Review of
The Mismeasure of Man
by: Stephen J Gould
Sarah A. Lechago
Western Michigan University
Main thesis

The books seeks to refute the viewpoint of
biological determinism

Biological determinism: shared behavioral
norms, and the social and economic
differences between human groups (races,
classes, sexes) arise from inherited, inborn
distinctions and that society, is an accurate
reflection of biology
Main theme in biological determinism

The book addresses a main theme in
biological determinism from an historical
perspective:


Worth can be assigned to individuals and
groups by measuring intelligence as a single
quantity
Two major sources of data support this idea
1.
2.
CRANIOMETRY
CERTAIN TYPES OF PSYSCHOLOGICAL
TESTING
Approaches to refuting biological
determinism

Sought to demonstrate 2 main aspects of
biological determinism viewpoint
1.
2.
Scientific weaknesses of studies upon which
these viewpoints were founded
(strengthened)
Political context



Gould asserts that science is NOT an objective
enterprise
Science must be understood as a social
phenomenon
“Science, since people must do it, is a socially
embedded activity.”


This viewpoint is in alignment with Whorf’s view that
language influences the way we attend to and
interpret our environment
Viewpoint is also heavily aligned with Skinner’s
(radical behaviorism) viewpoint that science is
essentially verbal behavior as such, it is socially
constructed

Interestingly, Gould believes that a factual
reality exists and that science can learn about
it – but it does so in a manner that is
influenced by the larger cultural context

This is much like Giere’s views on science which
hold 2 very similar ideas to Gould’s:
1.
2.
That scientists are very much influenced by the larger
cultural context
Perspectival Realism : There is a factual reality out there
that is too complex for scientists to know the whole of, but
they can know 1 real aspect of a phenomenon from their
unique perspective
Two main fallacies

Gould attempts to refute 2 main fallacies
associated with the abstraction of intelligence
as single entity and its location within the brain
1.
2.
Reification - tendency to convert abstract concept
of “intelligence” into a real entity
Ranking – tendency to order complex variation as a
gradual ascending scale – use numbers associated
with skull or intelligence measurement and rank
people accordingly into a series of worthiness
Polygeny and Craniometry before
Darwin

A climate existed which accommodated
findings of craniometry

Thomas Jefferson wrote “I advance it,
therefore, as a suspicion only, that the blacks,
whether originally a distinct race, or made
distinct by time and circumstances, are
inferior to the whites in the endowment both of
body and mind.”
Styles of scientific racism


Monogenism – origin of human being comes
from a single source and are a product of
degeneration from Eden’s perfection. Races
degrade to different degrees – whites the least
and blacks the most
Polygenism – human races were separate
biological species, the descendants of different
Adams

So popular in US it was called American school of
anthropology
Supporters of Polygeny



Popular in the US
Naturalist Agassiz converted to viewpoint when
he moved to the US AFTER his first contact with
black people
Samuel George Morton – dubbed the empiricist
of polygeny

Gathered and measure skulls from all over the world
to test the following hypothesis:

Ranking of races could be established objectively by physical
characteristics of the brain, particularly by its size
Morton’s findings




It is no surprise that Morton’s cranial measurements
supported the status quo of the time – status and access
to power during his time accurately reflected biological
merit (according to Morton and most of the scientific
community)
Gould went back and reanalyzed Morton’s original raw
data
Found that the data were patch worked and fudged to
support biological determinism ( the one that put whites
in an advantage above everyone else)
Interesting point:

Found no evidence of conscious fraud – which suggests a
general conclusion about the social context of science
Social versus Empirical

Brings up the question Godfrey-Smith
brought up of social structure of science s
antithetical to the empirical view of science

The science of the day truly believed
themselves using empirical approach to the
study of racial ranking (skull measurement) –
but clearly they were under the influence of
each other’s findings and the political
ambiance of the time

Mach too supported this social feature of
science in his discussion of the origins of
knowledge


Emphasized that humans’ interactions with their
environment constitute the rudiments of human
knowledge
Scientist do not work independent of their
environment –clearly highlighted in 2 major ways in
Gould’s book:


