“Few features of humanity are as obvious as the wide array of inherited diversity visible in our outward features. It's also evident that people whose ancestry traces to a particular geographic region typically appear similar to one another and different from other geographic regions. Moreover, we as humans have an almost innate propensity to compartmentalize nearly everything into discrete categories, even when lines that distinguish those categories are complex, blurred, or nonexistent. As an inevitable consequence, people have been subjected to categorization into what we call human races throughout much of the past several centuries.”

—  Daniel J. Fairbanks

Source: Everyone is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race (2015), p. 14.

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Daniel J. Fairbanks 13
American artist 1956

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“Throughout the past several centuries, people have used the term race to describe groups of people in much the same way it was used in past centuries to describe groups of animals. People with ancestry from a particular region of tend to share certain inherited similar features, resembling their parents. However, the children of parents with substantially different ancestral backgrounds often have an appearance that is intermediate between that of their two parents, and in subsequent generations, the offspring may vary. In part because of the obvious similarities between animals and humans for how traits are inherited, and in part because of cultural, political, and religious traditions, notinos of racial purity and superiority have surged and ebbed yet persisted, crossing the boundaries of culture, geography, politics, and time. They are still with us today, and some of the most insidious actions based on notions of racial supremacy happened not long ago.”

Daniel J. Fairbanks (1956) American artist

Source: Everyone is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race (2015), pp. 16–17.

“Vibrant human diversity is now commonplace in major cities throughout the world. Some celebrate such a mix of human diversity. Others deplore it, preferring that so-called races be separated both geographically and reproductively. Even today, some people retain the once-popular belief that the 'white' race is superior in intellect, health, and other attributes. Although far more people reject the notion of white supremacy today than in the past, its legacy remains, as evidenced by economic stratification, ongoing segregation, and classification by racial categories. Even among those who reject the supposed superiority of a particular ethnicity over any other, the perception of distinct, genetically determined human races often persists.”

Daniel J. Fairbanks (1956) American artist

Source: Everyone is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race (2015), pp. 9–10.

“Von Bertalanffy also studied the works of, a pre-Socratic philosopher. Anaxogoras said that 'everything was everything else.' Therefore all categories of thinking were relative and all contradictions only apparent. According to Cusanus the knowledge of infinite God cannot be grasped by human mind it can only be approached from different directions. The idea of God has many aspects which appear to be contradictory. It is similar to a human face which may present different appearances when perceived from different perspectives.”

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Source: Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972) (1989), p. 4

“The core study of geography is the study of places, that is the analysis of the significant differences that distinguish the various areas of the world from each other. Among the differences that are significant to this areal differentiation, one of the more obvious are differences in landforms; one of the least obvious to the eye, but nonetheless important in molding the character of areas, are the differences in their political organization. In pursuing these and other separate topics, geographers "radiate out in diverse directions" "and for various distances, toward the cores of other disciplines."”

Richard Hartshorne (1899–1992) American Geographer

As long as they realise where they are in reference to the central core, they may hope to understand each other purposes.
R. Hartshorne (1950) "The functional approach in political geography," Annals of the Association of American Geographers Vol. 40 (2), p. 95

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“[Quantity is the fundamental feature of things, ] the primarium accidens substantiae,' …prior to the other categories.”

Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer

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“We cannot speak of human rights without centering our attention on conscience, one among a few distinctive features that make humans human‒and humane.”

Marco Respinti (1964)

"Tai Ji Men: A Voyage to the Center of Conscience" https://bitterwinter.org/tai-ji-men-a-voyage-to-the-center-of-conscience/

“Culture is the collective programming of the mind distinguishing the members of one group or category of people from others.”

Geert Hofstede (1928) Dutch psychologist

Source: Culture's consequences: International differences in work-related values (1980), p. 25; as cited in Rüdiger Pieper (1990) Human Resource Management: An International Comparison. p. 130.

“We must also accept the possibility of Gestalt qualities comprehending complexes of elements of different categories.”

Christian von Ehrenfels (1859–1932) Austrian philosopher

Source: "On Gestalt Qualities," 1890, p. 97

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“The history of literature is the history of the human mind. It is, as compared with other histories, the intellectual as distinguished from the material, the informing spirit as compared with the outward and visible.”

William H. Prescott (1796–1859) American historian and Hispanist

"Chateaubriand's English Literature" (1839), p. 245.
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“Categorizing is necessary for humans, but it becomes pathological when the category is seen as definitive, preventing people from considering the fuzziness of boundaries, let alone revising their categories.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), p.15

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