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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (96686)	1/25/2005 10:53:17 AM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793694

Race does not exist. There is no gene that defines race. There are genes that define physical attributes like skin color, color of hair, shape of nose, height, bone structure, intelligence, etc. There is no definition of race in scientific terms. There is nothing in science that defines race. Species do not exist. There is no gene that defines a species. There are genes that define species specific attributes like wings, legs, antenna, compound eyes, and all other phenotypes etc. There is no single agreed on definition of species in scientific terms. The same can be said about every other classification from genus to phylum. There are a number of very classic examples that show how the definition of species is one of temporal or spatial separation (ring species). The boundaries are not clear at all. Do this little thought experiment. Say us current humans are a distinct species from our ancestors of 500K years ago, but the "same" species as our 200K year ago ancestors. But the 200K ones are not distinct from the 500K ones. They might be distinct from a 700K old one. For any particular point in history, you can pick an ancestor then look back further to find when they would be species distinct from their most recent ancestor. (Please don't argue about the practical impossibility of find fossils from particular dates, let alone the fact that we can't get ancient DNA). Its a matter of temporal distance in this example. Ring species exist at the same time, but diverge with geographic distance (like some salamanders ringed around the central valley of CA, or some frogs down the eastern seaboard). Near neighbors can interbreed, but the extremes can't. In the case in CA, the extremes meet in the south and are different species although geographically neighbors, but form a smooth transitional loop going around the valley. We classify things because it forms a useful framework for understanding. Including for instance developing medical treatments which target specific subgroups. If you don't like the word race, you can always enumerate exactly which genes you are after, in a statistical sense. BTW, each gene you carry has may have a unique history. Some like the Y-chromosome are fairly linear, but there are all sorts of complications when you dig into the subject.