This book was immediately hailed as a masterwork when first published in 1981, the answer to those who would rank people according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits. And yet the idea of innate limits--of biology as destiny--dies hard, as witness the attention devoted to "The Bell Curve,"
… More »This book was immediately hailed as a masterwork when first published in 1981, the answer to those who would rank people according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits. And yet the idea of innate limits--of biology as destiny--dies hard, as witness the attention devoted to "The Bell Curve," whose arguments are here so effectively anticipated and thoroughly undermined by biologist Gould. In this revised edition, Dr. Gould traces the subsequent history of the controversy on innateness. Further, he has added five essays on questions of "The Bell Curve" in particular and on race, racism, and biological determinism in general.--From publisher description.
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Authors:
Gould, Stephen Jay
Statement of Responsibility:
by Stephen Jay Gould
Title:
The mismeasure of man
Publisher:
New York :, Norton,, c1996
Edition:
Rev and expanded
Characteristics:
444 p. :,ill. ;,22 cm
Bibliography:
Includes bibliographical references (p. [425]-430) and index
Contents:
Introduction to the revised and expanded edition : thoughts at age fifteen
The fram of The Mismeasure of man
Why revise The Mismeasure of man after fifteen years?
Reasons, history and revision of The Mismeasure of man
I. Introduction
2. American polygeny and craniometry before Darwin : Blacks and Indians as separate, inferior species
A shared context of culture
Preevolutionary styles of scientific racism : monogenism and polygenism
Louis Agassiz, America's theorist of polygeny
Samuel George Morton, empiricist of polygeny
The case of Indian inferiority : Crania Americana
The case of the Egyptian catacombs : Crania Aegyptiaca
The case of the shifting Black mean
The final tabulation of 1849
Conclusions
The American school and slavery
3. Measuring heads : Paul Broca and the heyday of craniology
The allure of numbers
Introduction
Francis Galton, apostle of quantification
A curtain-raiser with a moral : numbers do not guarantee truth
Masters of cranimoetry : Paul Broca and his school
The great circle route
Selecting characters
Averting anomalies
Big-brained Germans
Small-brained men of eminence
Large-brained criminals
Flaws in a pattern of increase through time
Front and back
The cranial index
The case of the foramen magnum
Women's brains
Postscript
4. Measuring bodies : two case studies on the apishness of undesirables
The ape in all of us : recapitulation
The ape in some of us : criminal anthropology
Atavism and criminality
Animals and savages as born criminals
The stigmata : anatomical, physiological, and social
Lombroso's retreat
The influence of criminal anthropology
Coda
Epilogue
5. The hereditarian theory of IQ : an American invention
Alfred Binet and the original purposes of the Binet scale
Binet flirts with craniometry
Binet's scale and the birth of IQ
The dismantling of Binet's intentions in America
H.H. Goddard and the menace of the feeble-minded
Intelligence as a Mendelian gene
Goddard identifies the moron
A unilinear scale of intelligence
Breaking the scale into Mendelian compartments
The proper care and feeding (but not breeding) of morons
Preventing the immigration and propagation of morons
Goddard recants
Lewis M. Terman and the mass marketing of innate IQ
Mass testing and the Stanford-Binet
Terman's technocracy of innateness
Fossil IQ's of past geniuses
Terman on group differences
Terman recants
R.M. Yerkes and the army mental tests : IQ comes of age
Psychology's great leap forward
Results of the army tests
A critique of the army mental tests
The content of the tests
Inadequate conditions
Dubious and perverse proceedings : a personal testimony
Finagling the summary statistics : the problem of zero values
Finagling the summary statistics : getting around obvious correlations with environment
Political impact of the army data
Can democracy survive an average mental age of thirteen?
The army test and agitation to restrict immigration : Brigham's monograph of American intelligence
The triumph of restriction on immigration
Brigham recants
6. The real error of Cyril Burt : factor analysis and the reification of intelligence
The case of Sir Cyril Burt
Correlation, cause, and factor analysis
Correlation and cause
Correlation in more than two dimension
Factor analysis and its goals
The error of reification
Rotation and the nonnecessity of principal components
Charles Spearman and general intelligence
The two-factor theory
The method of tetrad differences
Spearman's g and the great instauration of psychology
Spearman's g and the theoretical justification of IQ
Spearman's reification of g
Spearman on the inheritance of g
Cyril Burt and the hereditarian synthesis
The source of Burt's uncompromising hereditarianism
Burt's initial "proof" on innateness
Later arguments
Burt's blindness
Burt's political use of innateness
Burt's extension of Spearman's theory
Burt on the reification of factors
Burt and the political uses of g
L.L. Thurstone and the vectors of mind
Thurstone's critique and reconstruction
The egalitarian interpretation of PMA's
Spearman and Burt react
Oblique axes and second-order g
Thurston on the uses of factor analysis
Epilogue : Arthur Jensen and the resurrection of Spearman's g
A final thought
7. A positive conclusion
Debunking a positive science
Learning by debunking
Biology and human nature
Epilogue
Critique of The Bell curve
The Bell curve
Disingenuousness of content
Disingenuousness of argument
Disingenuousness of program
Ghosts of Bell curves past
Three centuries' perspectives on race and racism
Age-old fallacies of thinking and stinking
Racial geometry
The moral state of Tahiti, and of Darwin
Summary:
This book was immediately hailed as a masterwork when first published in 1981, the answer to those who would rank people according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits. And yet the idea of innate limits--of biology as destiny--dies hard, as witness the attention devoted to "The Bell Curve," whose arguments are here so effectively anticipated and thoroughly undermined by biologist Gould. In this revised edition, Dr. Gould traces the subsequent history of the controversy on innateness. Further, he has added five essays on questions of "The Bell Curve" in particular and on race, racism, and biological determinism in general.--From publisher description.
Subject Headings:
Intelligence tests History
Ability Testing History
Personality tests History
Craniometry History
Topical Term:
Intelligence tests
Ability
Personality tests
Craniometry
LCCN:
95044442
ISBN:
0393039722
9780393039726
0393314251
9780393314250
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