Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Enumeratio and Distinctio by Katharina Schmidt



“A Family Tree in Every Gene” – Armand Marie Leroi:
Enumeratio:
- The tribes in question were the Onge, Jarawa, Great Andamanese and Sentinelese
- Most scientists are thoughtful, liberal-minded and socially aware people.

Distinctio:
- But what exactly does it mean? After all, in a catastrophe that cost more than 150,000 lives, why should the survival of a few hundred tribal people have any special claim on our attention? There are several possible answers to this question. The people of the Andamans have a unique way of life.
- Who speaks of "racial stocks" anymore? After all, to do so would be to speak of something that many scientists and scholars say does not exist. If modern anthropologists mention the concept of race, it is invariably only to warn against and dismiss it. Likewise many geneticists.

“Straw Men and Their Followers: The return of biological race” – Evelynn M. Hammonds:
Enumeratio:
- A number of evolutionary biologists, geneticists, biological anthropologists and medical researchers have recently challenged the view put forth by other scientists and social scientists that “Race is only social concept, not a scientific one.”
- There is no need to provide a careful articulation of the opposing argument because the point is not to explain to the public why race remains a complex and imprecise concept for those studying human variation within biology, genetics and medicine.

Distinctio:
- Indeed, through the use of race, medical scientists will be able to achieve the laudable goal of improving the health and treatment of diseases that disproportionately affect African Americans and other groups in which disease has been poorly understood and treated.
- In his cautionary tale, he recuperates race as nothing more than a useful heuristic—a useful shorthand—for obvious phenotypic and genetic diversity.

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