Article
Author: David J Depew (University of Iowa)
This essay uses rhetorical analysis to defend the population geneticist Richard Lewontin from accusations made by E. O. Wilson and others that his Marxist social philosophy distorts his empirical science. I suggest that Lewontin’s appeal to his own authority as an experimental evolutionary biologist supports his claim that racism has no biological justification and that it is his opponents whose assumptions about society distort their scientific arguments.
Keywords: behavior genetics, Darwinism, Ethos, Dobzhansky, T., eugenics, Jensen, A., Herrnstein, R., Lewontin, Marxism, population genetics, scientific racism, rhetoric of science, Wilson, E.
How to Cite: Depew, D. J. (2018) “Richard Lewontin and the Argument from Ethos”, Poroi. 13(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1273