The Mismeasure Of Man

“We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.”

This quote encapsulates Gould’s deep and personal commitment to debunking an unjust, racist theory that has resulted in lifetimes of denied opportunities.

“Science, since people must do it, is a socially embedded activity.” 

Gould has an interesting take on science, not as an objective exploration of the natural world, but as a uniquely human endeavor that is driven by social contexts, beliefs, feelings, emotions, and relationships.

“But science’s potential as an instrument for identifying the cultural constraints upon it cannot be fully realized until scientists give up the twin myths of objectivity and inexorable march toward truth.” 

While scientists cannot disentangle themselves from the socially-embedded activity of research, they can at least have hope of identifying the cultural constraints they operate under, but only if they give up the myth of scientific truth.

“We inhabit a world of human differences and predilections, but the extrapolation of these facts to theories of rigid limits is ideology.” 

Human uniqueness and diversity is a fact of life; however, these facts become obscured or invisible when diversity of opinion is oppressed by ideology.

“Appeals to reason or to the nature of the universe have been used throughout history to enshrine existing hierarchies as proper and inevitable.” 

Ruling classes use the position of rule to determine the rules.

“The doctrine of polygeny acted as an important agent in this transformation; for it was one of the first theories of largely American origin that own the attention and respect of European scientists—so much so that Europeans referred to polygeny as the ‘American school’ of anthropology.” 

Americans engaged in pursuing craniometry were given their first taste of European validation and respect. It is very possible that the American brand of racism became more exacting and punishing in response to this attention.

“Liars, if discovered, are excommunicated; scientists declare that their profession has properly policed itself, and they return to work, mythology unimpaired, and objectively vindicated. The prevalence of unconscious finagling, on the other hand, suggests a general conclusion about the social context of science.” 

Unconscious biases are all the more wondrous, for they are not faked or imagined, they simply exist and reflect social bias.

“Evolution and quantification formed an unholy alliance; in a sense, their union forged the first powerful theory of ‘scientific’ racism—if we define ‘science’ as many do who misunderstand it most profoundly: as any claim apparently backed by copious numbers.” 

When establishment science justifies what is morally unjustifiable, what results is an establishment racism that becomes all that much harder to disprove.

“Scientific racists and sexists often confine their label of inferiority to a single disadvantaged group; but race, sex, and class go together, and each acts as a surrogate for others.” 

When examining the case of Robert Bean, it is impressive to see how this act of surrogacy in the case of disadvantaged groups is enacted in real time—facts truly do become extraneous and unmoored from reality.

“Prior prejudice, not copious numerical documentation, dictates conclusions.” 

This is a theme that is documented again and again as scientists manage to look at their collected data and inevitably arrive at the same prearranged conclusion (whites on top, blacks on the bottom).

“Many investigators have devoted an extraordinary amount of attention to the subject of group differences in human brain size. They have gotten nowhere, not because there are no answers, but because the answers are so difficult to get and because the a priori convictions are so clear and controlling.” 

In the case of scientific research into questions that are not burdened with human consequence, scientists do manage to generate a range of possible conclusions. However, the question of human intelligence is too fraught for those invested in a particular answer to see a range of answers clearly.

“‘They’re like children’ was no longer just a metaphor of bigotry; it now embodied a theoretical claim that inferior people were literally mired in an ancestral stage of superior groups.” 

Again, once prejudicial beliefs become accepted science, beliefs become fact, and justify all manner of claims or actions.

“Lombroso’s theory was not just a vague proclamation that crime is hereditary—such claims were common enough in his time—but a specific evolutionary theory based upon anthropometric data.”

This supports the idea that racist beliefs are now being bolstered by the most radical, new scientific theories of the day. Now, the theory of stigmata, an old idea of hereditary crime, is given new life.

“We live in a more subtle century, but the basic arguments never seem to change.” 

This speaks to the recent research that supports theories of a genetic, hereditary basis for violent behavior or inheritable intelligence. Once again, the cycle of grouping and ranking people is given new life.

“Binet also fueled his own doubts with an extraordinary study of his own suggestibility, an experiment in the primary theme of this book—the tenacity of unconscious bias and the surprising malleability of “objective,” quantitative data in the interest of a preconceived idea.” 

“Binet also fueled his own doubts with an extraordinary study of his own suggestibility, an experiment in the primary theme of this book—the tenacity of unconscious bias and the surprising malleability of “objective,” quantitative data in the interest of a preconceived idea.” 

“The misuse of mental tests is not inherent in the idea of testing itself.” 

A test is a test; what others decide to do with test results—there is the rub.

“Shakespeare, of humble origin and unknown childhood, would have scored below 100. So Cox simply left him out, even though she included several others with equally inadequate childhood records.” 

Terman and Cox’s project is a very interesting case study, and an example of Gould infusing specific examples with fascinating details.

“Again and again, the data pointed to strong correlations between test scores and environment. Again and again, those who wrote and administered the tests invented tortuous, ad hoc explanations to preserve their hereditarian prejudices.” 

In the case of Yerkes interpretation of data, he, along with his American IQ testing compatriots, possessed an ability to reach conclusions in the face of collected evidence that is, to Gould’s point, fairly astounding.

“The paths to destruction are often indirect, but ideas can be agents as sure as guns and bombs.” 

This speaks to the policies governments and institutions passed as a result of the theories borne out of the hereditarian IQ testing movement in 20th-century America.

“I was taught the technique [of factor analysis] as though it had developed from first principles using pure logic. In fact, virtually all its procedures arose as justifications for particular theories of intelligence.” 

It is interesting that Gould, who built his scientific reputation using factor analysis, would critique inheritable intelligence, which factor analysis was invented to justify.

“We have been unable to escape the philosophical tradition that what we can see and measure in the world is merely the superficial and imperfect representation of an underlying reality.” 

As much as science purports to reveal truth, there is so much more that remains and will continue to remain a mystery unknown to man.

“Factor analysis is a fine descriptive tool; I do not think that it will uncover the elusive (and illusory) factors, or vectors, of mind.” 

Again, this speaks to Gould’s belief that intelligence is not quantifiable, and that factor analysis has been misused in the pursuit of “discovering” factors of the mind.

“If we focus on the objects and seek an explanation for the behavior of each in its own terms, we are lost.”

Gould reminds us again that we cannot explain a behavioral trait like intelligence, and attempts to try to locate its source are doomed not only to failure, but entrapment in a state of delusion.