Carleton S. Coon

the race concept as they sought to distance their field from the scientific racism of the first last century. And finally, the emergence of the modern synthesis changed the way that many geneticists thought about race. The shift towards populations as the basis for analysis, many argued, was no longer compatible with the essentialist notions underpinning race. Carlton Coon, Theodosius Dobzhansky, and Ashley Montagu represent the range of opinions on race circulating during the mid-century. Carlton Coon, physical anthropologist and author of the controversial The Origin of the Races, remained committed to the notion that race was a natural division based on phenotypic differences. Theodosius agreed with Coon in as far as thought the term "race" carried analytical import. According to Dobzhansky: In the context of population genetics the concept of race is useful only as a tool of decision making in that it is one of many ways in which genetic diversity is made meaningful. In that way, race is no more than a methodological decision and not something that reflects an underlying hierarchy.” Nevertheless, Dobzhansky 's contention that physical difference represented a inadequate measure of racial difference inspired his new genetic definition of race defined as the differences in gene frequencies between populations. For Dobzhansky, the study of race remained an important venture because its ability to reveal information about the processes of evolution. On the other end of the…