The Scientific Fallacy of the Human Biological Concept of Race

Abstract

Key Words: Physical anthropology, forensic anthropology, evolution, Linnaeus, Darwin, Broca, Blumenbach, Carleton Coon, Cavalli-Sforza, F. Boas, Margaret Mead, Ashley Montagu, R. Lewontin, S. J. Gould, L. Lieberman, dismantling race, nazi-fascist racism. A Wrong Approach Modern science try to understand the phenomena of nature through the formulation of hypotheses and their subsequent empirical control by comparing predictions and observations. If a scientific hypothesis receive the empirical validation then it become part of the construction of a paradigm; otherwise, the hypothesis must be simply rejected if falsified by experimental results (Popper 1934; Kragh 1987). That was not the case of the construction of the anthropological dogma of human biological concept of race. Physical anthropology originated as an independent scientific discipline during the eighteenth century, and has been affected by an epistemological error from the very beginning. In fact, the existence of races was considered the basic principle of physical anthropology instead of just being a hypothesis amenable to empirical investigation, and therefore for about two centuries physical anthropologists refused to be led by the only criterion of truth that natural sciences recognize, namely empirical validation. However, all scholars who dedicated themselves to that futile classificatory exercise unintentionally contributed to demonstrate that they were involved in a false paradigm, because of the problematic aspects in explaining human biological variability using the taxonomic sub-specific category of race. This difficulty in identifying human races was proved by the high number of subdivisions suggested, which included two to sixty-three races, and differences in the traditional definition of race: Race as synonymous of sub-species, ethnic group, population, and so on (Darwin 1871; Count 1950; Biasutti 1967; Could 1981; Brace 1982). Why did so many physical anthropologists refuse to test the hypothesis of whether human biological variability could be neatly subdivided according to the taxonomic sub-specific categories of race? Why did so many physical anthropologists accept the racial paradigm? Three main constrains, two external and one internal to the scientific process, contributed to this serious error in scientific logic. First, the history of the cultural context from which physical anthropology originated. Second, the history of the social context in which physical anthropologists formulated the concept of race. Third, the broad process of construction of theories within Biological Sciences. The Cultural Context which Conditioned Physical Anthropologists The first reason emerged from a western culture idea that biological and ethnic diversity is very ancient. This concept developed in Egypt during the second millennium B.C., and represented a deep change in perspective. In fact, before then not only humanity but the whole world was considered as a unit. The Egyptians subdivided humankind into four groups, one of which was made up by themselves. They in fact called themselves Remet which simply means man. In their paintings of the fifteenth century B.C. they were portraid in red, while the Asiatics named Aamu in yellow, the populations of sub-Saharan Africa, the Nubians named Nehesyu, in black, and the Libyans, as well as some western populations named Tjemehu, with yellow hair and blue eyes (Bresciani et al. 1993; Gardiner 1947). Still in ancient times, the father of history Herodotus (490/480430/420 B.C.) gave a physical description to a great number of people in his Historie, and Pliny the Elder (23-79) in his Naturalis historic explained physical differences between Africans and Europeans as a direct consequence of climate. After Herodotus all long-distance travellers, up to the origin of physical anthropology, left descriptions of the peoples they met (Daumas 1957; Duchet 1971; Geymonat 1973). …