the mismeasure of man by stephen jay gould

One position that The Mismeasure of Man emphasizes is that science is not an unbiased academic discipline. The scientific method has become the means for discovering facts, but many times errors can occur. The Mismeasure of Man provides a rebuttal to the pseudoscience of the past and present.

At its most extreme case it could lead to genocide. Gould provides a general synopsis of this monograph : “This book ,then is about the abstraction of intelligence as a single entity, its location with in the brain, its quantification as one number for each individual, and the use of numbers to rank people in a single series of worthiness, invariably to find oppressed and disadvantaged groups – races, classes, and sexes – are innately inferior and deserve their status.” The danger with such a body of thought is not only the promotion of falsehood, but the promotion of discrimination and prejudice. These were similar arguments made by pseudosciences such as craniometry, phrenology, the theories of heritable IQ, and eugenics. Affirmative action, welfare, and immigration policies they argued needed to be abandoned, because the problem with struggling groups was genetically and biologically based.

The book argued that there were racial differences in IQ and that no social programs would reduce inequality. The Bell Curve made the argument that human intelligence is the best predictor for success in terms of income, job performance, or standing in society. This book was written by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein in 1994. Gould produced an updated version in 1996 in response to The Bell Curve. There has been a long history of scientific racism that still remains present in both academic circles and the public sphere. Gould uses his knowledge of biology to not only discredit false beliefs, but explains his arguments in a historical context. Stephen Jay Gould was a paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and a historian of science. The Mismeasure of Man is a monograph that challenges the concept of biological determinism and the pseudoscience behind the concept of heritable as well as quantifiable IQ. Documentaries, Lectures, and Interviews.Nintendo87 on Charles Darwin Editorial Carto…

Mac Kubista on Charles Darwin Editorial Carto… GAYNOR John on A Kiowa Mother With Her Child… Rigobert Bonne Map of Southeastern Africa (1770).Robert Koch’s Drawing From The Etiology of Tuberculosis (1882).

The mismeasure of man by stephen jay gould