On natural groups, cladistics and good old racism
Many of us (humans) have a deeply founded conviction that biological organisms must be “naturally” partitioned into a “true” set of “natural groups”, ie, ethnical groups, which have a higher degree of relationship within them than any single organism in them has with any single organism outside of them, like species and/or races.
This idea is, however, only an illusion that actually is a corollary of our conceptualization of reality. Biological organisms do have relationships with their ancestors, but there is no unambiguous boundary between groups of organisms. Instead, this idea itself is not only wrong, but also paradoxically contradictory, as Russell’s paradox demonstrates.
Cladistics’ attempt to turn this fact up-side-down by claiming that the idea is right and Russell’s paradox is wrong is nothing but a bold denial of facts. It is actually a claim that the race biology of the early 20th century was rational. Unfortunately for cladists, this claim is just as wrong today as it was in the early 20th century. Cladistics is not rational, but on the contrary, total irrationality.
Cladistics is just a new name on good old racism, now claiming to be scientific. If it should have been, then we should have been forced to discard science, but fortunately it isn’t. It is just a devastating confusion of science with belief leading back to good old racism. The fact that science partitions reality into kinds does not mean that science believes that reality consists of kinds, but just opens for discussion about reality.
Another contribution to understanding of conceptualization http://menvall.wordpress.com/
2013-02-22 16:03:47
Source: http://menvall.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/on-natural-groups-cladistics-and-good-old-racism/
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