Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (45 page)

But aren't races
supposed
to blend into one another as fuzzy sets, while retaining their uniqueness and separateness (see Sarich 1995)? Yes, but how these groups are classified depends on whether the classifier is a "lumper" or "splitter"—seeing similarities or differences. Darwin noted that naturalists in his time cited anywhere from two to sixty-three different races of
Homo sapiens.
Today there are anywhere from three to sixty races, depending on the taxonomist. Cavalli-Sforza and his colleagues conclude, "Although there is no doubt that there is only one human species, there are clearly no objective reasons for stopping at any particular level of taxo-nomic splitting" (1994, p. 19). One might think that Australian Aborigines, for example, would be more closely related to African blacks than southeast Asians, since they certainly
look
more alike (and facial features, hair type, and skin color are what everyone focuses on in identifying race). Genetically, however, Australians are most
distant
from Africans and
closest
to Asians. This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, even if it goes against our perceptual intuitions, since humans first migrated out of Africa, then moved through the Middle and Far East, down Southeast Asia, and into Australia, taking tens of thousands of years to do so. Regardless of what they look like, Australians and Asians should be more closely related evolutionarily, and they are. And who would intuit, for example, that Europeans are an intermediate hybrid population of 65 percent Asian genes and 3 5 percent African genes? But this is not surprising from an evolutionary perspective.

Part of the problem of race classification is that within-group variability is greater than between-group variability, as Cavalli-Sforza and his colleagues argue: "Statistically, genetic variation within clusters is large compared with that between clusters." In other words, individuals within a group vary more than individuals between groups. Why? The answer is an evolutionary one:

There is great genetic variation in all populations, even in small ones. This individual variation has accumulated over very long periods, because most polymorphisms observed in humans antedate the separation into continents, and perhaps even the origin of the species, less than half a million years ago. The same polymorphisms are found in most populations, but at different frequencies in each, because the geographic differentiation of humans is recent, having taken perhaps one-third or less of the time the species has been in existence. There has therefore been too little time for the accumulation of a substantial divergence. (1944, p. 19)

And, the authors repeat (it cannot be overstated), "The difference between groups is therefore small when compared with that within the major groups, or even within a single population" (1994, p. 19). Recent research shows, in fact, that if a nuclear war exterminated all humans but a small band of Australian Aborigines, a full 85 percent of the variability of
Homo sapiens
would be preserved (Cavalli-Sforza and Cavalli-Sforza 1995).

The End of Racism

It is always the individual that matters, not the group; and it is always how individuals differ that matters, not how groups differ. This is not liberal hope or conservative hype. It is a fact of evolution, as one entomologist noted in 1948: "Modern taxonomy is the product of an increasing awareness among biologists of the uniqueness of individuals, and of the wide range of variation which may occur in any population of individuals." This entomologist believed that taxonomists' generalizations of species, genera, and even higher categories "are too often descriptions of unique individuals and structures of particular individuals that are not quite like anything that any other investigator will ever find." Psychologists are equally guilty of such hasty generalizations, he adds: "A mouse in a maze, today, is taken as a sample of all individuals, of all species of mice under all sorts of conditions, yesterday, today, and tomorrow." Worse still, these collective conclusions are extrapolated to humans: "A half dozen dogs, pedigrees unknown and breeds unnamed, are reported upon as 'dogs'—meaning all kinds of dogs—if, indeed, the conclusions are not explicitly or at least implicitly applied to you, to your cousins, and to all other kinds and descriptions of humans" (p. 17).

If he had only talked about bugs, this entomologist would be relatively unknown. But midway through his career, he switched from studying an obscure species of wasp to a very well-known species of WASP— the human variety. In fact, he concluded, if wasps showed so much variation, how much more might humans? Accordingly, in the 1940s, he began the most thorough study ever conducted on human sexuality, and in 1948 Alfred Kinsey, entomologist turned sexologist, published
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.
In this book, Kinsey observed that "the histories which have been available in the present study make it apparent that the heterosexuality or homosexuality of many individuals is not an all-or-none proposition" (Kinsey, Pomeroy, and Martin 1948, p. 638). One can be both simultaneously. Or neither temporarily. One can start as heterosexual and become homosexual, or vice versa. And the percentage of time spent in either state varies considerably amongst individuals in the population. "For instance," Kinsey wrote, "there are some who engage in both heterosexual and homosexual activities in the same year, or in the same month or week, or even in the same day" (p. 639). One might add, "at the same time." Therefore, Kinsey concluded, "One is not warranted in recognizing merely two types of individuals, heterosexual and homosexual, and that the characterization of the homosexual as a third sex fails to describe any actuality" (p. 647). Extrapolating this to taxonomy in general, Kinsey deduced the uniqueness of individuals (in a powerful statement tucked away in the midst countless tables):

Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. Not all things are black nor all things white. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories. Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separate pigeonholes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. The sooner we learn this concerning human sexual behavior the sooner we shall reach a sound understanding of the realities of sex. (p. 639)

Kinsey saw the implications of this variation for moral and ethical systems. If variation and uniqueness are the norm, then what form of morality can possibly envelope
all
human actions? For human sexuality alone, Kinsey measured 250 different items for each of over ten thousand people. That is 2.5 million data points. Regarding the variety of human behavior, Kinsey concluded, "Endless recombinations of these characters in different individuals swell the possibilities to something which is, for all essential purposes, infinity" (in Christenson 1971, p. 5). Since all moral systems are absolute, yet the variation of these systems is staggeringly broad, then all absolute moral systems are actually relative to the group conferring (usually imposing) it upon others. At the end of the volume on males, Kinsey concluded that there is virtually no evidence for "the existence of such a thing as innate perversity, even among those individuals whose sexual activities society has been least inclined to accept." On the contrary, as he demonstrated with his vast statistical tables and in-depth analyses, the evidence leads to the conclusion "that most human sexual activities would become comprehensible to most individuals, if they could know the background of each other individual's behavior" (Kinsey, Pomeroy, and Martin 1948, p. 678).

