How did Darwin define race?

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by Medium Dave, Feb 8, 2017.

  1. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Medium Dave: the question of race is a very contentious issue here (as is plainly obvious). SciFo does indeed have a preponderance of regular posters who regularly harp on this issue to advance their racist agendae. SciFo also has a preponderance of sockpuppets - banned posters returning under new names.

    It in no way means you are either of those things, it simply means that this is the reality here, and it needs to be taken in to consideration.
     
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  3. Medium Dave Registered Member

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    Not at all. "Descent with modification" refers to heredity with mutation, not a classification system. The system Darwin refers to in his letter is purely descent based.

    Well now your making a subjective-normative judgement, based on cherry picked situation, and hilariously using the race concept to do that. You can see silicon valley is mixed race, and there are smart people of all races there. Granted. Does that case disprove average racial differences? Of course not! How silly.

    Well feel free to post them and explain how it contradicts me. "A letter disagrees with you" isn't an argument.

    I think I see the problem here. Wikipedia:

    "In the United States, creationists often use the term "Darwinism" as a pejorative term in reference to beliefs such as scientific materialism, but in the United Kingdom the term has no negative connotations, being freely used as a shorthand for the body of theory dealing with evolution, and in particular, with evolution by natural selection."
    Typology is the study of types. It's really that simple. Types can be essentialist or cut arbitrarily from continuous variation. Darwin refuted essentialism, and I agree with him. The confusion is where you allow non-essentialist types in non-human taxonomy, then deny essentialist types in human taxonomy. I am saying that races are non-essentialist types of exactly the same nature as non-human taxa. We agree there are no "boxes" or "hard classification schemes". I am saying that race was not conceptualised as such by Darwin and isn't now. It's a strawman race concept.

    Races and subspecies are certainly less distinct than species due to gene flow and blurred boundaries. This doesn't mean "the classification system breaks down". One can still group by ancestry or similarity. Unless you deny the subspecies concept?

    What? "Finer divisions" are without merit? Contrived nonsense. Of course individual assessments are better. This doesn't mean the race concept has no value. That's why it's used in medicine.

    Nobody is talking about "hard-box classifications". Strawman. Races are cut from continua.

    Absolutely. Same with races.

    You're using the word "variety" in the same sense as race. It's just a semantic game. And you didn't answer my question. Apparently, according to you, races aren't differentiatied "enough". Quantify enough. Is there some standard in non-humans? Give examples.

    Nope. It refutes essentialist typology. Let's use the word division instead of type. Races and all taxa are non essentialist divisions.

    If by typology you mean essentialism, then races are not typological as conceived by Darwin. Strawman.
     
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  5. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Looking at the above, I wonder if I have done a disservice to our hot-tempered friend with the undisclosed agenda.

    Perhaps he's not a creationist. Perhaps he's Steve Bannon. Or Jeff Sessions.

    (Pass the pillowcase and scissors......

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    )
     
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  7. Medium Dave Registered Member

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    What an idiot.
     
  8. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Yep. So why are you playing it? Darwin didn't define "race" any more than he defined "variety", "location", etc; he just used English words to communicate.

    That would belong in Linguistics.
    If you want to argue against modern strawman race concepts that have nothing to do with Darwin, why fool around with historical semantic trivia?

    If you're trying to argue that the sociological races have any equivalence to scientific taxa, or similar bs, you're not going to get anywhere by invoking Darwin - even if he was that muddleheaded, he's been dead for over a century.
     
  9. Medium Dave Registered Member

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    Your response seems to be "I know you are but what am I?" I'm not bringing up undefined words randomly to refer to the same thing. I gave you Darwin's definition of race. There is not much more I can do if you deny what's in front of you.

    What do you mean by "sociological races"? I suspect I'm not talking about sociological races, rather biological races defined by ancestry by Darwin and to the present day, the same as any other taxa, and denied by Boasian Communists for political reasons.
     
  10. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Maybe but if so I'm not the only one.

    For as long as you continue to dodge my request that you tell me why you accused me of dishonesty, I consider you an unworthy respondent and fair game for a bit of light amusement.
     
  11. Medium Dave Registered Member

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    There's a difference between dodge and ignore.

    I already explained what was dishonest.
     
    Last edited: Feb 9, 2017
  12. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    So do you feel that your question about Darwin has been answered?
     
