of my favorite examples of that practice is from a puff piece that <i>Time Magazine</i> ran on the HGDP, in which
Luca Cavalli-Sforza was trying to show himself off as a swashbuckler. And as S. J. Perelman once said, no man ever
buckled a better swash.</div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">On one occasion, when Cavalli-Sforza was taking blood from schoolchildren
in a rural region of the Central African Republic, he was confronted by an
angry farmer brandishing an ax. Recalls
the scientist, “I remember him saying, ‘If you take the blood of the children,
I’ll take yours.’ He was worried that we might want to do some magic with the
blood." (<a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,982346,00.html">Time Magazine, 16 January 1995</a>)</span></div>
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When people come after you with an ax, that is usually a
clue that you have not received their voluntary informed consent. That is why there is no HGDP anymore, and why
Teri Markow now works on flies.</div>
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Bioethics serves to make scientists responsible social
actors, especially if they don't want to be responsible social actors. Time was, that a scientist could do anything
they wanted to anyone they wanted, for any reason they wanted. Now they can't. The lesson we learned around the middle of
the last century is that the progress of science is great, but when it bumps up
against human rights, human rights wins, hands down. That's a good lesson for genetics students to learn. </div>
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And what is the author/blogger Ricki Lewis's stake in all
this? Why bother to revisit a dead issue, and
mount such a preposterous defense of Markow's work? Maybe she's one of those people still
fighting the Science Wars, who thinks that bioethics is just a set of obstacles
to scientific research. She does seem to
hold some unusual views about science: "Science has nothing to do with
belief, it is about data and evidence." Actually, science has a lot to do with belief;
for example, if you believe that you can do science on people without their
consent, then you don't get to do the science.</div>
Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18140836427889800046noreply@blogger.com1