The Mismeasure of Man (Revised & Expanded)
The definitive refutation to the argument of The Bell Curve.When published in 1981, The Mismeasure of Man was immediately hailed as a masterwork, the ringing answer to those who would classify people, rank them according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits. Yet the idea of biology as...
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The definitive refutation to the argument of The Bell Curve.When published in 1981, The Mismeasure of Man was immediately hailed as a masterwork, the ringing answer to those who would classify people, rank them according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits. Yet the idea 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. In this edition, Stephen Jay Gould has written a substantial new introduction telling how and why he wrote the book and tracing the subsequent history of the controversy on innateness right through The Bell Curve. Further, he has added five essays on questions of The Bell Curve in particular and on race, racism, and biological determinism in general. These additions strengthen the book's claim to be, as Leo J. Kamin of Princeton University has said, "a major contribution toward deflating pseudo-biological 'explanations' of our present social woes."
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780393314250 (0393314251)
Publish date: June 17th 1996
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Pages no: 448
Edition language: English
I loved Stephen Jay Gould's calm way of eviscerating prejudiced, fraked up belief systems. An essential book if you have trouble getting the idea that you can't judge intelligence by looking at anything but intelligence.
Before a proper summation can be given, one first has to understand the Why of The Mismeasure of Man. The Why being hundreds of years of conservative, white-folk-do-well-because-they're-smartest ideology supported by "science", and the more recent belief in the existence of an inherited IQ number by...
Gould gives the history of IQ testing in a social and scientific context, exposing all the mistakes in the formulation and recognition of, for example, the factor g as a general, heritable, unique and unchangable measure of intelligence. He writes with ease and humour, and gives horrifying examples ...