Stephen Jay Gould
Paperback | Pages: 446 pages Rating: 4.04 | 7794 Users | 337 Reviews
Mention Based On Books The Mismeasure of Man
| Title | : | The Mismeasure of Man |
| Author | : | Stephen Jay Gould |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | 2nd edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 446 pages |
| Published | : | June 17th 1996 by W. W. Norton Company (first published October 28th 1982) |
| Categories | : | Science. Nonfiction. History. Psychology. Anthropology. Biology. Evolution |
Representaion In Favor Of Books The Mismeasure of Man
The definitive refutation to the argument of The Bell Curve.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? 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 belt tightening. It might not make you any smarter, but The Mismeasure of Man will certainly make you think.--Rob Lightner
This edition is revised and expanded, with a new introduction
Itemize Books To The Mismeasure of Man
| Original Title: | The Mismeasure of Man |
| ISBN: | 0393314251 (ISBN13: 9780393314250) |
| Edition Language: | English URL http://books.wwnorton.com/books/978-0-393-31425-0/ |
| Literary Awards: | National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction (1981), National Book Award Finalist for Science (Hardcover) (1982) |
Rating Based On Books The Mismeasure of Man
Ratings: 4.04 From 7794 Users | 337 ReviewsRate Based On Books The Mismeasure of Man
A brilliant debunking of the ideas of innate, unchangeable intelligence, IQ, and the Bell Curve.Gould narrates a fascinating, horrifying history of the search for a scientific proof of innate, unchangeable, heritable intelligence, featuring many elitist, racist and sexist characters. He makes complex scientific and mathematical ideas simple, understandable, and enjoyable to read.Well worth a read.Though written 40 years ago, Gould's polemic against hereditarianism has not lost any of its potency and urgency. Whether through craniometry, obscure body measurements, general intelligence or IQ-tests, the ruling class has time and time again found ways to reify social and historical classes as expressions of a timeless, unchanging reality. This mechanism, rooted in feudalism, persists vigourously in capitalism and makes a sneaky comeback in the guise of fascism and colonialism. To be
Gould is a good person and an excellent thinker. This is a call to scientists to examine their own biases and it is a demolishment of centuries of racist genetic testing. It's also such a pleasure to read someone who is a sound thinker and can write logically. I know some of his debunkings (i.e. Morton) have since been debunked, but that does nothing to diminish the importance of this work. Also, he notes that racist "science" tends to proceed from movements demanding equality. And so it is that
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 which all humans can be ranked, culminating in The Bell Curve, by Herrnstein and Murray (1994). It is a book that asserts poor people are, in short, intellectually inferior to the non-poor, and thus
A history of the use of intelligence testing to support racism, sexism, and class boundaries, focusing on two areas: 19th-century craniometry and 20th-century IQ tests. The going gets a little heavy in the final chapters when Gould busts out the math, but it's an eye-opener, using two specific historical examples to make larger points about the way science, though supposedly neutral, can be warped to enforce existing prejudices. (When poor Italian immigrants flooded into America in the early
One shouldn't read Baron-Cohen without first fortifying oneself with Gould.
I found this book very disappointing considering how much I love other books by Gould. The Mismeasure of Man aims to attack some of the supposed evidence for scientific racism. The book's purpose intrigued me initially, but as I began reading its content, I found Gould's method very unconvincing. This is one of Gould's arguments that I found most difficult to buy - Gould's attack on craniometry. He first gives a brief background of some of the first craniometric studies of human races done by
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