From: mday@jukebox.lcs.mit.edu (Mark Day)
Subject: Re: Is it in the Genes?
Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
	<MDAY.92Oct6163140@jukebox.lcs.mit.edu>
	<1992Oct7.044243.9685@news.columbia.edu>
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 22:41:15 GMT

   gk31@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gag-Lae  Kim) writes:

	   I suppose my understanding of race is quite different from
   yours or your researched definitions.  My definition of race is in
   perspective of both biological and cultural aspects. Cultural and
   biological contribution to a given race cannot be separated to view
   independently.  Although there isn't a case where there's absolutely
   no overlap of cultural and biological aspects between one race and the
   other (the race that we commonly separate), significant differences
   can be found, in both cultural and biologica sense, among races that
   are commonly defined in anthropological context.

I think you are asserting that "race" is both a cultural and
biological construct.  I have never argued against "race" being a
cultural construct, so we can drop that issue.  You do not actually
provide any evidence for your claim that it is a biological construct.
If your "biological" notion of "race" cannot, in fact, be separated
from your cultural notion of race, then it is not biology.  Sorry.  I
simply refuse to dignify a culturally-dependent pseudoscience with the
name "biology".  I believe that most professional biologists would go
along with me on this.

	   Following your logic, I can see why you say "there are no
   race, and subspecies."  But, I can only see your logic being true in
   sub-molecular level in biological sense (slight exaggeration).  
   Obviously, I am sure you are aware of the cultural differenc in 
   this world.  Again, these two things cannot be separated.  

Sorry, but again I disagree.  The point at which something is either
true or false depending on which country I'm in is also the point at
which science has gone out the window.  I know that scientists are
human beings in a cultural context, and that limits their ability in
any given place or time to achieve genuine objectivity.  Nevertheless,
I believe that objectivity is the goal, and that failures to achieve
it are (eventually) viewed as errors, not accepted as good science.
Both Lysenkoism in the former Soviet Union and "German physics" vs.
"Jewish physics" in Germany before World War II are now viewed as
dreadful mistakes, not accepted as the inevitable intertwining of
culture and science.

	   About coming up with culturally independent names for race...
   Yes, that is impossible.  And it seems like those naming was done for
   convinience sake than anything else.  Yet I think it serves purpose,
   just as much as differentiating field of study into certain names.
   With your logic, philosophy, math, biology, biochemistry, history,
   sociology, psychology, and many others are all same to me.

Well, that's actually an interesting analogy.  Fields of study are
also a social construct, and their boundaries shift.  In Buckminster
Fuller's words, if you throw an apple into a pond, Nature doesn't need
to have an interdepartmental meeting where the biologists decide that
"their" apple will combine with the chemists' water to produce the
physicists's waves.  

I don't have anything against such categorizations, but I don't think
that anyone thinks of them as "scientific".  I have yet to see an
article in a refereed journal where someone claims to have determined
the "correct" classification of all knowledge.

All I've argued is that "race", like a field of study, is a social
construct.  If you (or someone else) want to argue that "race" is a
scientific construct, I'll want a tighter definition of it.

--Mark Day

mday@lcs.mit.edu