Posted on 05/06/2014 5:19:14 PM PDT by Altura Ct.
‘This book is an attempt to understand the world as it is, not as it ought to be.’ So writes Nicholas Wade, the British-born science editor of The New York Times, in his new book A Troublesome Inheritance.
For some time the post-War view of human nature as being largely culturally-formed has been under attack just as surely as the biblical explanation of mankind’s creation began to face pressure in the early 19th century. What Steven Pinker called the blank slate view of our species, whereby humans are products of social conditions and therefore possible to mould and to perfect through reform, has been undermined by scientific discoveries in various areas.
But the most sensitive, and potentially troubling to the modern psyche, is the difference between human population groups that have evolved over the past 50,000 years. As Wade writes: ‘The fact that human evolution has been recent, copious, and regional is not widely recognized, even though it has now been reported by many articles in the literature of genetics. The reason is in part that the knowledge is so new and in part because it raises awkward challenges to deeply held conventional wisdom.’
The political objections are a reaction to the horrific things done in the name of race in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, culminating in the Final Solution, after which the UN’s Ashley Montagu made the influential declaration that race was to all intents and purposes a fiction. Before that, anthropologist Franz Boas had popularised the idea that we are entirely products of culture.
This has remained the conventional view, indeed the only one that academics could safely hold; yet a number of inconsistencies have begun to crack away at this noble idea.
Among them is the recent knowledge that evolution can take place far quicker than people once thought. Greg Cochran and Henry Harpending, in their book The 10,000 Year Explosion, argued that human evolution had sped up since the advent of the first cities. The drastic changes in our ancestors’ environment created new evolutionary pressures; among them were selection for qualities that were beneficial in our larger communities, such as lower levels of aggression, deferred gratification (vital for farmers), a greater willingness to trust people outside of close kin group, and the qualities required for craftsmanship, finance and various other complex skills. Thus civilisation had increased the rate of evolution, and was continuing to do so.
Their research was solid, yet as Wade says, ‘Scientific enquiry thus runs into potential conflict with the public policy interest of not generating possibly invidious comparisons that might foment racism’.
Among the areas explored by Cochran and Harpending, along with another academic, Jason Hardy, has been Ashkenazi intelligence, and yet a previous paper, despite being considered ‘fascinating’ by editors, could not be published in the United States.
It is obviously understandable why Jewish intelligence and success, the subject of extreme and violent jealousies through the ages, makes people nervous. But the outsized contribution of Jews to almost all fields must surely interest all but the dullest of minds: just 0.2 per cent of the world population, Jews accounted for 29 per cent of Nobel Prizes in the late 20th century, and 32 per cent so far in 21st century. That tiny, remarkable country Israel recently won its fifth Chemistry Prize in a decade.
One can admire Jewish culture and the Jewish work ethic, but the idea that this enormous level of achievement is purely cultural, while possible, certainly does not pass the Occam’s razor test. As Wade says, ‘People are highly imitative, and if the Jewish advantage were purely cultural, such as hectoring mothers or a special devotion to education, there would be little to prevent others from copying it.’ They haven’t.
The same is true of the Chinese, who across Asia and now the rest of the world have formed highly successful business communities and, like the Jews, have suffered attacks from jealous neighbours: ‘If Chinese business success were purely cultural, everyone should find it easy to adopt the same methods. This is not the case because social behaviour, of Chinese and others, is genetically shaped.’
As he says: ‘New evidence strongly suggests that the very different kinds of society seen in the various races and in the world’s great civilizations differ not just because of their received culture – in other words, in what is learned from birth – but also because of variations in the social behaviour of their members, carried down in their genes.’
The implications of this will trouble many people, seeing as it suggests that certain traits differ on average among population groups. He cites the MAO-A enzyme; people with only 2 copies (rather than 3, 4 or 5) have a much higher level of delinquency. And ‘if individuals can differ in the genetic structure of their MAO-A gene and its controls, is the same also true of races and ethnicities? The answer is yes.’ A team in Haifa looked at people from seven ethnicities and found 41 variations in the portions of the genes they decoded, with ‘substantial differentiation between populations’.
So why do so many people confidently argue that there is no such thing as race, because there are ‘no clear distinct racial boundaries’. This he calls ‘verbal subterfuge’, arguing: ‘When a distinct boundary develops between races, they are no longer races but separate species. So to say there are no precise boundaries between races is like saying there are no square circles.’
