One of the most important books I own: Are there entire populations of people who are born with an innate, quantifiable intelligence greater than others? Can intelligence even be quantified? According to Gould, science has not yet arrived at a meaningful and scientifically legitimate understanding of this concept of intelligence, nor a way to measure it, nor any proof that certain races are naturally smarter than others.

I would expect an eminent evolutionist to spend his time making a case for how biological diversity lends itself to multiple levels of mental ability through natural selection. But instead Gould puts on a turtleneck and tweed and plays historian--quite well, too! His scientific background gives him the credibility to explore this topic like no historian could.

Gould walks through the history of science's attempt to quantify human intelligence and demonstrates how and why each method eventually failed. But of course this type of science exists today in various types of IQ tests, bell curves, all of which are used to not only measure this thing we call intelligence, but also by some to argue that some groups are naturally superior to others. Gould analyzes the history, methods and underlying theories behind these contemporary incarnations.

The book is readable, well illustrated, well documented, and has a lot of solid historical analysis.

Some critics complain that in The Mismeasure of Man Stephen J. Gould attacks a straw man: craniometry is, after all, no more than fin-du-siècle quackery with which no self-respecting scientist would dream of having truck these says. Likewise, the naïve early attempts at to link IQ with heredity that Gould spends so much time recounting have long since been soundly and uncontroversially demolished, so Gould at best is shooting fish in a barrel, and many suspect him of something more mendacious than that. Some suspect a political agenda. The late Stephen Jay Gould, you see, was a *Marxist*, after all.

That particular, ad hominem, charge has mystified me the more I've read of Gould's work. I first encountered Gould in discouraging circumstances where his evolutionary theory of punctuated equilibrium was subjected to a contumelious lambasting at the hands of (usually) mild-mannered philosopher Daniel Dennett, in his (otherwise) wonderful and thought-provoking book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life.

Taken as I was by Dennett's general argument at the time (I'm less swooned by it these days), I thought his vituperative treatment of Gould was out of character - from what I can tell Dennett is a positively genial chap - but otherwise thought nothing of it, other than supposing Gould to be part of the problem and not the solution.

There I surely would have left it, and Stephen J. Gould, were it not for Richard Dawkins' silly entry to the "religious wars" The God Delusion - as good an example as one could ask for of how perfectly thoughtful, sensible and smart scientists tend to make arses of themselves when they stray from their stock material. About the only interesting thing in Dawkins' book was how, again, poor old Steve Gould, now sadly deceased, got another shoeing, this time for his pragmatic attempt to reconcile science and religion in Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life.

This time I had the BS radar switched on, found Dawkins' attack to be pretty obviously misguided (Dawkins may be a great biologist but his epistemology would have had him kicked out of PHIL 101) and wound up being more, not less, persuaded by Gould's concept of "non-overlapping magisteria".

In any case, at the very least this Gould chap seemed like the sort of contrarian agitator who was clearly a good sport and an interesting critter, but more to the point it sounded like he had something interesting to say. And so, it transpired, he does. I've since read a number of his books and articles, all of them articulate, beautifully written, witty, erudite and excellent in substance, and never once have I seen any suggestion of Marxist bias (eager followers of my reviews will know I have no particular sympathy with left wing politics).

As regards The Mismeasure of Man such insinuations would be especially ironic, since Gould's very point is to illustrate that well-meaning and well respected scientists are all too prone to be deceived into equating their wilful interpretations as scientific truths. In fact, I suspect Gould would even concede to some bias: that, he would say, is the point.

Against all the odds, there seem to be a few brave souls who hold out hope for a hereditary aspect to intelligence: indeed a couple seem to be active on this site. Gould's only substantive point for them is to say that, whatever we even mean by "intelligence", it is so obviously situational and environment-dependent (this shouldn't be news to anyone who's seen Crocodile Dundee) - in other words *socially constructed* - that seeking to tie it to something like biology - which by its very definition isn't - is on its face a waste of time. Gould the liberal then adds, by way of political commentary, that the harmless if silly conclusion that the two *are* related is liable to be misinterpreted by unscrupulous (or simply unsuspecting) people, particularly if they have a particular social agenda which would find it convenient to establish innate differences between - for which read "innate deficiencies in certain (other)" - racial groups. That isn't a scientific point, it's a political one, and to my (un-Marxist) mind, Gould is perfectly right to make it.

Now a different objection to Gould's enterprise might be that such a point doesn't require 300 pages of careful demolition of unequivocally bunk science to make (unless your correspondent is funded by the Pioneer Foundation, apparently: and for those lucky souls, not even 300 pages of argument will do it). But the methodological point is the one that interests Gould: how the hypothesis conditions the evidence sought but even the interpretation placed upon it. Gould's patient history would function as a case study for Thomas Kuhn's superb essay on the contingency of Scientific knowledge The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Gould also sees analogy between the hereditarian's linear view of intelligence with the naive ordering of all creation to accord with a supposed evolutionary progression from bacterium to homo sapiens sapiens. Again, it's not the Marxist but the Paleontologist who patiently explains that evolution doesn't work like that: it is better viewed as an expanding bush that a linear progression.

To be sure, in the early parts of this book there is a level of detail that seems superfluous, but the later aspects, and particular Gould's insight into statistical correlation and factor analysis are fascinating and well explained for a layman, and the handsomeness of his turn of phrase and the constancy of his erudition - scientists tend to be poorly read outside their fields, but this was most certainly not the case of the late professor Gould - make this a fascinating and enjoyable work by a profoundly wise and sadly missed thorn in the establishment's side.

They don't make them like this anymore, alas. ( )

One reason why I love science is that it's self-correcting; unfortunately, the corrections take centuries because cultural institutions profit from inventions like "irrational" women and "sub-primate" racial groups. Rest in peace, Stephen Jay Gould: a great writer who takes the reader by the hand through a difficult path. ( )

One thing I grasp from this book is that even if I cannot understand statistical analysis, it is not because I’m innately stupid. The book can be depressing in the fact that so many do so much to defend they’re prejudices and so many are willing to take it for truth.

“Interestingly, most of the men who built biodeterminism in the 1920s recanted their own conclusions during the liberal swing of the 1930s when Ph.D.’s walked depression breadlines and poverty could no longer be explained by innate stupidity.” (p. 29)

“The difference between strict hereditarians and their opponents is not, as some caricatures suggest, the belief that a child’s performance is all inborn or all a function of environment and learning. I doubt that the most committed antihereditarians have ever denied the existence of innate variation among children. The differences are more a matter of social policy and educational practice. Hereditarians view their measures of intelligence as markers of permanent, inborn limits. Children, so labeled, should be sorted, trained according to their inheritance and channeled into professions appropriate for their biology … Antihereditarians … test in order to identify and help. … Mental testing becomes a theory for enhancing potential through proper education.” (p. 183)

“Evolution forms a copiously branching bush, not a unilinear progressive sequence. … Modern earthworms and crabs are descendants of lineages that have evolved separately from vertebrates for more than 500 million years… They are not our ancestors; they are not even ‘lower’ or less complicated than humans in any meaningful sense. They represent good solutions for their own way of life; they must not be judged by the hubristic notion that one peculiar primate forms a standard for all of life.” (p. 348) ( )

This is one of my most recommended reads to folks doing psychological assessments. It tells you what they don't teach you in grad school!
Life changing! ( )