Topics

The concrete subjects — people, places, works, and fields — that the notes touch on.

• A Troublesome Inheritance 1

  Nicholas Wade's book on genes, race, and human history.

• Adolf Bastian 1

  The German anthropologist who coined 'the psychic unity of mankind' and shaped modern culturist theory.

• American Anthropological Association 1

  The principal professional organization of American anthropologists, which issued a statement denouncing Putnam's book in 1961.

• Ancient DNA 1

  The recovery and analysis of genetic material from archaeological and historical human remains to reconstruct population history and evolution.

• Anthropology 9

  The discipline studying human societies, cultures, and biological variation.

• Arthur Jensen 1

  The educational psychologist who argued Gould misrepresented his work and attacked a strawman of biological determinism.

• Bo Winegard 3

  The psychologist and essayist who writes on race, intelligence, and human nature.

• Bradley Thayer 1

  The political scientist and author writing on Chinese racism and U.S. strategic competition.

• Carl Degler 3

  The historian and author of In Search of Human Nature, tracing the decline and revival of Darwinism in American social thought.

• Carleton Coon 1

  The 20th-century American anthropologist and AAA president who studied racial differences and resigned in protest over the association's denunciation of Putnam's book.

• Carleton Putnam 1

  The author of Race and Reason, a book arguing for significant racial differences with political implications.

• China–United States Relations 1

  The strategic and ideological rivalry between China and the United States.

• David Reich 1

  The geneticist and ancient-DNA researcher who argues that average genetic differences among populations can no longer be ignored.

• Eugenics 3

  The movement seeking to improve human populations through hereditarian control of reproduction.

• Franz Boas 5

  The anthropologist who championed the concept of culture and campaigned against racial explanations of human difference in American social science.

• Guns, Germs, and Steel 1

  Jared Diamond's book explaining the differing development of human societies through environmental and geographic factors.

• In Search of Human Nature 1

  Carl Degler's book tracing the decline and revival of Darwinism in American social thought.

• Intelligence Testing 2

  The psychometric measurement of cognitive ability, including IQ, Spearman's hypothesis, and measurement invariance.

• Jared Diamond 1

  The geographer and author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, arguing environment rather than biology shaped the divergent fates of human societies.

• John Derbyshire 1

  The writer and author of We Are Doomed, who classifies theories of human nature as religious, cultural, and biological.

• Lee McIntyre 1

  The philosopher of science and author writing on the scientific attitude and reforming the social sciences.

• Lewontin's Fallacy 2

  The statistical error of concluding that human races are biologically meaningless by examining genetic loci one at a time while ignoring correlations across loci.

• Multiculturalism 1

  The social and political framework of accommodating multiple cultural identities within one nation.

• Nicholas Wade 1

  The science writer and author of A Troublesome Inheritance, arguing for a genetic basis to human social differences.

• Noah Carl 2

  The social scientist and essayist who writes on intelligence, race, and human population differences.

• Out of Africa Migration 1

  The dispersal of modern humans out of Africa roughly 75,000 years ago into diverse global environments.

• Paul Graham 0

  The essayist and programmer who writes on ideas, startups, and intellectual culture.

• Polygenic Scores 1

  Genomic scores aggregating many small-effect alleles from genome-wide association studies to predict traits such as intelligence.

• Population Genetics 9

  The study of genetic variation and differences within and between human populations.

• Poul Duedahl 1

  The historian who analyzed UNESCO's cultural internationalism and its campaign against the concept of race.

• Race and Reason 1

  Carleton Putnam's 1961 book arguing for significant differences between races and their political implications.

• Racial Segregation 1

  State-sanctioned racial separation, including U.S. segregation and South African apartheid, addressed in mid-20th-century civil rights struggles.

• Richard Lewontin 3

  The geneticist who argued that human genetic variation within populations vastly exceeds variation between races, rendering racial classification biologically insignificant.

• Robert Trivers 1

  The evolutionary biologist who reported cases of researchers failing to share their data in psychological studies.

• Russell Warne 2

  The psychologist who argues that between-group mean differences in intelligence are partially genetic in origin.

• Samuel George Morton 1

  The 19th-century American scientist whose cranial capacity measurements Gould accused of racially biased manipulation.

• Social Science 1

  The disciplines studying human behavior and society, including economics, psychology, and sociology.

• Stephen Jay Gould 3

  The evolutionary biologist and science writer known for his work on contingency in history and critiques of biological determinism.

• Superior: The Return of Race Science 3

  Angela Saini's book on the resurgence of race science, here the subject of a critical review.

• The Mismeasure of Man 1

  Stephen Jay Gould's book critiquing intelligence testing and biological determinism, itself the subject of extensive scholarly criticism.

• UNESCO 1

  The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which issued postwar statements on race to combat racial inequality.

• UNESCO Statements on Race 1

  The four statements on race issued by UNESCO between 1950 and 1967 asserting human equality and challenging the biological race concept.

• We Are Doomed 1

  John Derbyshire's book examining conservatism and human nature.