The Mismeasure of Man

by StephenJayGould (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1997

  $4.24

• Used

  Paperback
  1992

  $3.28

  Can human intelligence be measured? From 19th-century craniometry (literally, the measurement of skulls) to today's vastly sophisticated methods of IQ testing, the author traces the history of scientists' attempts to assess human intelligence. Along the way he tackles the fundamental problems - the very idea of measurement seems reductive, suggesting that biology is destiny - morever as he vividly demonstrates, scientists' theories have too often been dangerous reflections of their own personal motives and racial/class/sexual prejudices. This book examines the fatal flaws in intelligence testing and reaffirms the richness and variety of human potential. This book won the National Book Critics' Circle Award for 1982.

• New

  paperback
  

  $17.89

  When published in 1981, The Mismeasure of Man was immediately hailed as a masterwork, the ringing answer to those who would classify people, rank them according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits. And yet the idea of innate limits-of biology as destiny-dies hard, as witness the attention devoted to The Bell Curve, whose arguments are here so effectively anticipated and thoroughly undermined by Stephen Jay Gould. In this edition Dr. Gould has written a substantial new introduction telling how and why he wrote the book and tracing the subsequent history of the controversy on innateness right through The Bell Curve. Further, he has added five essays on questions of The Bell Curve in particular and on race, racism, and biological determinism in general. These additions strengthen the book's claim to be, as Leo J. Kamin of Princeton University has said, a major contribution toward deflating pseudo-biological 'explanations' of our present social woes.