The sheer popularity of biological determinism within the
scientific community and the culture at large at the time (esp.
in the US)
Agassiz’s radical shift to polygenic view in his move from
Europe to the US
Psychology tried to find its way

Psychology sought to elevate itself to the ranks
of a serious science such as physics



Evolution and the quantification formed the unholy
alliance – the union formed first powerful theory of
“scientific racism”
Numbers have amazing powers to convince.
Theories are built on interpretation of numbers


Gould claimed that the interpreters of these numbers are
trapped by their own rhetoric
Williams and Whorf – also emphasized how our verbal
behavior influences the way in which we separate the world
and understand the world, our viewpoint we bring to bear to
our analyses is influenced by our language
The many different ways numbers were
used to support biological determinism

Francis Galton (1822-1911) –






Darwin’s cousin
Pioneer of modern statistics
Coined term “eugenics” (1883) – advocated
regulation of marriage & family size according to
hereditary endowment of parents
Believed could measure anything – believed socially
embedded behaviors had strong innate components
Engaged in anthropometry – inheritance of
intelligence – measured skulls and bodies
Regarded as leading intellect of his time
More numbers in support of
biological determinism

Robert Bennett Bean – English surgeon
1906 – published book comparing brain of
white and black people
 Compared genu (front part of corpus callosum
where intelligence is) and splenium (back part
where sensorimotor are located)
 Found that whites have larger genu hence
more powerful intellect and blacks a larger
splenuim hence more suited for labor work

Broca’s numbers from his school of
craniometry

Paul Broca (1824-1880)




Professor of clinical surgery
Founded Anthropological Society for Paris (1859)
Believed that larger skulls associated with larger
brains which are associated with greater intelligence
Treated egalitarian scientists harshly b/c they
debased their higher calling as scientists b/c they
allowed ethical hope to cloud their judgment and
distort the “objective” truth
Broca’s findings



Assumed human races could be ranked in linear
scale of mental worth
Originally found whites to have the largest of
brains
But when faced with contradictory data – Asians
had big brains - used criterion differentially
where it would lend support to his a priori
conclusion not only supporting biological
determinism but the superiority of whites above
all other races
Measuring bodies in the name of
biological determinism

Ernst Haeckel – great German zoologist



Proclaimed “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” –
individual climbs his/her own family tree
This was extraordinarily impactful concept to many
scientific fields
It also served as general theory of biological
determinism

If adult blacks and women are like white male children, they
are living representatives of ancestral stage in the evolution
of white males
Recapitulation

Herbert Spencer – supported of social
Darwinism


Stated the intellectual traits of the uncivilized
are traits recurring in the children of civilized
G. Stanley Hall

Claimed higher suicide rated of women as
sign of their primitive evolutionary status
Criminal Anthropology

Lombroso- Italian physician



Established criminal anthropology – theory of innate
criminality
Theory was specific evolutionary theory based on
anthropomorphic data
Can tell a born criminal by his anatomy and even by
some of this social traits such as:
1.
2.

A special language that contains a lot of onomatopoeia –
speak differently b/c they feel differently
Tattooing (WOW!) – reflects the insensitivity of criminals to
pain and atavistic love of adornment
Lombroso’s stigmata were important criteria in many
criminal trials
The Hereditarian Theory of IQ


Binet – interested in intelligence testing as well
but frustrated with what he called “medical”
approach (craniometry etc) and decided on
“psychological” method
He developed the test originally b/c
commissioned to do so by minister of public
education in order to ONLY identify children who
are not succeeding in regular classroom and
therefore provide them with further support
IQ


However, Binet’s test was since taken and
definitely not used for its original purpose – Binet
declined to call IQ a measure of inborn
intelligence
But hereditarians who got a hold of the test used
it as a way to measure “inborn intelligence” and
then rank people accordingly – this affected


Education certain groups of people received
Certain Jobs people were considered for
Intelligence Tested

Misuse of intelligence tests arises from 2
fallacies:
1.
2.
Reification – intelligence is this real, singular
thing a person possesses
Hereditarianism – not simple claim that IQ is
heritable but 2 false implications drawn from
this idea
1.
Equation of “heritable” with “inevitable”
2.
Confusion of within- and between-group heredity
Hereditarianism


