ABSTRACT
Richard C. Lewontin is arguably the most influential evolutionary biologist of the second half of the 20th century. His 1972 article, titled “The Apportionment of Human Diversity,” has been subject to wildly different interpretations: Either it shows we are all equal, or it shows small but significant differences among human races. In this chapter, I provide two windows on Lewontin (1972): First, I summarize the publications that influenced him and framed his exploration; second, I present close readings of the five sections of the article: “Introduction,” “The Genes,” “The Samples,” “The Measure of Diversity,” and “The Results.” I hope to illuminate the basic anatomy and argumentative arc of the article, and why it became such a historically important document. In redoing all of his calculations, I find that Lewontin made calculation errors (including rounding errors or omitting diversity component values) for all the genes he analyzed except one (P), and understated the among races diversity component, according to even just his own calculations. I show that “Lewontin’s Distribution” of, within populations, among populations but within races, and among races, diversity apportionment is properly 86%/7%/7%, respectively.
