The Mismeasure of Man


by Stephen Jay Gould,
W. W. Norton & Company, 444 pages.
ISBN: 0393314251

This book is about measuring intelligence, and how it has been done incorrectly in the past, especially in the pursuit of certain racial stereotypes. It is also about the fallibility of the scientific method as relates to the actual practice of science by scientists.

Summary

Gould starts by examining the early 20th century fascination with correlations between cranial capacity and size, and race. The correlations, which were repeatedly shown at the time to prove the understood fact that white, European males (and in many cases, specifically German, French, or English males,) were more intelligent than other, "lesser" races. Acknowledging that the correlation between cranial capacity and intelligence is flawed in and of itself, Gould proceeds to dissect exactly how the very subjective measurements were taken, and then how data was correlated, in many cases clearly incorrectly, using, what Gould argues were clearly unconscious, fudging of the data in many ways.

Many intriguing examples of this are pointed out in the book; Grape seed not being a good measure of cranial capacity, as one contemporary cranialist noted, the difference between two measurements could greatly exceed the statistical differences between races. In addition, many factors were taken into account only when beneficial to the theories being propounded; repeatedly, the scientists would argue that body size, sex, or some other factor has some important relationship to head size, and therefore the European sample must be adjusted upward, or the African sample downward, but never vice-versa, even in cases where the data clearly showed that similar adjustments were needed elsewhere.

Gould goes on to make similar criticisms of other contemporary theories of various attributes that were “linked” with intelligence, demolishing each in turn. He then turns to IQ testing, its eugenic roots, and the similar failings of the various tests of the IQ systems, including the first mass testing of IQ anywhere, in the US army during World War 1. These tests were carried out badly, frequently so much so that the cultural biases that would have invalidated any significant conclusions from the tests were irrelevant due to the fact that the instructions were so miserable that those tested, in group of hundreds, frequently did not answer anything at all. (There is a terrific story in the book about how the large groups of non-responsive answers were interpreted as people too stupid to have their intelligence even measured by these tests, having the mental ability of less than a five year old.)

Lastly, Gould takes issue with the single intelligence theory, or reification, the idea of assuming that if one can measure something, it must have some reality, as opposed to being aspects of a more complicated emergent behavior, or even simple artifacts of the system, such as cultural bias. There are several technical mathematical subjects that Gould explains (rather well), involving Dimensional analysis (and NOT unit analysis, which is what most of that node discusses.) that were causes of problems with many techniques used.

Review

The book was an interesting read overall, though amazingly overly technical at certain points. There were several points in the book that Gould digressed into emotionally involving, but ultimately irrelevant stories about the horrors of eugenics and conservatism, inextricably linked. While not quite the “intellectual foundation behind the movement for racial equality” that wrinkly claims in his w/u on Gould, it certainly was an important step in the refutation of the racist, eugenic dogma that passed for intellectualism in certain circles in the early eighties.

I would caution the reader that very little of the book is truly essential to the current discussions on IQ and racism; too much of the conceptual background of the ideas Gould proposed have passed into common discussion to have any real shocking information on that question. The more interesting side of the book, and what is possibly most overlooked, is that Gould uses this highly public and important issue to raise points relating to the way science is done, and the lack of true detachment from the subjects, that can lead to the use of science as a weapon, not a tool to learn.