Darwin the Man of His Times(aethermug.com) |
Darwin the Man of His Times(aethermug.com) |
For a long time that literally was the dominant philosophy in the west: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_chain_of_being
Of course such ideas never explain gun powder or Genghis Khan but nobody ever said racists are smart.
Only because we know better now. It must have seemed self evident at the time and we can forgive Darwin for making that mistake. He was a scientist and I'm sure he'd have accepted the evidence that all the so-called races are embarrassingly alike.
Not a fan of these retrospective moralistic takes.
Wasn't exactly that one of the most revolutionary insights of his theory? That humans evolved and are governed by the same forces of natural selection as other animals? It is amusing that, 166 years after On the Origin of Species, that part is still controversial.
[1] And there are plenty of species that we consider distinct, that can and do interbreed and bear fertile offspring.
That's a theory, anyway. Yes, biologists (and presumably botanists and all those who study the other kingdoms) have made errors in judgment, and yes, the current definition is very poor (often broken, sometimes unprovable in a practical sense).
It does not follow, however, that all life exists on some continuous spectrum of mutations. Members of Equus caballus have distinct genetic traits that do not occur in Equus asinus.
The reality we see about us is that life seems to group itself into channels or pools of limited genetic variation. But that variation doesn't mean the channels/pools aren't real.
No, it is a reaction to treating humans the same as finches. You give the thing he does a label and then attack the label, instead of attacking the thing itself.
[0] https://bioanth.org/about/aaba-statement-on-race-racism/