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10 - Conclusions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2024

Jonathan Marks
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Charlotte
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Summary

I admit there has been a lot of negativity in this book. But that’s how most scientists will tell you that science works, following the twentieth-century philosophy of Karl Popper. Science proceeds, in this view, through the falsification of hypotheses. That is the engine of science, and definitely a good thing. But scientists also generally don’t like to acknowledge that their own hypotheses have been falsified. Hence the perseverance of many of the folk views of human heredity and variation, in swaths of popular culture and in shrinking niches within the scholarly community itself.

My goal here has not been to describe human variation, but to help the reader understand it. Many decades ago, a book like this one would have been a mostly descriptive survey of the peoples of the world: stocky circumpolar peoples, tall and skinny Somalis, short Indonesians, darkly complexioned Sri Lankans, pale Swedes, and so forth.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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  • Conclusions
  • Jonathan Marks, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
  • Book: Understanding Human Diversity
  • Online publication: 31 August 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009534314.011
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  • Conclusions
  • Jonathan Marks, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
  • Book: Understanding Human Diversity
  • Online publication: 31 August 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009534314.011
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Conclusions
  • Jonathan Marks, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
  • Book: Understanding Human Diversity
  • Online publication: 31 August 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009534314.011
Available formats
×