When
I see the president of Harvard and the Nobel Laureate head of Cold
Spring Harbor Labs both fired for suggesting that genes may play a role
in mental capacity, I am forced to realize this may be a taboo subject
where the majority is wrong.
I have long assumed that mental capacities and emotional dispositions were too complex and malleable to be genetically generated.
I am now changing my mind. For two reasons.
One
is that by substituting the human term "ethnicity" for the unacceptable
terms "race" and "breed" the matter takes on a different quality.
Different ethnic groups have significantly different physical
morphology. Nearly all Japanese women have small breast relative to
their close neighbors the Koreans. Epicanthic
folds are found in many populations out of central Asia and so is a red
birth mark on the lower back. Hair qualities vary greatly over the
Indian sub-Continent and so-called aboriginals have a number of
distinct physical attributes unique to their ethnic regions.
We
do have visibly distinct ethnic groups and we don't really know why. I've tried
to find out the minimum human tribal group that can generate a new
visible ethnic attribute and how many generations are required for the
whole tribe to evidence the trait. I can't find out. We don't know.
Therefore genetic evolution of ethnic attributes could be a short period, maybe less than 10 generations. If visible ethnic variations are possible in historic time, then so could ethnic variations in mental capacity and emotional disposition.
Two, is that it is clear to me, from experience with my grand-children, to see that mental capacity and emotional disposition does vary with the individual and is evident within the first year of life. Therefore both could readily be genetically associated.
This is a taboo subject because we have an underlying notion of superiority and inferiority of mental and emotional attributes that we don't want attached to ethnicity. As most people who mistakenly touch this third rail say, and I say " differences don't mean rankings."