40 pages • 1 hour read
Stephen Jay GouldThe Mismeasure Of Man
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1982A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary: “American Polygeny and Craniometry before Darwin: Blacks and Indians as Separate, Inferior Species”
In Chapter 2, Gould introduces the scientific justification for racial prejudice as biological determinism’s “primary line of attack” (63). He prefaces the chapter by asking whether inductive science led to 19th-century craniometry, or whether a desire to rank intelligence led to the “scientific” questions asked by 19th-century scientists (63).
Gould reports that both renowned scientists and American “culture heroes,” including Georges Cuvier, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln, ascribed to the social convention of ranking races; the only differences lay between “hard liners” who believed biology justified enslavement, and “soft-liners” who believed freedom was not dependent on intelligence (63).
Prior to Darwin’s theory of evolution, the two main rationales for racial ranking rested in monogenism and polygenism. Monogenists (a.k.a. degenerationists) believed that man originated out of Eden and, from there, declined with “whites least and blacks most” (71). Polygenists believed that races were a separate species, and, as such, blacks were a separate form of life.
Gould first introduces the work of Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), a leader in advancing American scientific theories of polygeny. After immigrating to America, Agassiz taught at Harvard and developed a theory whereby modern races of man living in distinct geographic areas met the “biological criteria for separate species” (78). He concluded that the “primitive difference” of races suggested physical labor for blacks, contrasted with intellectual labor for whites (79). While Agassiz was an opponent of slavery, he still believed blacks should be “denied social equality,” warned of the dangers of intermarriage, and advocated for racial segregation (80).
Gould then presents the work of Samuel George Morton (1799-1851), a Philadelphia physician and the first polygenist to publish data ranking racial intelligence based “objectively” on measurements of brain size (83). Morton first filled cranial cavities of skull samples with sifted white mustard seed and measured the volume of the seed after it was poured into a graduated cylinder. Over time, the inconsistency of weight and seed size led Morton to switch to one-eighth inch lead shot BBs, which significantly reduced the rate of measurement error.
Morton published three major works based on his research: the Crania Americana (1839), the Crania Aegyptiaca (1844), and a final catalog of his entire collection (1849). Morton’s published findings matched the commonly-held racial prejudices of the time, with whites at the top, Native Americans in the middle, and blacks on the bottom.
In reexamining Morton’s measurement procedures, calculations, and conclusions, Gould found “no evidence of conscious fraud” (86). However, Gould did find: 1) inclusion or omission of data produced brain size averages that conformed with commonly held racial prejudices, 2) opportunities for subjective measurement with inconsistently-sized mustard seed always confirmed racial prejudices, 3) variations in skull size were always ascribed to intelligence (i.e. variations in skull size based on gender or stature were never statistically accounted for), and 4) all data miscalculations and omissions led to results that upheld racial prejudices.
Gould notes that while “identification of blacks as a separate and unequal species had obvious appeal as an argument for slavery,” due to its secular nature, it was not a popular justification for slavery at the time (101).
Chapter 2 Analysis
Gould’s analysis of Agassiz’s work includes a comprehensive look at his beliefs, which were deeply embedded in the 19th-century understanding of human races as “separate creations” (76). Gould views Agassiz’s conversion to polygeny as one based on personal views and shared peer opinions, rather than scientific objectivity. In quoting extensively from Agassiz’s writings, Gould shows how a leading scientist of his time, who had not actually generated any data to support his claims, wrestled with the idea of categorizing and measuring racial intelligence. After quoting an extensive passage from Agassiz, Gould notes, “I have treated [his] paper in detail because it is so typical of its genre—advocacy of social policy couched as a dispassionate inquiry into scientific fact” (79).
Gould’s argument that unconscious racial biases underlie all of Agassiz’s efforts to rationalize treatment of the races is sustained when reading Agassiz’s recommendation that blacks should be “regulated and limited” and “denied social equality” (80). While Agassiz may have argued that his theories are based in scientific reason, Gould asserts that they are merely the reflection of societal prejudice. In the latter part of his life, Agassiz’s professional standing was crumbling and scientists “began to regard him as a rigid and aging dogmatic”; however, his arguments in favor of racial segregation remained popular (82).
Gould’s treatment of Morton’s work is prefaced with an overview of his notoriety as the “great data-gatherer” of facts that won worldwide respect for an American theory of polygeny (83). His first publications on measurement were widely acclaimed, and with fame came conviction. Morton stopped vacillating on the question of measuring for “mental and moral worth,” and his arguments for action grew increasingly robust: human races are “separate, created species” (84).
If what a scientist has to say is eagerly anticipated because it will confirm beliefs regarding societal norms, what is that scientist’s unconscious reaction to data that does not conform to societal expectation? Gould argues that in the grand scheme of unconscious bias, the reactions are 1) subtle shifts in criteria that favor societal norms, 2) processes that omit inconvenient truths, and 3) miscalculations and convenient manipulations that support a secretly-hoped-for answer. That Morton was considered objective is all the more eye opening in its irony.