  13. Medium Dave Registered Member

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    I already knew the answer. I was wondering what the board members here thought. The usual pseudoscience Marxist nonsense sadly.
     
  14. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    No such human races have been defined, at least not as far as I know or anyone has posted here - certainly not by Darwin: you would have to define them for yourself, and you haven't.
    Looking back, I still can't find it here. It isn't in anything I've ever read by Darwin - he used the word loosely, along with "variety" and a couple of others. If you are trying to invoke Darwin to defend some notion of the sociological races of the US (or Brazil, or South Africa, there are a few different ones around - most people here use the US classification) you're doomed. He was never that confused, and he's been dead for a century.
     
  15. Medium Dave Registered Member

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    "Grant all races of man descended from one race; grant that all structure of each race of man were perfectly known—grant that a perfect table of descent of each race was perfectly known.— grant all this, & then do you not think that most would prefer as the best classification, a genealogical one, even if it did occasionally put one race not quite so near to another, as it would have stood, if allocated by structure alone. Generally, we may safely presume, that the resemblance of races & their pedigrees would go together."

    It was in post 4 and someone took the trouble to copy paste it into Google and post the precious URL so as not to "break the rules". Did you really miss that?

    So Darwin defined race genealogically. Yes, I understand that "sociological race" can be defined otherwise. But that's not what I'm talking about is it?
     
  16. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    No, he argued that genealogical definition would be best, if it were possible. It wasn't, at the time. It hasn't been done yet, even now (some illuminating genealogical groupings have been sorted out, but they don't line up with anybody's "races" and there doesn't seem to be much point in calling them "races").

    Also, he explicitly separated "race" from "pedigree", indicating that when he used the term it was not defined by pedigree - he wasn't using the term genealogically.
    If you are talking about any human "race" that currently exists, named and so forth, you are talking about a sociological one. (genealogically, for example, Obama is a hybrid of two different but probably fairly close groups and his wife appears to belong to a third more distant one. Sociologically, two hundred and fifty years ago Obama would have been all one race - the Irish were "black" at the time, like the Kenyans - and his wife the same as him. )

    By Darwin's time I think the Irish were beginning to be "white" in the US - I don't remember the timeline from my reading at the moment. And it hardly matters: the point is that none of the current "races" in the US are defined by common descent.
     
    Last edited: Feb 9, 2017
  17. Medium Dave Registered Member

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    Your assertions are simply false. Ancestry inferred from morphology a la Blumenbach and ancestry inferred from genomics produce the same Caucasoid/Negroid/Mongoloid clusters, ie. the traditional genealogical races. You can call those clusters whatever you want. The historical term was races, and it's usual to not randomly rename things for no reason other than politically motivated distaste.
     
  18. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    So do you just want to argue with the members about the definition of race or is there anything further you want to discuss. If this is only going to be a back and forth about the meaning or validity of race then that does not seem very interesting and I will move on.
     
  19. Medium Dave Registered Member

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    You added this. He explicitly defined race genealogically. Your claims appear fabricated. Where is the supporting quote?

    Yes, political race is often not genealogical. You are pointlessly repeating this.
     
  20. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    No, they don't. And the "traditional" races are not genealogical.
     
  21. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    He did not define a single human race, and he offered genealogical definition as something one could only imagine. You quoted the man - read your own quote. It was a hypothetical.

    Here's Darwin, clearly stating that races are based on "resemblance" and genealogical groups are at the time of his writing different things.
     
    Last edited: Feb 9, 2017
  22. Medium Dave Registered Member

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    What studies are you looking at? I'd look at Blumenbach's original work where he explicitly posits shared ancestry, as a monogenist, and coins the Caucasoid/Negroid/Mongoloid partition. Then I'd look at global genomic PCAs such as "Mapping Human Genetic Diversity in Asia" where they explicitly posit shared ancestry among East Asians or Mongoloids.

    Did you look at any studies or just write "No they don't"?
     
  23. Medium Dave Registered Member

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    He defined the classification system, which then generates groups. You seem to have a problem with phylogenetics in general. Doubtless this is only when discussing human race.

    This is becoming silly. He said races could be based on resemblance or genealogy in the part you left out, that these would tend to go together, and genealogy was a preferred system. I've had enough of your fabrications.
     

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