Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id IAA28749 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 4 Oct 2000 08:03:19 +0100 From: <dgatherer@talk21.com> X-Mailer: talk21 v1.15 - http://www.talk21.com To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk X-Talk21Ref: none Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2000 07:59:19 BST Subject: re: Mysticism etc. Message-Id: <20001004070133.XLHP2486.t21mta03-app.talk21.com@t21mtaV-lrs> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Richard:
I think racism is in the same category as religious belief. It cannot be
proved or disproved empirically. It again is a matter of personal faith.
Derek:
But it can be said that there are no such things as races. That was proved empricially back in the late 60s with Masatoshi Nei's experiments on human genetic variation. So racism is a bit like unicornology. The reason we erroneously believe that there are races is because we are good at visual classification (presumably evolved to help us distinguish poisonous food from etc, or some such), and this means we tand to categorize people based on very superficial external characteristics such as skin colour etc, which are really only mono or oligogenic effects.
Nei M, Roychoudhury AK (1972) Gene differences between Caucasian, Negro, and Japanese populations.
Science. 1972 Aug 4;177(47):434-6.
Nei M, Roychoudhury AK (1974) Genic variation within and between the three major races of man, Caucasoids, Negroids, and Mongoloids.
Am J Hum Genet. 1974 Jul;26(4):421-43
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