2^6 READINGS IN BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE 



our biological selves? We shall discuss these selves not in individual, but 

 in group terms. In a very real sense what we do not know about human 

 biological groupings may become positive knowledge if it outlines future 

 avenues of research. If we recognize a darkness we also recognize a need 

 for light. 



The first "don't" is simply this: we are not sure — at least we do not 

 agree — what actually constitutes a biological race in man. In 1871 Charles 

 Darwin, in "The Descent of Man," expressed the problems of racial clas- 

 sification quite clearly: 



"Every naturalist who has had the misfortune to undertake the descrip- 

 tion of a group of highly varying organisms, has encountered cases . , . 

 precisely like that of Man, and if of a cautious disposition he will end by 

 uniting all the forms which graduate into one another, under a single 

 species; for he will say to himself that he has no right to give names to ob- 

 jects which he can not define." 



Darwin represents one extreme: there is but one race, the human race. 

 One may study the literature on human racial classification and go to 

 the other extreme, wherein no less than 150 species, each with sub-races, 

 are postulated. 



In 1735 Linnaeus, the great Swedish naturalist, gave Man the scientific 

 name he to-day still bears — Hovw sapiens (the "wise man"). Let us ana- 

 lyze ourselves biologically; an expanded cerebral cortex that makes of us 

 a reasoning animal; a protracted period of infancy and childhood that en- 

 ables us to be a learning animal; a facial skeleton reduced in size so that we 

 have a physiognomy instead of a snout; a forelimb that is freed from loco- 

 motion so that a forepaw has become a hand; a spinal column, viscera, 

 a pelvic girdle, and a hind limb, that are reasonably well adapted to an 

 upright posture and bipedal locomotion. In this general morphological 

 pattern all mankind is truly one; one genus, one species. In all important 

 and major bodily details we are one — in brain, in peripheral nerves, in 

 heart, in blood and blood vessels, in all viscera, in muscles, and in skeletal 

 architecture. 



But there do exist differences which are, as it were, superimposed upon 

 this basic ground-plan. There are differences in skin color, in eye color, 

 in hair color and hair texture, in head shape, in nose and lip shape, and 

 even in limb proportions. These differences are obvious, they are external, 

 and we have recognized them for thousands of years. On the basis of skin 

 color, principally, we subdivide Homo sapiens into three major groups: 

 White, Yellow, Black. Scientifically we may designate these as H, s. 

 caiicasoideus, H. s. jnongloideiis, H. s. 7iegroideiis, respectively.^ Each of 

 these groups — in practice we often call them "stocks" — is a sub-species, 

 and each has certain distinctive morphological features which, taken 

 singly, are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but which, taken in com- 



1 Some anthropologists feel that these merit specific ranking. 