Wade is critical of leading biologists, economists and psychologists who have simply dismissed possible non-cultural explanations as racist, or who pin their hopes in geographic determinism, or shy away from recent evolution because of the political implications. This, he says, has nothing to do with its scientific validity but the ‘political dangers’ that researchers face in ‘pursuing the truth too far’.
The political dangers are very real; various academics have lost their jobs or faced quite extreme harassment for voicing the belief that differences in group IQ scores are partly hereditary, despite there being solid evidence that intelligence is under genetic control.
And yet these ‘accusations of racism against anyone who suggests that cognitive capacities might differ between human populations groups… are shaped by leftist and Marxist political dogma, not by science.’ He says: ‘The common sense conclusion – that race is both a biological reality and a politically fraught idea with sometimes pernicious consequences – has also eluded’ much of academia.
This book’s ideas are indeed fraught but beyond carefully explaining the dangers of misusing science, the consequences are not for scientists to ponder, but rather lawmakers and others of influence; they can choose either to consider the evidence and make things work as best as they can, using what knowledge we have, or they can continue to ignore the ticking of Darwin’s unexploded bomb, punishing anyone who raises the subject.
This hostility faced by those with troublesome ideas is, of course, itself explained by evolution. As Wade mentions earlier on, we are social creatures, and we have evolved behaviours to live as such: ‘One is a tendency to criticise, and if necessary punish, those who do not follow the agreed norms.’ That is partly why, as a species, we find it easier to talk about how the world should be, rather than how it is.
What places have the same genetics but put no emphasis on education and learning? And I’d stay away from remarks that third graders could pick the article apart.
Jews and Arabs are called Semites because they speak a Semitic language. Being Semitic has nothing to do with genes.
So, by way of example, how do you explain "The Bell Curve"?
Yes, specifically the Vietnamese in recent years, the Koreans and the Japanese. But like the Chinese, their cultures are Confucian. That's the critical factor IMHO.
(How can you be sure they follow Confucian culture? They all eat with chopsticks. No kidding!)
Also, two other Asian countries, where Chinese are an extremely influential minority, have done moderately well in the economic arena -- Malaysia and Thailand.
In the meantime, the non-Confucian countries in Asia haven't done do so well -- Indonesia, Laos, Burma, Cambodia, Philippines, India, Nepal, etc.
(And guess what? They don't eat with chopsticks. They eat either with spoons or with their fingers!)
>> Being Semitic has nothing to do with genes. <<
Not so sure about that. The Y-chromosome haplotypes of Jews and Arabs are remarkably similar.
There is a definition of Semitic, look it up.
Daniel Pipes? No Thanks.
Since cultural factors and ideas are not genetic, they can't be explained (not even in principle) by natural selection and hence evolution. I wonder why scientists pretend not to see this obvious fact.
Always wishing there would be some discussion on the full title of Darwin’s book, “The Origin of Species and The Preservation of Favoured Races.” If that were an open topic, liberal evolutionists would be forced to deal with their hypocrisy and the textbooks re-written. Unfortunately it’s not going to happen.
Compare North and South Korea.
The North demands that you do not learn anything except the limited amount they allow. Real education is verboten although they do emphasize "re-education". They are a failed society.
The South does put emphasis on education and learning. They are a successful society.
They are perhaps the clearest example of the difference that culture has on people. If genes ruled then the North and the South would be roughly equal. They are not.
Different groups of human beings have been reproductively isolated for tens of thousands of years, long enough to accumulate obvious morphological differences.
If you can tell at a glance, or looking at a piece of hair or earwax under a microscope, which continent someone’s ancestors are from, then what on this great green earth makes you think that somehow, magically, all people everywhere are exactly the same in all other respects? Do you think that things like average levels of key mood or behavior influencing hormones are somehow immune to genetic variation? Keep in mind this is variation so significant that it can cause powdery earwax, epicanthic folds, and shovel teeth. I simply cannot grasp such idiotic and irrational thinking that would blatantly assume all people, despite obvious evidence to the contrary, must somehow be biologically and behaviorally identical.
Obvious physical differences between various ethnic groups are just the tip of the iceberg. Differences in key metabolic pathways, differences in immunological function, differences in average and peak levels of key hormones and enzymes, are forming the basis of ethnically and individually targeted medical therapies. In a few years you’re going to be prescribed drugs tailored to your ethnic background, and hopefully therapies targeted specifically at your familial and individual profile.
