eminent and prestigious paleontologists, who worked out the sequence of

evolution of the horse. He wrote,

The northern races invaded the countries to the south, not only as
conquerors but as contributors of strong moral and intellectual elements to a
more or less decadent civilization. Through the Nordic tide which flowed
into Italy came the ancestors of Raphael, Leonardo, Galileo, Titiano; also,
according to Gnther, of Giotto, Botticelli, Petrarca, and Tasso. Columbus,
from his portraits and from busts, whether authentic or not, was clearly of
Nordic ancestry. 7 [emphasis added]
Whether authentic or not, indeed! Over and over again, leading intellectuals
have assured their audiences that modern science shows that there are inborn
racial and individual differences in ability. Nor have modern biologists
taken a different view. Except for a brief interruption around the time of the
Second World War, when the crimes of Nazism made claims of innate
inferiority extremely unpopular, biological determinism has been the
mainstream commitment of biologists. Yet these claims are made without a
shred of evidence and in contradiction to every principle of biology and
genetics.
To realize the error of these claims, we need to understand what is involved
in the development of an organism. First, we are not determined by our
genes, although surely we are influenced by them. Development depends
not only on the materials that have been inherited from parents-that is, the
genes and other materials in the sperm and egg-but also on the particular
temperature, humidity, nutrition, smells, sights, and sounds (including what
we call education) that impinge on the developing organism. Even if I knew
the complete molecular specification of every gene in an organism, I could
not predict what that organism would be. Of course, the difference between
lions and lambs is almost entirely a consequence of the difference in genes
between them. But variations among individuals within species are a unique
consequence of both genes and the developmental environment in a constant
interaction. Moreover, curiously enough, even if I knew the genes of a
developing organism and the complete sequence of its environments, I could
not specify the organism.
There is yet another factor at work. If we count the number of bristles under
the wing of a fruitfly, for example, we find that there is a different number