onsdag 28 augusti 2013

Is race biology rational?

Biological systematics offers two diametrically opposed (ie, orthogonal) classifications: Linnean systematics and Cladistics (ie, the PhyloCode), whereof Linnean systematics is relative and the PhyloCode is absolute. It means that Linnean systematics combines typology (is, classification) of things with historical relationship between things (ie, ethnicity) using a compromise between these two attributes of things (under the assumption that the two attributes are diametrically opposed), whereas Cladistics on the contrary assumes as an axiom (actually claims) that these two attributes are not orthogonal, but instead consistent (and therefore don't have to be combined using a compromise). Linnean systematics thus assumes that typology is orthogonal to ethnicity, whereas Cladistics on the contrary assumes as an axiom (actually claims) that typology and ethnicity are consistent. It means that Cladistics is essential for race biology. Only iff typology is consistent with ethnicity (as Cladistics assumes, actually claims) is race biology rational.

So, is typology orthogonal to or consistent with ethnicity?

Cladistics claims that the answer to this question is not a matter of facts, but of premises. This claim means that typology can be both orthogonal to and consistent with ethnicity depending on which premises one chooses, ie, that the answer only depends on which answer one prefers. If this claim is true, then "orthogonal to" and "consistent with" are not opposites, but equalities, since the difference between them is not real. If so, then there isn't any difference between Linnean systematics and Cladistics at all, but instead they are just two different aspects on the same thing, ie, the true tree of life, whereof Linnean systematics merely is a redundant complication.

The problem for the Cladistic claim is that it is contradicted both theoretically and practically. Theoretically by Bertrand Russell's demonstration already a hundred years ago (1901) that classification is ultimately paradoxically contradictory, by meaning that the cladistic equalization of typology and etnicity ends in paradox, and practically by the fact that time is relative (ie, orthogonal) to space, by meaning that the Cladistic equalization of type and ethnicity is actually just a conflation of type and ethnicity. Type and ethnicity are factually not equal, but orthogonal.

The answer to the question above is thus that typology is orthogonal to ethnicity. Fortunately, it means that race biology is irrational. When we understand this fact, there is thus no return to the old race biology that Willi Hennig transferred from the Nazi approach to today's Cladistics. Then we can discard both it and Cladistics as resting on the old erroneous idea that ethnicity (ie, races, species, genera, and so on) necessarily also is typologically distinct, instead returning to the old and fundamental question in biological systematics: what is a species? Isn't this shift interesting, Gareth (Nelson)?

The problem with race biology is that also many of those that don't like it still believe in races. They would be better off if they could understand that belief in races itself is irrational..  

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