| Flint |
10-18-2007 09:32 PM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flint
(Post 396468)
“there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so”.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ZenGum
(Post 396689)
The quote given here is plausible, BUT contains nothing to suggest that Europeans would be genetically smarter than Africans. It could well turn out that Africans have more "smart genes" that Europeans...
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Good point. The only part of this I took an interest in was the pervasive fallacy that people are somehow "equal" - in a literal sense. People should be regarded as equal so far as concerns their opportunity to live up to whatever potential they have. But, each individual person certainly has vastly different potential.
And it doesn't seem far-fetched to me that evolution would act on geographically distinct groups, endowing them with different abilities specific to the environmental stresses they experience. What he should have said is that different racial groups might be "differently" intelligent.
Of course, he is trying to create hype, to promote his new book. And, hey, it worked! |
