Volume 6, Number 1 · February 3, 1966
Man and Superman
By Edmund R. Leach
The Living Races of Man
by Carleton S. Coon, by Edward E. Hunt Jr.
Knopf, 344 pp., $10.00
An Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species
by Samuel Stanhope Smith, edited by Winthrop D. Jordan
(Reprinted from the second edition of 1810) Harvard, The Belknap Press, 336 pp., $7.50
Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race
by Ashley Montagu
Meridian, 499 pp., $2.65 (paper)
Taxonomy provides one of the oldest and most persistent philosophical problems. Should we assume that the things in the world belong to natural kinds which have existed from the beginning, or should our categories vary according to our special interests? Formal zoologists may feel that since a whale is a mammal it cannot possibly be a fish; mariners might hold that its fishlike aptitudes are entirely obvious. Communication between the two sides is very difficult. Much of the argument about human races is like that and things have been that way for nearly two centuries. The persistence of such cross-talk is especially unfortunate because in the case of human classification, true objectivity is quite impossible. If Professor X maintains that human beings fall into n natural kinds (races) then one of those races contains Professor X himself. Professor X is then bound to believe that, in some perhaps not very clearly defined way, that particular race is superior to all others. In short, Professor X becomes almost without knowing it a 'racist' in the most derogatory sense.
Review, 1415 words
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