So far this year everyone has been too busy sitting in front of the television to go rioting, in England at least. But the Independent Riots Communities and Victims Panel has published its final report on why last August’s riots took place. Clearing the ground, it said: ‘We know that the rioters were not a homogenous group of people all acting for the same reasons.’
There is such a word as homogenous, but it is not the one called for here. Homogenous is a synonym for homogenetic, meaning ‘having a common ancestor’. The riot panel did not intend to discuss whether the rioters had a common ancestry. Darwin used homogenous in the sixth edition of The Origin of Species, commenting on Ray Lankester’s distinction between structures that resemble each other in different animals ‘owing to their descent from a common progenitor’ (homogenous) and ‘resemblances which cannot thus be accounted for’ (homoplastic).
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