It has gotten off to a great start.

I am about to present in this exciting workshop.

Yeah, I don’t know how and why because I posted it in order 😅

It’s a pleasure

I meant to say that this chapter is for *The Routledge Handbook of the History of the Philosophy of Science after Kant.

(PDF) Philosophy and race science PDF | This chapter focuses on the history of the philosophy behind race science. Although the scientific and philosophical debate about race goes back... | Find, read and cite all the research you nee...

Yes, you can find it here: www.researchgate.net/publication/...

:)

(PDF) Philosophy and race science PDF | This chapter focuses on the history of the philosophy behind race science. Although the scientific and philosophical debate about race goes back... | Find, read and cite all the research you nee...

We end the chapter by saying that this return of race science, given the history of race science, provides reason for disquiet.

You can find the page proofs for this chapter here: www.researchgate.net/publication/...

13/13 The rise of consumer ancestry tests is also a major concern. By reporting results in terms of supposed racial origins, they present complex biocultural histories as categorical ancestry components. This misleadingly naturalises classifications of race & ethnicity in the manner of race science.

12/13 This relates to our warning against the rise of liberal eugenics. Despite its framing as individual parental choice, the use of race as a proxy in this domain makes doubtful its distancing from racism especially in how its eugenics will likely reinforce already preexisting racial hierarchies.

11/13 Another pillar of this revival is the failure of personalised genomics. This failure has led to precision medicine. This field uses race as a proxy for ancestry, reintroducing the methodological and typological errors of race science into current medical and behavioural science practices.

10/13 Since 2000, race science has returned with a vengeance. One basis emerges from the argument that since we can cluster genetic data into groups, those clusters are biologically real race groups. But statistical clustering in this case doesn’t map onto meaningful biological categories.

9/13 We close the chapter by examining the contemporary resurgence of biological realism about race triggered by various interpretations of the Human Genome Project and commercial ancestry testing. Beliefs in biological race have returned in a ‘new’ statistical, high-tech, genomic guise.

8/13 Nevertheless, we highlight that scientific refutation alone does not stop the social harm caused by racist ideas. For instance: despite being discredited, works like The Bell Curve continue to influence arguments against policies for social justice and welfare (through think tanks, etc.).

7/13 We argue that hereditarians’ reliance on heritability estimates is confused and dependent on false claims about genetics. Moreover, from Lewontin’s empirical interventions to contemporary genomics, the races they assume are real have been shown to lack robust biological reality.

6/13 We review parts of the case debunking this central argument. Its flawed logic claims that because IQ is heritable, performance gaps must be genetic. We reiterate that heritability is a population-specific measure that doesn't tell you about the aetiology or cause of a trait.

5/13 In 1969, race science was revived by hereditarian psychologist Arthur Jensen. He argued that IQ differences between races are genetic, fixed, and immune to social intervention. Jensen’s framework became the central argument for contemporary versions of scientific racism.

4/13 This decline in race science was reinforced by penetrating scientific critiques from biologists like Richard Lewontin. Despite their interventions in the debate, scientific racism was already making a comeback in the US by the late 1960s.

3/13 Following the atrocities of WWII, race science went into a temporary decline. This retreat was bolstered by the 1950 & 1951 UNESCO statements on race alongside a budding recognition of the devastating consequences of the biological theories about race that motivated Nazism.

2/13 We begin the chapter by tracing the development of race science. We show how race in modernity was developed as a biological category used to justify social hierarchies. This was a project that explicitly and often intentionally dominated scientific thought until the mid-20th century.

1/13 Check out our new chapter, Philosophy and Race Science, co-authored with Sahotra Sarkar for The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Race. In it, we track the historical development, the temporary retreat, and the subsequent reincarnation of race as a biological concept: doi.org/10.4324/9781...

That feeling of “there’s nothing left to laugh about” in middle age is seen here in graph form. At least it also shows hope that if you live long enough there are plenty of things you could laugh about in the future.

This is a thought-provoking article, worth the read.

Wow, congratulations! All the best for your project

Please follow and share this profile - announcements of their upcoming talks in the philosophy of biology will be shared here on Bluesky.

It was a good day today.

Prof. Duana Fullwiley (Stanford University) kicks off our spring speaker series with the talk “Into the Lab: Racial World Building and its Discontents” on February 3rd. You can register to attend via zoom here: hugera.org/lecture-seri...

The International Fellowships programme provides support for outstanding early career researchers. First identify a suitable mentor in the Faculty of Philosophy. Once you have obtained their agreement, send CV & expression of interest to philref@phil.cam.ac.uk by Thursday, 12 February 2026
#philsci

A poster announcing the "Situating Philosophy" pre-conference panel being held at the University of the Western Cape Life Science Auditorium.

I am looking forward to being a part of this pre-conference panel.

People will spew this kind of rhetoric and praise the actions behind it and then be in complete shock when it leads to retaliatory action. We know this to be what initiates a very cynical cycle of violence. Completely predictable, still tragic and worth resisting.

Yes, sure. But what I plan to write goes beyond that to giving an analysis of the propaganda machine that produces that narrative about the "144 laws" and where it sits in our politics.