Lewontin knew a lot about genetics, whereas I don't know even one percent of what he knew. But the problem does not lie in this, but in drawing wrong conclusions. It is a problem of logic, not of genetics.
Lewontin was correct that the genetic variation between human populations was less than the genetic variation between individuals in each human group. His mistake was thinking that he had discovered the squaring of the circle. We must be very careful with the conclusions we draw, especially when a discovery appears to deny the obvious. What should Lewontin have made of his discovery? Well, he should have thought about how it was possible that, despite the fact that these differences were greater within than between groups, nevertheless those groups were still such; that is to say, that we could still more or less easily distinguish people as belonging to one or another group. This fact clearly demonstrated that his discovery, in reality, did little to explain what he wanted to explain.
And therein lies the crux of the matter. Lewontin wanted to reach certain conclusions pre-established by his ideology. Lewontin resented racism, but instead of explaining it, he ruled it non-existent. But the best way to deal with the problem of racism is to understand its bases, not hide them. And the basis of racism is probably as trivial as other psychological traits that emerged during our evolution as a species. Racial differences are nothing more than differences that arise in different settings. The way to handle the problem of racism is more similar to how we handle our sexual impulses than to the pretense of decreeing that, since it has no genetic basis, therefore, human races do not exist. Human races exist as long as different animal species exist. And none of those facts imply that we have the right to kill members of other species or to subdue, belittle, or humiliate people of other races.
"Lewontin was correct that the genetic variation between human populations was less than the genetic variation between individuals in each human group."
No, he wasn't correct. The two kinds of genetic variation are not comparable. Natural selection has shaped the first kind of genetic variation much more than the second kind.
"But the best way to deal with the problem of racism is to understand its bases, not hide them".
The term "racism" scarcely existed before the 1960s. It arose during the interwar years as a synonym for Nazism and similar "blood and soil" ideologies. During the postwar era, many European-born intellectuals in the U.S. argued that anti-Black prejudice was essentially the same thing as Nazism, and that argument has prevailed through dint of repetition.
Peter, to be absolutely accurate, I should have said the same thing, or perhaps I could have written that "although Lewontin was right that the genetic variation between human populations was less than the genetic variation between individuals in each group human, IN ONE ASPECT... -and furthermore-, IRRELEVANT for the discussion..., so I gladly accept your correction to my comment.
Regarding the fact that the term racism barely existed when Lewontin wrote what we all know, so what do you think motivated Lewontin in this story?
That one aspect is the most important one. Remember, genes differ considerably in their functional importance. Many if not most are little more than "junk." Natural selection acts most strongly on those genes that actually do something, and such genes vary much more across population boundaries than within populations.
Richard Lewontin wrote his famous paper in 1972. It was during the 1960s that the term "racism" came into popular usage. Previously, it was just a synonym for Nazism. The 1960s were a time when many intellectuals were arguing that Black Americans would suffer the same fate as the Jews in Germany. In particular, the landslide election of Richard Nixon in 1968 was seen as the beginning of a new fascism in America. That's how a lot of people talked in those days.
"a Swiss person has no more in common with another Swiss than with a Peruvian"
How do we reconcile this with the results of Witherspoon (2007), which found that:
"we define ω as the frequency with which a pair of individuals from different populations is genetically more similar than a pair from the same population ... with data sets comprising thousands of loci genotyped in geographically distinct populations: In such cases, ω becomes zero."
Yes, that is true. If you map the genetic variability of each gene, and then place those maps one on top of another, you will clearly see the different human races.
But what, exactly, does that finding prove? It doesn't invalidate Lewontin's finding that, for any one gene, variability within populations greatly exceeds variability between populations.
You might be getting somewhere if you aggregated the variability of all the genes that contribute to a single human trait (e.g., stature). You could then argue that natural selection acts on specific traits and not on any one gene. Your finding would then be evolutionarily more significant than Lewontin's.
I'm sorry, but I don't see the evolutionary significance of Witherspoon's finding (which others before him have made). Those thousands of gene loci don't inform us about a single trait.
