Darwinism

But for Darwinism, would modern race theory exist? (For Fred Reed, here.) Another reaction to Nicholas Wade’s parting shot at the New York Times, a book resurrecting Darwinian racism Pacific Standard: The concept of human races appears to be solidly grounded in present-day biology and our evolutionary history. But if you asked that conference of geneticists to give you a genetic definition of race, they wouldn’t be able to do it. Human races are not natural genetic groups; they are socially constructed categories. Political correctness warning: This has now become a politically incorrect belief. It wasn’t so yesterday or last month. The New York Times has announced it is so. Now, the truth of this claim is not obvious. The idea Read More ›

Here: Allen Orr, my first Ph.D. student, has developed a thriving career as a popular book reviewer, and in this week’s New York Review of Books, he critique’s Nicholas Wade’s new book, A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History. I made a few comments on this book a few days ago, saying that it was in the main pretty bad, though one part, the presentation of the case for genetic differentiation of human populations, was not too bad. But Wade’s main thesis was that differences between human societies, as well as rapid changes within human societies, was due to evolutionary change mediated by natural selection. That latter contention, I claimed, had no evidence behind it, though Wade argued otherwise. Read More ›