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The Mismeasure of Man
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The Mismeasure of Man description
How smart are you? If that question doesn't spark a dozen more questions in your mind (like "What do you mean by 'smart,'" "How do I measure it," and "Who's asking?"), then The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould's masterful demolition of the IQ industry, should be required reading. Gould's brilliant, funny, engaging prose dissects the motivations behind those who would judge intelligence, and hence worth, by cranial size, convolutions, or score on extremely narrow tests. How did scientists decide that intelligence was unipolar and quantifiable, and why did the standard keep changing over time? Gould's answer is clear and simple: power maintains itself. European men of the 19th century, even before Darwin, saw themselves as the pinnacle of creation and sought to prove this assertion through hard measurement. When one measure was found to place members of some "inferior" group such as women or Southeast Asians over the supposedly rightful champions, it would be discarded and replaced with a new, more comfortable measure. The 20th-century obsession with numbers led to the institutionalization of IQ testing and subsequent assignment to work (and rewards) commensurate with the score, shown by Gould to be not simply misguided--for surely intelligence is multifactorial--but also regressive, creating a feedback loop rewarding the rich and powerful. The revised edition includes a scathing critique of Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve, taking them to task for rehashing old arguments to exploit a new political wave of uncaring and belt tightening. It might not make you any smarter, but The Mismeasure of Man will certainly make you think. --Rob Lightner |
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The Mismeasure of Man Customer Reviews
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Cogent Analysis on the Misuses of Intelligence Testing
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Regarding Stephen Jay Gould's book "The Mismeasure of Man," it seems to me that a recurring theme can be found in many of the negative reviews. The theme is a variation of the claim: "Gould allows his ideology to get in the way of his analysis." Putting aside, for the moment, the question of whether or not that particular criticism has any basis in fact, I find it remarkable that the progenitors of such a claim do not (will not?) consider the possibility that the scientists, scholars and social scientists who hold views antithetical to those of Gould's--e.g. intelligence is largely genetic and heritable; the gap in I.Q. test scores between whites and blacks is due to innate genetic differences--may be guilty of committing the same malfeasance for which Gould is being accused.
Moreover, one has to wonder if the prime reason for all the strong negative criticism is not necessarily a general disagreement with the printed facts, but rather a personal, visceral rejection of the perceived incompatibility between the conclusions Gould recovers, on the one hand, and the chosen ideology of the critical reviewers themselves, on the other.
Given the plausibility of such a scenario, I believe a healthy dose of introspection and sincerity is in order, lest one proceeds to "cast the first stone." |
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