Variation is what Kinsey called "the most nearly universal of all biologic principles," but it is one that most seem to forget when they "expect their fellows to think and behave according to patterns which may fit the lawmaker, or the imaginary ideals for which the legislation was fashioned, but which are ill-shaped for all real individuals who try to live under them." Kinsey demonstrated that while "social forms, legal restrictions, and moral codes may be, as the social scientist would contend, the codification of human experience," they are, like all statistical and population generalizations, "of little significance when applied to particular individuals" (in Christenson 1971, p. 6). These laws tell us more about the lawmakers than they do about the laws of human nature:

Prescriptions are merely public confessions of prescriptionists. What is right for one individual may be wrong for the next; and what is sin and abomination to one may be a worthwhile part of the next individual's life. The range of individual variation, in any particular case, is usually much greater than is generally understood. Some of the structural characters in my insects vary as much as twelve hundred percent. In some of the morphologic and physiologic characteristics which are basic to the human behavior which I am studying, the variation is a good twelve thousand percent. And yet social forms and moral codes are prescribed as though all individuals were identical; and we pass judgments, make awards, and heap penalties without regard to the diverse difficulties involved when such different people face uniform demands, (in Christenson 1971, p. 7)

Kinsey's conclusions may be applied to race. How can we pigeonhole "blacks" as "permissive" or "whites" as "intelligent" when such categories as black and white, permissive and intelligent, are actually best described as a continuum, not a pigeonhole? "Dichotomous variation is the exception and continuous variation is the rule, among men as well as among insects," Kinsey concluded. Likewise, for behavior we identify right and wrong "without allowance for the endlessly varied types of behavior that are possible between the extreme right and the extreme wrong." That being the case, the hope for cultural evolution, like that of biological evolution, depends on the recognition of variation and individualism: "These individual differences are the materials out of which nature achieves progress, evolution in the organic world. In the differences between men lie the hopes of a changing society" (in Christenson 1971, pp. 8-9).

In America, we tend to confound race and culture. For instance, "white or Caucasian" is not parallel to "Korean-American" but to "Swedish-American." The former roughly indicates a supposed racial or genetic make-up, while the latter roughly acknowledges cultural heritage. In 1995, the Occidental College school newspaper announced that almost half (48.6 percent) of the Frosh class were "people of color." For the life of me, however, I have a difficult time identifying most students by the traditional external signs of race because there has been so much blending over the years and centuries. I suspect most of them would be hyphenated races, a concept even more absurd than "pure" races. Checking a box on a form for race—"Caucasian," "Hispanic," "African-American," "Native American," or "Asian-American"—is untenable and ridiculous. For one thing, "American" is not a race, so labels such as "Asian-American" and "African-American" are still exhibits of our confusion of culture and race. For another thing, how far back does one go in history? Native Americans are really Asians, if you go back more than twenty or thirty thousand years to before they crossed the Bering land bridge between Asia and America. And Asians, several hundred thousand years ago probably came out of Africa, so we should really replace "Native American" with "African-Asian-Native American." Finally, if the Out of Africa (single racial origin) theory holds true, then
all
modern humans are from Africa. (Cavalli-Sforza now thinks this may have been as recently as seventy thousand years ago.) Even if that theory gives way to the Candelabra (multiple racial origins) theory, ultimately all hominids came from Africa, and therefore everyone in America should simply check the box next to "African-American." My maternal grandmother was German and my maternal grandfather was Greek. The next time I fill out one of those forms I am going to check "Other" and write in the truth about my racial and cultural heritage: "African-Greek-German-American."

And proud of it.

PART 5

HOPE

SPRINGS

ETERNAL

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;

Man never Is, but always To be blest.

The soul, uneasy, and confin'd from home,

Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind

Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;

His soul proud Science never taught to stray

Far as the solar walk or milky way;

Yet simple Nature to his hope has giv'n,

Behind the cloud-topp'd hill, an humbler heav'n.

—Alexander Pope,
An Essay on Man,
1733

16

Dr. Tipler Meets Dr. Pangloss

Can Science Find the Best of All Possible Worlds?

Alfred Russel Wallace, the nineteenth-century British naturalist whose name is permanently tethered to Charles Darwin's for his co-discovery of natural selection, got himself into trouble in his quest to find a purpose for every structure and every behavior he observed. For Wallace, natural selection shaped every organism to be well adapted to its environment. His overemphasis on natural selection led to his hyper-adaptationism. He argued in the April 1869 issue of the
Quarterly Review,
much to Darwin's dismay, that the human brain could not entirely have been the product of evolution because in nature there is no reason to have a human-size brain, capable of such unnatural abilities as higher math and aesthetic appreciation. No purpose, no evolution. His answer? "An Overruling Intelligence has watched over the action of those laws, so directing variations and so determining their accumulation, as finally to produce an organization sufficiently perfect to admit of, and even to aid in, the indefinite advancement of our mental and moral nature" (p. 394). The theory of evolution proves the existence of God.