[BDDkDvgZ]

Tsuioko,
Thanks for the input, especially the Lewontin reference. I knew I had seen some stat like that somewhere.

Bossel,
I feel compelled to reply to you, even though I think we both have little left to bring to this discussion. Statement like "Its quite obvious that you don't want to understand." are insulting, condescending and uncalled for. (Especially because it was in response to terms I quoted from YOUR previous post!) I have never put myself forth as an expert in this area, I am constantly asking for clarification and reading the articles that are parsed in this thread. If nothing else I have tried to understand with increasing difficulty your point of view. I am offended by your tone.

You also claim not to be an elitist, but the two times I brought up the fact that aboriginal Amazons and Persians would have a different taxonomy, you asked "How many of them are biologists." I am not a biologist either, and by your snide statement I am entirely unqualified to discuss the taxonomy of a subspecies. (and you would be right, actually.) I feel I have always state myself plainly and have never taken such a tone with you. The tone of these statements to me seem not only elitist, but ethnocentric and arrogant. I am hoping that the implication was unintentional or perhaps that my inference is in error.

As for words having the same meaning for the sender and reciever, I'm quite surprised as a linguistics major you didn't recognize one of the basics of communications. In the US, the concept is quite elementary. :/ And Yes, if a scientist intends to communicate with a houswife, he must use terms she understands. For communication to occur, the sender and reciever must share a common language. The sender should be aware of what terms connote (and possibly denote) in the INTENDED reciever. (So if a scientists were writing to other scientists, he would choose differert terms.)

I pulled the terms "superficial appearence" from an article YOU cited: Multiregional Evolution hypothesis, in the last sentence of the last paragraph, so if you want to ridicule anyone it should be the expert you cited and not me. You also seem to have missed the entire point that we are talking about the validity, reliability and existentence of a concept, and so when I listed scientific concepts it was to illustrate the point that all of the concepts are significant, specific and important. Although we may re-translate these concepts into different languages, the core of the concept does not change.

You are quite right to note that I was sloppy about the origins of science. I'm thinking Age of Reason, Enlightenment...but actually refering to something more modern. Let me rephrase to clarify: the ethnocentric European concept of Race was well developed to the point of dogmatic and inhumane application well before the advent and development of modern sciences such as microbiology, biochemistry, and genomics. The "concept" of race, along with the old world terminology is saddled with so much negative connotation that intereferes with discussion that many or most scientists and scientific journals avoid its usage in favor of more accurate terminology that is devoid of such baggage. Race in these terms has as much validity as spontaneous generation. (I doubt that the terms or concepts of language and dialect carry such baggage.) Although its connotation in the discussion of human variation may find some valid basis, the denotation attached to its historical and popular usage render its continued application in the current field of biology not just politically incorrect, but an anachronism.

The "la la" relativism statement- again I applologize for being vague. When you said everything is relative, it seemed like a cop out- that anything can mean anything to anyone at any given time...(la, la, la...) While this is true in some kind of philosophical sence, it seems to me to exhibit the kind of lack of reasoning that the basic scientific method argues against. Materialism, that a thing can be known, measured, that a concept can be predictive, reliable and valid...the solid concrete knowable universe- this to me is inherent in the methods of science. As a non scientist, I am perhaps the least qualified, most "la-la" person you can find to make this argument. Someone with better Cartesian logic and a stronger scientific background would be better.

You may feel the need to reply to this post by breaking it down into little blue boxes and following each with a one line zinger. I think many of your previous posts have already address much of what I have said here. It may seem to add strength to your argument, but I think both of us (especially me- I'm working on it) could be more brief.