HW 2/11

biological determinism: “hold shared behavioral norms, and the social and economic differences between human groups – primarily races, classes, and sexes – arise from inherited, inborn distractions and that society, in this sense, is an accurate reflection of biology”
Mettle: worthiness of people
Agassiz: naturalists should have the right to view the physical relations of men as scientific questions and nothing related to politics or religion.
“If the status quo is an extension of nature, then any major change, if possible at all, must inflict an enormous cost- psychological for individuals, or economic for society- in forcing people into unnatural arrangements”.
“The purely relativistic claim that scientific change only reflects the modification of social contexts, that truth is a meaningless notion outside cultural assumptions, and that science can therefor provide no enduring answers”.