Yet you think that differences like that can’t possibly influence maturation, behavior, or measurable ability? That somehow the biochemistry responsible for us being able to communicate in the first place, and engage in abstract reasoning, must be exactly the same in all respects between all persons and groups of persons? That culture is the only possible cause of differences in between groups of people? That somehow human beings magically stopped changing when they left Africa?
You do realize that such fairytale rationale can cause more harm than good? How about this scenario: say that a few years from now researchers discover that persons of a certain familial background have significantly lower average and peak levels of key growth differentiation factors in utero - leading to a measurably reduced rate of neurological development. Said researchers hypothesize that simply supplementing pregnant women of said group with injections of said GDF is an intervention likely to improve the neurological function, and hence overall life outcome, of an entire generation of persons. Do you ignore those measurable biological differences as well and argue that good schooling will somehow make up for a 15 point IQ deficiency?
How about a real-world example. Years back a few maverick researchers wanted to explore the possible hereditary nature of schizophrenia. The very idea was abhorrent to many in the academic establishment, with comparisons to eugenics and nazi science brought forth and numerous attempts made to deny the researchers funding. Eventually the researchers were able to secure some funding from people not so obsessed with phantom boogeymen of eugenic deathsquads, and were able to demonstrate that yes indeed schizophrenia is significantly heritable. This discovery didn’t cause the government to sterilize the mentally ill, it didn’t cause a resurgence in hate crimes, it didn’t cause us to turn our asylums into crematories — it DID however allow doctors to identify at risk families as well as individuals and engage in early medical and psychiatric intervention that measurably improved the quality of life for a large number of persons.
Just because differences exist between individuals and groups doesn’t mean the end of the world or the start of a eugenics war. Admitting that people differ biologically, and that such differences in biology effect both behavior and life outcome, is the first step in generating new and effective medical therapies and social interventions to improve quality of life for large numbers of people. Sticking your fingers in your years and screaming “LALA-I-CANT-HEAR-YOU” is not a good substitute for rationally discussing the risks and benefits of quantifying biological differences between persons and groups and addressing the consequences of those differences - you can’t just wish away differences. Quite the opposite, stubborn denial delays the formation and adoption of reasonable, moral frameworks to guide the discussion about said differences.
You speak as if the theory of evolution has not itself changed since Darwin. That is, of course, false. Why would someone want to debate something that is, a best, an interesting history and beginning point. Darwin had an woefully incomplete understanding of geology and an incomplete knowledge of biology. He didn’t have DNA, radiometric dating or plate tectonics to work with. Survival of the fittest isn’t survival of the best.
You are correct. And the big ideas of Confucius are strong families, cultivation of knowledge and morality.
These are very similar to the big ideas of Judaism.
When you study successful cultures they tend to have those three big ideas in common.
Genetically they may be as different as you can get. But their ideas converge.
I am curious, have you actually read it?
The BeeGees had the answer to why the Jewish people have done well while others have not. It lies in the title of one of their songs “Staying Alive”.
That is a great incentive to be creative in the face of diversity and annihilation. Having a god to look to for guidance, as well as written laws and guidelines for behavior, proper health practicies, and social cohesion also help a people survive.
Do you understand the distinction between Ashkenazi Jews and Sephardic Jews?
It appears to this layman there is a strong helping of both nature and nurture in humans.
>>It is absolutely clear that difference between groups are solely cultural and there is no legit clues to prove otherwise.
The field of athletic success says otherwise.
Not really.
If you start learning about world genetics you find that we are far more mixed then most people could believe. Genes from around the world are found around the world. We travel, we trade and we have lots of sex. Whenever you find any group that has contact with any other group there is, to a greater or lesser degree, an exchange of genes. And then that group trades with a third group and it goes on and on.
If you can tell at a glance, or looking at a piece of hair or earwax under a microscope, which continent someone’s ancestors are from,
Well, you see that is just the problem. You can't.
Are there genetic traits? Of course. Are they stronger then culture? So far unproven to say the least.
This flies in the face of those who think we can "breed" better people rather then training better people.
They think that if they can just find the right mix of genes the hard consistent work of creating and maintaining a culture that encourages people to be better will be over.
To quote you "Sticking your fingers in your years and screaming “LALA-I-CANT-HEAR-YOU” is not a good substitute for rationally discussing the risks and benefits of quantifying cultural differences between persons and groups and addressing the consequences of those differences - you can’t just wish away differences."
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
How do you explain it?
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