HW 2/18

Posted on by penninjh
  • fecundity: the ability to produce an abundance of offspring or new growth; fertility.
  • To what extent are these ideas and conclusions influenced by racism and to what extent are they influenced by a less developed scientific knowledge.
  • miscegenation: the interbreeding of people considered to be of different racial types.
  • It seems to me that there is a lot of undeveloped scientific thought going on as well as ideas of the time that are biasing these thought processes.
  • For instance, the morality argument that mixed races are of inferior morals inherently. Based on the advances of science and information we have today I would say that “inferior morality” was due to environmental influences and not genetics. If you were to grow up poor, uneducated, and without a good teaching of morals and values then clearly you’re more likely to accrue bad morals and values and someone with those variables in their upbringing.
  • Audience: people with the same ideas, concepts, and biases of the time. Reinforcing beliefs.
  • The Gap: since some people may be swayed by the ideas that race amalgamation is needed/beneficial for the betterment of society or worried of that case, Hoffman is attempting to remove such worries or rebut this idea. (Whether race amalgamation is a benefit to society or will cause a deterioration of it)
  • Confirmation bias seems to run rampant through this section as well as the assumption that brain size directly correlates to intelligence. Was this viewpoint even held by biologists of the time?
  • Not to mention were the skulls even checked for deformation or just assumed to be in their original condition?

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