Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin, Father of Scientific Racism

Well, he may not be the Father, but he certainly gave scientific racism quite a boost with The Descent of Man:

 At some future point, not distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, Chapter 5.

That is just one quote.  The Descent of Man is full of racist theorizing.  You really have to read it to get the full flavor.  If you do not have the time (or stomach) to read the whole thing, try chapter five.

Give him credit for a very influential theory, although he was not the first or only one to theorize on evolutionary concepts.  But give him credit for all the influences of his theories-- good and bad.  Since it is "Darwin Day," why shouldn't we give as much attention to The Descent of Man as we do to On the Origin of Species?  Whoops, I did not give the full title: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. 

According to Darwin, genocide is the natural result of a natural process. And it is all very scientific.

"Ida" Is Not Even Close To Being a Human Ancestor

From a Washington Post AP story, Ida is not so amazing after all:

Remember Ida, the fossil discovery announced last May with its own book and TV documentary? A publicity blitz called it "the link" that would reveal the earliest evolutionary roots of monkeys, apes and humans.

. . .

In fact, Ida is as far removed from the monkey-ape-human ancestry as a primate could be, says Erik Seiffert of Stony Brook University in New York.

. . .

The new analysis says Darwinius does not belong in the same primate category as monkeys, apes and humans. Instead, the analysis concluded, it falls into the other major grouping, which includes lemurs.

Experts agreed.

"This is a rigorous analysis based on many features," said Eric Sargis, an anthropology professor at Yale.

I'm ready for the media blitz that will correct the misinformation generated by the original media blitz. I won't hold my breath.

From a Guardian article:

The Ida fossil, which was found in the Messel Pit on the outskirts of Frankfurt, was revealed to the public in what amounted to the greatest publicity coup in modern science. The mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, appeared alongside the fossil, wearing a T-shirt carrying the TV tie-in logo, "The link." A book about Ida was already coming off the presses.

Ida was an immediate media sensation. The fossil received blanket coverage around the world and newspapers hailed her as the "missing link" between humans and animals. The Guardian even gave away free wallcharts of "humanity's long lost ancestor."

My previous posts and commentary on the Ida hoopla (with analogy to Britney Spears) are here and here.

So it goes . . .

Ardi: "The Pelvis Looked Like an Irish Stew"

From the Time magazine article about the new "Ardi" fossil ("Ardipithecus ramidus"):

Deducing such details of social behavior is, admittedly, speculative — and several researchers are quick to note that some of the authors' other major conclusions need further discussion as well. One problem is that some portions of Ardi's skeleton were found crushed nearly to smithereens and needed extensive digital reconstruction. "Tim [White] showed me pictures of the pelvis in the ground, and it looked like an Irish stew," says [Alan] Walker. Indeed, looking at the evidence, different paleoanthropologists may have different interpretations of how Ardi moved or what she reveals about the last common ancestor of humans and chimps.

Casey Luskin is having some fun with the quality of the new fossil ("Ardipithecus ramidus") here and here:

So what do we have with “Ardi”? We have an extremely crushed “Irish stew” fossil that has undergone extensive reconstruction in order to become part of a PR campaign to make bold claims of ancestral status to the human line, even though at base its qualities are very similar to previously known fossils, and there's a lot of skepticism about the claims being made. In other words, we have the typical media circus that we find every time a new "missing link" is found.

I read the general media articles and I wonder: What ever happened to good ol' enlightenment skepticism? Casey Luskin is one of the few to hold on to some.