Principios de Taxonomia

Races are not populations of individuals who are different in a majority of their
traits, but rather, they are populations of individuals who possess a few characteristic
traits that are the diagnostic traits of their race (Chapter 5). It is easy to find differences
in outward appearance (e.g., skin and hair color, morphology of the body and the face)
between humans from different parts of the Earth.
However, the necessity of adaptation to particular environmental conditions in
different geographical areas has only led to changes in a small number of genes in
the genome, specifically those that have been subjected to the adaptive pressure of
adjusting to local environmental conditions. In humans, the diagnostic traits
between races are mainly related to skin and hair color as adaptations to the
varying intensity of solar radiation and allelic differences in specific metabolic
enzymes as adaptations to varying diets (Kingsley, 2009). The majority of genes in
the genome are not affected by these adaptations, and accordingly, the numbers of
these changes vary among single organisms within a race to the same magnitude
as between members of different races. Hence, a native Central European can
differ from his equally Central European neighbor in more genetic traits than
from a sub-Saharan African. Races are not generally different from each other,
but they carry specific license plates, by means of which they can be identified.
This realization disproves a common prejudice about the nature of racial
difference.
The problem is that the differences between races concern very distinct adaptations
to local environments, and these traits are altogether low in number. Who
decides which traits are awarded the rank of being a distinguishing property of a race?
What makes skin and hair color so special? There are hundreds of other traits that
could in principle be used to divide a species into diagnosable groups. Why do we
consider native Africans to be a separate race, but not the Bavarians in contrast to
the Westphalians in Germany? Both of these populations are diagnosable groups that
are distinguished by certain specific traits.
These considerations make it clear that races are typologically defined, and the
traits chosen in considering a population as a race are a matter of highly subjective
human decision-making processes. Though races are useful tools for pragmatic
classifications, they are nevertheless artificial classes formed into groups by the
human mind. Races are pretended to be biological units, but in fact they are only
scientific or social or political constructs. No natural law defines races as cohesive
natural groups.
The example of racial discrimination shows most clearly the fatal consequences
human intuitions can face if they are not verified by scientific and logical foundations.
2.12
Species Pluralism: How Many Species Concepts Exist?
2.12 Species Pluralism: How Many Species Concepts Exist?j33
A remarkable number of species concepts are currently in use (Mayden, 1997). This
multiplicity demonstrates, above any other point, that all of these concepts must be
fictitious. These concepts must be human constructs and cannot represent entities