The Mismeasure of Man
Stephen Jay Gould's 1981 history and critique of biological determinism and IQ.
At a glance
Key ideas
Craniometry, Reification, Heritability within, not between …
See all 4Criticism
Morton's skulls, Factor analysis, Propaganda …
See all 4Connections
Also on this page: Key facts · Links · Sources · Related pages
- Gould examines the methods and motives behind biological determinism, the belief that social differences between groups reflect inborn ones.
- He argues that it rests on treating intelligence as a single measurable quantity.
- He criticises craniometry and IQ testing for two fallacies: reification of an abstraction, and ranking people in one series.
- The 1996 second edition added a critique of The Bell Curve.
Why it matters
- It is the best-known critique of scientific racism and of IQ as a single number, and remains contested, especially over its reading of Samuel Morton's skull data.
Key facts
- Author
- Stephen Jay Gould1
- Published
- 19811
- Second edition
- 1996, with two chapters on Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve1
- Awards
- National Book Critics Circle Award; American Educational Research Association Outstanding Book Award (1983)1
- Rankings
- 24th on the Modern Library's list of the best English-language non-fiction of the 20th century (1998); 17th on Discover's greatest science books (2006)1
Key ideas
-
Craniometry1
Morton, Agassiz and Broca let their expectations shape their measurements of skulls.
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Reification1
Turning an abstraction such as IQ or general intelligence into a thing.
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Heritability within, not between1
Heritability inside a group does not explain differences between groups.
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The g factor1
He disputed that one IQ score measures a single general intelligence.
Criticism
-
Morton's skulls1
A 2011 re-measurement by Jason Lewis and colleagues found Morton had not falsified his data; Michael Weisberg (2015) defended most of Gould's case.
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Factor analysis1
John B. Carroll and David Bartholomew said Gould misunderstood or misused factor analysis.
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Propaganda1
Stephen Blinkhorn and Lloyd Humphreys called it political propaganda.
-
Arthur Jensen1
Whom the book criticised, said it used straw men and its own political bias.
Connections
Written by
Links
Sources
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