Hereditarianism equates “heritable” with
“inevitable”
Gould stated that genes so not make specific
bits and pieces of a body; they code for a
range of forms under an array of
environmental conditions

Midgley and Morris (1992) support this idea in
their paper where they essentially asserted the
notion that the nature nurture is a false
dichotomy. Nothing including “instinct” is
“genetically determined” without environmental
input
Prominent figures in the introduction of
intelligence testing in the US



H.H. Goddard – first popularizer of Binet scale in
America developed “scientific” term moron –
those just under normal intelligence
Lewis M. Terman – mass marketing of the innate
IQ – wanted to sort children to their “proper”
stations in life
R.M. Yerkes – Army Mental Tests – faculty at
Harvard – massive testing with army recruits –
established the superiority of whites over all
others, wealthier over poorer, and certain types
of white Europeans (e.g. Nordic) over other
types of white Europeans (e.g. Mediterraneans)


Boring – applied intelligence test in army with
Yerkes – statistical interpretation of test which
gave whites distinct advantage
C.C Brigham – published (1923) book A Study of
American Intelligence – which became primary
vehicle for translating army results on group
differences into social action

Ability to immigrate in the US – several Jewish
individuals who anticipated the holocaust fled to seek
refuge in the US and were denied on the basis of
assumptions of their “worth” that were assigned to
them by these intelligence tests
The Bell Curve
In 1994 Herrnstein and Murray published:
The bell curve: the reshaping of American
life by difference in intelligence
 In this book, Gould refutes the arguments
put forth by this book

Critique of The Bell Curve

Book was well received at the time it was
published (1994) b/c of the general social
climate of the time – an ungenerous
climate looking to cut social programs and
can very justified in this by the argument
that:

Beneficiaries of these programs can’t really
be helped b/c of inborn cognitive inability
expressed in the form of the IQ
Critique of The Bell Curve

The Bell Curve rests on 2 arguments:
1.
2.
Rehashing Social Darwinism which is
evolutionary argument about biological basis
of human differences
Extends argument for innate cognitive
stratification by social class to a claim for
inherited racial differences in IQ – small
extension for Asian superiority over
Caucasian but large extension for
Caucasian over people of African descent
Critique continued
Central fallacy of Bell Curve: using
substantial heritability of within group IQ is
explanation for average difference
between groups
 The authors in interpreting the results of
IQ tests, omitted facts, misused statistical
methods (see above), and seemed
unwilling to admit the consequences of
their book

Critique continued

The authors were disingenuous with
content
Murray denied race as in subject important in
the book – blamed media for this
 But race was 1 of 2 major themes in the book
and their claims about group differences had
major political impact

Critique continued

Authors were disingenuous about the argument




Book hid behind many complex numbers and figures
The book is very one-dimensional – all the analysis rests upon a
single technique applied to a single set of data
Authors failed to supply any justification for central claim: reality
of the IQ as a number that measures a real property in the head
In one part of the book, the authors essentially state that “…..
you cannot predict what a given person will do from his IQ score”
but in the very next statement they made the strong causal
claim, “We will argue that intelligence itself, not just its
correlation with socioeconomic status, is responsible for these
group differences.”
Take home point




Science is a social endeavor – scientists bring their
cultural values to their analyses
When biological determinism dominates, the
consequences at the scientific, social, and political level
can have a tremendous negative impact
Biological determinism espouses the idea that traits,
especially cognitive abilities are innate and society’s
structure should reflect these natural, biological
differences
Gould conducted a reanalysis of the data collected by
the most prominent scientists past and present, and
demonstrated that these data were collected and
interpreted on shaky scientific/statistical grounds under
the influence of the cultural climate of their times
Take home point




The main point here is that these biological
determinists were the most eminent
thinkers/scientists of their time
They did not purposely commit fraud with the
data they collected
They truly attempted to conduct good science
but were still very much influenced by the
greater cultural context
Skinner was right – science is verbal behavior
and verbal behavior is behavior like any other,
subject to the same environmental influences as
all other behavior