I don't see how this is supposed to be a valid response to Gnew's point. Seems like the Witherspoon finding he cites disconfirms nominalism about races.
"The proportion of human genetic variation due to differences between populations is modest, and individuals from different populations can be genetically more similar than individuals from the same population. Yet sufficient genetic data can permit accurate classification of individuals into populations. Both findings can be obtained from the same data set, using the same number of polymorphic loci."
If you aggregate data from more and more genes, human races will become easier and easier to identify. That finding, in itself, doesn't disprove Lewontin. In fact, Lewontin recognized that human races do exist. He was simply arguing that they account for a small proportion of the total geographic variation of human genes.
Witherspoon's position lies between Lewontin's and mine. "Phenotypes controlled by a dozen or fewer loci can therefore be expected to show substantial overlap between human populations. " Well, that's true only in the sense that complex genetic traits tend to be more significant, both adaptively and functionally, than simple genetic traits.
The key factor, here, is not the number of loci that control the trait. Rather, it's the adaptive significance of the trait. The more it is sensitive to natural selection, the likelier it will vary across a population boundary, since that boundary usually separates different environments of selection and adaptation.
Thanks, though I still don't understand--I'll need to go back and read more carefully. I think I'm with you until the last sentence of the second-to-last paragraph above. For one thing, I don't understand why the fact stated in the final sentence matters. Why is the comparison significant.
(No obligation to answer, obviously. Not my area and, again, I need to read the piece more carefully.)
1. Genes are not of equal importance. Many just sit on the genome and do nothing. Others produce "structural proteins" (e.g., the proteins of flesh and blood). And others regulate how other genes operate. The last kind of gene is many times more important than the first kind.
2. The more important a gene is, the more sensitive it will be to natural selection.
3. The more sensitive a gene is to natural selection, the more it will vary across a population boundary. This is because a population boundary usually coincides with a difference in ecosystem, climate, or way of life. Natural selection will not be the same on each side of the boundary; consequently, adaptations will not be the same. Something that works great on one side will not work so well on the other side.
4. Therefore, genetic variation between populations is qualitatively more important than genetic variation within populations. It is more important in the sense that it has a greater impact on the way an organism behaves and functions.
This seems consistent with the view that races are natural kinds. The most common versions of that view recognize that the differences among races are rather superficial.
“Greater mtDNA differences appeared within the single breeds of Doberman pinscher or poodle than between dogs and wolves”
This may be true for Mitochondrial DNA, but does it generalize to the canine genome as a whole? I ask this because Elaine Ostrander, an expert on the genetics of domestic dogs, reports:
“Genetic variation between dog breeds is much greater than the variation within breeds. Between-breed variation is estimated at 27.5 percent. By comparison, genetic variation between human populations is only 5.4 percent” (Ostrander 2007).
Ostrander (2007) Genetics and the Shape of Dogs, American Scientist 95(5): 406.
I put very little stock in what Jewish "geneticists" like Lewontin say about race because they have an agenda to downplay racial differences between blacks, whites and orientals primarily so that they will mix and produce a dull, docile brown race that Jews can use to do their bidding. Jews fear most, smart, independent minded whites, who have been standing up against them for over 2000 years and will eventually defeat them. Any person who denies racial differences should be dropped in the blackest area of Detroit where the natives will show them the realities of race first hand.
The Jewish American community did not become committed to antiracism until the early 1930s, for reasons that should be obvious. We can see this change in the writings of Franz Boas, whose views on this subject had previously been very different:
Please allow voiceover file to be downloaded--sometimes you allow this and sometimes you don't--is there a reason for this, or is it just an oversight?
Lewontin knew a lot about genetics, whereas I don't know even one percent of what he knew. But the problem does not lie in this, but in drawing wrong conclusions. It is a problem of logic, not of genetics.
