Reviewed by Clifford Morris
The Mismeasure of Man (1981, 1996) by Stephen Jay Gould
© 1981, 1996 New York: W. W. Norton BF431.G68 1996 ISBN 0-393-31425-1 (Paperback) 446 pp.In 1981, the late Stephen Jay Gould wrote The Mismeasure of Man, written, in the main, to argue against serious social and political suggestions earlier scribed by Arthur R. Jensen in his 1969 famous article How much can we boost IQ and scholastic achievement? Likewise, in 1996, Gould produced a revised and expanded version of the same book as a response to Richard L. Herrnstein and Charles Murray's 1994 book The bell curve: Intelligence and class structure in American life.
Here then is my review1 of Gould's 1996 (revised and expanded) version.
In Thoughts at Age Fifteen, the sub-title to his new introduction to the Revised and Expanded Edition of The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould (1996) calls himself a "working scientist by trade" (p. 24), then "a statistically minded paleontologist" (p. 25), and finally "an evolutionary biologist by training" (p. 41). The author of thirteen books, Mr. Gould currently teaches geology, the history of science and biology at Harvard University. Gould's strong interest in intelligence initially arose from his desire to bring science and its discoveries to the attention of the non-scientist.
In considering the mainstream arguments made about "the theory of a measurable, genetically fixed, and unitary intelligence", Gould (1996, p. 21) became concerned about how the social sciences, especially psychology, were misused in the development of the concept of intelligence, in particular, the whole nature of human intelligence testing itself. Gould has well responded to such misuses with two timely publications. In 1981, he wrote The Mismeasure of Man mainly to argue against the social and political results of those misapplications, more specifically, in response to Arthur R. Jensen's (1969) article titled How much can we boost IQ and scholastic achievement?. Likewise, in 1996, Gould produced the revised version of The Mismeasure of Man as a response to Richard L. Herrnstein and Charles Murray's (1994) book The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life.
Throughout the book's 424 pages, Gould "argues that early researchers (perhaps unconsciously) biased their measurements of intelligence based on race and points to shortcomings of those trying to substantiate "g" (Yam, 1998, p. 7). Gould uses his expanded and somewhat revised 1996 version to reiterate, once again, two central themes. First and simply stated for here, he argues that the psychological construct "intelligence" has not been shown to be any physical object or real thing (see pp. 27, 48, 56, 185, 189). Instead, he suggests that intelligence is one's ability to face problems in an unprogrammed or creative manner. Throughout, he argue that intelligence is what he calls "the ground of culture," not a biological entity. He perceives intelligence as the product of cultural evolution ... distinct from biological evolution.
However, Gould feels that because of the efforts of a group of American psychologists during the war years, the concept of intelligence has been endowed, as just outlined, to the position of a real object. To cite him precisely, Gould says that now intelligence has been become "reified, or made real". Restated more simply, Gould "sees" reification as a real thing, as something each person possesses that is, unitary, genetically fixed, measurable and constant (for a more detailed account of Gould's basic premises, see Carroll, 1985, especially pp. 123-125).
Gould's second major point is that using an abstract concept such as intelligence to quantify and rank people's worth is an exceedingly dangerous enterprise. He points out that this way of ranking is a fallacy because the task of ranking people implies quantification, or measurement resulting in one single number for each person -- the intelligence quotient (IQ) score. Further, "Gould shows how this sort of ranking can lead (and, as he shows clearly, has led) to the erroneous conclusion that oppressed and disadvantaged groups -- races, classes, sexes -- are found to be innately inferior and deserving of their reduced status, with all of this based on the measurement of something that exists only as an abstract concept at best" (Miller, 1993, p. 8).
In all of the above, Gould's viewpoint on human intelligence testing is quite similar to that of the Harvard psychologist, Howard Gardner (1998). Like Gould, Gardner believes that mainstream intelligence tests cannot use single neat numeral to measure our "distinctly different kinds of minds" (Gardner, 1999, p. 45; see also Yam, 1998, p. 7). To sum up this brief review, Gould considers the use of psychological testing to rank ones' worth on the basis of the single IQ or general "g" score the major misuse of science in this century.
Note
1. To read Philippe Rushton's reviews of this book, go to http://www.eugenics.net/papers/rushton.html
Selected References
Carroll, John, B. (1995). Reflections on Stephen Jay Gould's 'The Mismeasure of Man' (1981): A retrospective review. Intelligence, 21, 121-134.
Gardner, Howard (1998, Winter). A multiplicity of intelligences. [Special Issue]. Scientific American, 9(4), 18-23.
Gardner, Howard (1999, January 25). A prescription for peace. Time, 153(3), pp. 44-45.
Gould, Stephen Jay (1996). The mismeasure of man: Revised and expanded. New York: W. W. Norton. (Original work published 1981)
Herrnstein, Richard. J, & Murray, Charles (1994). The bell curve: Intelligence and class structure in American life. New York: Free Press.
Jensen, Arthur R. (1969). How much can we boost IQ and scholastic achievement? Harvard Educational Review, 39(1), 1-123.
Miller, Lynda (1993). What we call smart: A new narrative for intelligence and learning. San Diego, California: Singular Publishing Group.
Yam, Philip (1998, Winter). Intelligence considered, [Special Issue]. Scientific American, 9(4), 6-11.
Revised: Monday, 05 February, 2007
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