Thursday, April 10, 2008

Ever Since Darwin, 8: The Science and Politics of Human Nature, 29: Why We Should Not Name Races

Homo sapiens is a strongly differentiated species.
But variability does not warrant a designation of races.
There are better ways to study human differences.

How can we study geographic variability then?
Multivariate analysis offers an objective mapping based on a lot of characteristics while races are subjective. Almost all proponents of multivariate analysis decline to name subspecies. You cannot map a continuous distribution if each specimen has to be assigned to a discrete subdivision.

Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould

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