Lewontin was correct that the genetic variation between human populations was less than the genetic variation between individuals in each human group. His mistake was thinking that he had discovered the squaring of the circle. We must be very careful with the conclusions we draw, especially when a discovery appears to deny the obvious. What should Lewontin have made of his discovery? Well, he should have thought about how it was possible that, despite the fact that these differences were greater within than between groups, nevertheless those groups were still such; that is to say, that we could still more or less easily distinguish people as belonging to one or another group. This fact clearly demonstrated that his discovery, in reality, did little to explain what he wanted to explain.
And therein lies the crux of the matter. Lewontin wanted to reach certain conclusions pre-established by his ideology. Lewontin resented racism, but instead of explaining it, he ruled it non-existent. But the best way to deal with the problem of racism is to understand its bases, not hide them. And the basis of racism is probably as trivial as other psychological traits that emerged during our evolution as a species. Racial differences are nothing more than differences that arise in different settings. The way to handle the problem of racism is more similar to how we handle our sexual impulses than to the pretense of decreeing that, since it has no genetic basis, therefore, human races do not exist. Human races exist as long as different animal species exist. And none of those facts imply that we have the right to kill members of other species or to subdue, belittle, or humiliate people of other races.
"Lewontin was correct that the genetic variation between human populations was less than the genetic variation between individuals in each human group."
No, he wasn't correct. The two kinds of genetic variation are not comparable. Natural selection has shaped the first kind of genetic variation much more than the second kind.
"But the best way to deal with the problem of racism is to understand its bases, not hide them".
The term "racism" scarcely existed before the 1960s. It arose during the interwar years as a synonym for Nazism and similar "blood and soil" ideologies. During the postwar era, many European-born intellectuals in the U.S. argued that anti-Black prejudice was essentially the same thing as Nazism, and that argument has prevailed through dint of repetition.
http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2015/05/birth-of-word.html
Peter, to be absolutely accurate, I should have said the same thing, or perhaps I could have written that "although Lewontin was right that the genetic variation between human populations was less than the genetic variation between individuals in each group human, IN ONE ASPECT... -and furthermore-, IRRELEVANT for the discussion..., so I gladly accept your correction to my comment.
Regarding the fact that the term racism barely existed when Lewontin wrote what we all know, so what do you think motivated Lewontin in this story?
That one aspect is the most important one. Remember, genes differ considerably in their functional importance. Many if not most are little more than "junk." Natural selection acts most strongly on those genes that actually do something, and such genes vary much more across population boundaries than within populations.
Richard Lewontin wrote his famous paper in 1972. It was during the 1960s that the term "racism" came into popular usage. Previously, it was just a synonym for Nazism. The 1960s were a time when many intellectuals were arguing that Black Americans would suffer the same fate as the Jews in Germany. In particular, the landslide election of Richard Nixon in 1968 was seen as the beginning of a new fascism in America. That's how a lot of people talked in those days.
"a Swiss person has no more in common with another Swiss than with a Peruvian"
How do we reconcile this with the results of Witherspoon (2007), which found that:
"we define ω as the frequency with which a pair of individuals from different populations is genetically more similar than a pair from the same population ... with data sets comprising thousands of loci genotyped in geographically distinct populations: In such cases, ω becomes zero."
Yes, that is true. If you map the genetic variability of each gene, and then place those maps one on top of another, you will clearly see the different human races.
But what, exactly, does that finding prove? It doesn't invalidate Lewontin's finding that, for any one gene, variability within populations greatly exceeds variability between populations.
You might be getting somewhere if you aggregated the variability of all the genes that contribute to a single human trait (e.g., stature). You could then argue that natural selection acts on specific traits and not on any one gene. Your finding would then be evolutionarily more significant than Lewontin's.
I'm sorry, but I don't see the evolutionary significance of Witherspoon's finding (which others before him have made). Those thousands of gene loci don't inform us about a single trait.
I don't see how this is supposed to be a valid response to Gnew's point. Seems like the Witherspoon finding he cites disconfirms nominalism about races.
Let's consult the Witherspoon paper:
"The proportion of human genetic variation due to differences between populations is modest, and individuals from different populations can be genetically more similar than individuals from the same population. Yet sufficient genetic data can permit accurate classification of individuals into populations. Both findings can be obtained from the same data set, using the same number of polymorphic loci."
https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/176/1/351/6064640
If you aggregate data from more and more genes, human races will become easier and easier to identify. That finding, in itself, doesn't disprove Lewontin. In fact, Lewontin recognized that human races do exist. He was simply arguing that they account for a small proportion of the total geographic variation of human genes.
