Re: Race: real or imagined?

        It would be impossible for me to agree more with this statement.
I have been tempted to post something almost identical all week, but RNH
beat me to it.  Besides our ideological knee-jerk reactions, there is also
what I might call academic chauvinism:  as social scientists, we may
think we own all the turf concerned with human society.  Therefore, 
natural scientists:  stay out!  This turf is POSTED!

        Anyway, thanks for your contribution.

        Warren Wagar



On Thu, 9 Dec 1999, Richard N Hutchinson wrote:

> It is one thing to say that "race" has no biological basis, only
> sociological.  That's what the evidence shows.  It is another thing to say
> that the human species has no biological basis.  Such a statement is
> patently absurd, and that is exactly what it is to dismiss all
> sociobiological/evolutionary psychological research.  Such a position is
> nothing but an ideological knee-jerk reaction.  It is the left-wing
> equivalent of scientific creationism, opposing evolutionary theory because
> it challenges an ideological dogma.
> 
> Not everyone on this list follows lockstep an anti-sociobiological
> orthodoxy.  That human behavior is caused partly by biological factors and
> partly by sociological factors is the sensible starting point.  It leaves
> open all the particulars for empirical research to determine.  To reject
> biological causation in toto is to remain willfully ignorant.
> 
> RH
> 
>