Except for one thing (below) you and I are not disagreeing on the main points. I have no problem with people studying genetics and how close various human populations are to each other. Genetics is one of the most interesting fields in biology and why not look at how humans of one place are related to those in the next?
I also agree that the study thereof is separate from human stupidity about racism, ethnocentrism and other things.
Again, I also agree that the only reason the study of the relatedness of human population groups can cause any foreseeable problem would be precisely because it deals with our own kind: humans. For better or for worse, even the 21st century is populated with some dimwits who like to imagine one group is somehow - even if only for the most superficial of reasons - 'better' than another.
The existence of bad apples does not mean sensible people shouldn't study how humans evolved, how they dispersed and colonised various inhabitable parts of the world. I'm almost just as interested in this as I am at finding out how the depths of the oceans (where the pressure due to the masses of water is beyond imagination) is able sustain life: there are most strange and wonderful creatures adapted to living there; or how there are some ecological systems of life on earth that do not require the sun to live.
I don't know that everyone working in the field of genetics today is free from the prejudices that the naturalists of the 19th and early 20th century eagerly entertained.
Was never one for considering repercussions myself, I'm curious like a cat - operating on the shortsighted principle 'the future will tell where we go wrong'. When I think about it though, like I am forced to do now, somewhere there is a niggling in my head telling me that not trying to find answers to all the questions is a bad thing, whilst on the other side there's the thought that some questions are for the present (while humans are still timebomb teenagers ready to explode at the earliest opportunity) best left unvisited.
But hey, I was barely awake during the sole ethics course I ended up taking, so what do I know? Besides, I don't think they ever covered such things...
The sum total of my complaint was with respect to races. Not a scientific classification scheme. It makes no sense for 21st century science to be using this (and they don't, as far as I am aware), unless perhaps scientists are planning to wholly transplant race <i>names</i> onto genetic clusters (but, other than for Caucasian, even that diagram didn't use race names). Even in the latter case, they are then <i>not</i> really referring to the same categories (that is, they're not defined by the same criteria) as the ones naturalists/proto-anthropologists were referring to.
There is one thing in your last post that I disagree with, merely because it is factually incorrect:
<!--QuoteBegin-Hauma Hamiddha+Jun 29 2007, 07:30 AM-->QUOTE(Hauma Hamiddha @ Jun 29 2007, 07:30 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->race (=ethnic group)[right][snapback]70623[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->By definition, race is not the same as ethnic group.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->R. Dawkins had to grudgingly admit that humans might have been adapted in the past to elicit ethnic discrimination responses.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I'm curious to know which of Richard's books this is.
ADDED:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In a rooted tree of the extant Homo sapiens the bushmen come out as being the basal-most branch. So when one cuts the rooted tree up they may end up getting a <group> of their own. Is this meaningful?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->No probs with this, as long as where applicable all genetic clusters that are as distant from neighbouring clusters (as the Bushmen are from their neighbours) get their own group as well.
I also agree that the study thereof is separate from human stupidity about racism, ethnocentrism and other things.
Again, I also agree that the only reason the study of the relatedness of human population groups can cause any foreseeable problem would be precisely because it deals with our own kind: humans. For better or for worse, even the 21st century is populated with some dimwits who like to imagine one group is somehow - even if only for the most superficial of reasons - 'better' than another.
The existence of bad apples does not mean sensible people shouldn't study how humans evolved, how they dispersed and colonised various inhabitable parts of the world. I'm almost just as interested in this as I am at finding out how the depths of the oceans (where the pressure due to the masses of water is beyond imagination) is able sustain life: there are most strange and wonderful creatures adapted to living there; or how there are some ecological systems of life on earth that do not require the sun to live.
I don't know that everyone working in the field of genetics today is free from the prejudices that the naturalists of the 19th and early 20th century eagerly entertained.
Was never one for considering repercussions myself, I'm curious like a cat - operating on the shortsighted principle 'the future will tell where we go wrong'. When I think about it though, like I am forced to do now, somewhere there is a niggling in my head telling me that not trying to find answers to all the questions is a bad thing, whilst on the other side there's the thought that some questions are for the present (while humans are still timebomb teenagers ready to explode at the earliest opportunity) best left unvisited.
But hey, I was barely awake during the sole ethics course I ended up taking, so what do I know? Besides, I don't think they ever covered such things...
The sum total of my complaint was with respect to races. Not a scientific classification scheme. It makes no sense for 21st century science to be using this (and they don't, as far as I am aware), unless perhaps scientists are planning to wholly transplant race <i>names</i> onto genetic clusters (but, other than for Caucasian, even that diagram didn't use race names). Even in the latter case, they are then <i>not</i> really referring to the same categories (that is, they're not defined by the same criteria) as the ones naturalists/proto-anthropologists were referring to.
There is one thing in your last post that I disagree with, merely because it is factually incorrect:
<!--QuoteBegin-Hauma Hamiddha+Jun 29 2007, 07:30 AM-->QUOTE(Hauma Hamiddha @ Jun 29 2007, 07:30 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->race (=ethnic group)[right][snapback]70623[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->By definition, race is not the same as ethnic group.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->R. Dawkins had to grudgingly admit that humans might have been adapted in the past to elicit ethnic discrimination responses.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I'm curious to know which of Richard's books this is.
ADDED:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In a rooted tree of the extant Homo sapiens the bushmen come out as being the basal-most branch. So when one cuts the rooted tree up they may end up getting a <group> of their own. Is this meaningful?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->No probs with this, as long as where applicable all genetic clusters that are as distant from neighbouring clusters (as the Bushmen are from their neighbours) get their own group as well.