Witherspoon's position lies between Lewontin's and mine. "Phenotypes controlled by a dozen or fewer loci can therefore be expected to show substantial overlap between human populations. " Well, that's true only in the sense that complex genetic traits tend to be more significant, both adaptively and functionally, than simple genetic traits.
The key factor, here, is not the number of loci that control the trait. Rather, it's the adaptive significance of the trait. The more it is sensitive to natural selection, the likelier it will vary across a population boundary, since that boundary usually separates different environments of selection and adaptation.
Thanks, though I still don't understand--I'll need to go back and read more carefully. I think I'm with you until the last sentence of the second-to-last paragraph above. For one thing, I don't understand why the fact stated in the final sentence matters. Why is the comparison significant.
(No obligation to answer, obviously. Not my area and, again, I need to read the piece more carefully.)
1. Genes are not of equal importance. Many just sit on the genome and do nothing. Others produce "structural proteins" (e.g., the proteins of flesh and blood). And others regulate how other genes operate. The last kind of gene is many times more important than the first kind.
2. The more important a gene is, the more sensitive it will be to natural selection.
3. The more sensitive a gene is to natural selection, the more it will vary across a population boundary. This is because a population boundary usually coincides with a difference in ecosystem, climate, or way of life. Natural selection will not be the same on each side of the boundary; consequently, adaptations will not be the same. Something that works great on one side will not work so well on the other side.
4. Therefore, genetic variation between populations is qualitatively more important than genetic variation within populations. It is more important in the sense that it has a greater impact on the way an organism behaves and functions.
A paradigm of clarity--thanks.
This seems consistent with the view that races are natural kinds. The most common versions of that view recognize that the differences among races are rather superficial.
“Greater mtDNA differences appeared within the single breeds of Doberman pinscher or poodle than between dogs and wolves”
This may be true for Mitochondrial DNA, but does it generalize to the canine genome as a whole? I ask this because Elaine Ostrander, an expert on the genetics of domestic dogs, reports:
“Genetic variation between dog breeds is much greater than the variation within breeds. Between-breed variation is estimated at 27.5 percent. By comparison, genetic variation between human populations is only 5.4 percent” (Ostrander 2007).
Ostrander (2007) Genetics and the Shape of Dogs, American Scientist 95(5): 406.
Diversity is our strength...but...not *real* diversity...only made-up diversity.
The idea that there is *real* diversity is racist.
Pretend diversity is our strength.
I put very little stock in what Jewish "geneticists" like Lewontin say about race because they have an agenda to downplay racial differences between blacks, whites and orientals primarily so that they will mix and produce a dull, docile brown race that Jews can use to do their bidding. Jews fear most, smart, independent minded whites, who have been standing up against them for over 2000 years and will eventually defeat them. Any person who denies racial differences should be dropped in the blackest area of Detroit where the natives will show them the realities of race first hand.
Comment warning for anti-semitism. One more strike and it’s a temporary ban.
Oh good, the extras from Deliverance are here.
The Jewish American community did not become committed to antiracism until the early 1930s, for reasons that should be obvious. We can see this change in the writings of Franz Boas, whose views on this subject had previously been very different:
http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2015/04/more-on-younger-franz-boas.html
thx--I was doing something similar to get the download files before but it didn't work last time--but I tried it later and it did work.
Great article.
Please allow voiceover file to be downloaded--sometimes you allow this and sometimes you don't--is there a reason for this, or is it just an oversight?
1. Press Ctrl+Shift+I (to open developer tools)
2. Click "Network"
3. Search "transcoded" in the box on the left
4. Refresh the page and press the play button.
5. Click on the "transcoded.mp3?post_id=..." result that appears.
6. See the "Request URL" header at the top
7. Copy that URL
8. Paste into a new browser tab and it should download.