Principles of Human Evolution - Part 1

The Growth of the Evolutionary Perspective

In an introduction to the study of human evolution it is important to recognize the concept of continuity. Evolution is a continuous process that connects all living organisms. However, there are obvious gaps which exist, highlighting cases of discontinuity. The disparity between humans and other apes is one example of this. Humans are uniquely advanced, and yet are still products of the evolutionary process. This gap has been acknowledged first by Darwin in 1859 and four years later by Thomas Henry Huxley. After two great intellectual revolutions concerning humans place in the world, Copernicus declaring the earth was not in fact the center of the universe and Darwin’s publication of Origin, there waere palpable changes in conceptions of where humans should find themselves. Once thought to be separate from nature, after these revolutions humans could be viewed as being a part of nature. Early perceptions of these relationships were seen as a Great Chain of Being, a hierarchy of living organisms with humans at the progressive end.
Q: Even after 1859, humans were seen as naturally superior. Why didn’t the theory of evolution remove the ideal of the Great Chain of Being? How did perceptions of progress alter explanations of the inequality of races?
Q: Our textbook urges us to “mind the gap” concerning our place in evolutionary biology. What is meant by this metaphor?

Considering the historical views of human evolution, two principle matters have continued to dominate the debates over the years. One factor is how close humans are to other apes. Some have argued that humans and chimps are very close while others would like to emphasize the greater differences. The other factor involves how far back in time human characteristics go. The latter brings up issues of what makes us more human such as bipedalism and intelligence.
During the 1960’s scientists were prominent believers in the single-species hypothesis, stating that only one species of hominin could exist at any one time therefore publicizing the idea that human evolution was a single linear progression. Arguments placed great emphasis on the importance of culture. Because humans are characterized by exhibition of cultural traits, it would be impossible for more than one species to survive together. This hypothesis was dismissed a decade later given the current discoveries of fossils proving the coexistence of both Homo erectus and Australopithecus boisei. There are now two complex questions still under research: the origin of the human lineage and the origin of human characteristics.
Q: How have other arguments over the relationship between humans and apes changed over the last 150 years?

Despite differences in theoretical approaches, anthropologists have kept four key events in mind for explaining the development of modern humans. These include the origins of terrestriality, bipedality, encephalization, and culture and have been placed in various sequences depending on differing schools of thought. An important element of the evolutionary perspective, no matter the sequence, is the way in which this information is disseminated. According to anthropologist Misia Landau, evolutionary explanations have typically followed a narrative form by telling a hero’s story (as explained in the previous post). This is notably reflective of how scientists can be influenced by their biased worldviews concerning natural relationships and humans.
Q: “What binds together the narrative of the folk tale and the narrative of paleoanthropology is that both are events that occur through time, and so attracts the form of explanation where one event is causally related to another.” Rather than using storytelling, what would make for a better evolutionary explanation?

The Principles of Evolutionary Theory

Though the idea of biological transformation had been introduced prior to the publication of The Origin of Species, Darwin was the one able to back up his theory with extensive documentation and explanation. Since then, the theory of evolution has gone though many changes, while even today scientists debate the details.

Simply put, evolution is change over time, and natural selection (the survival of genes from one generation to the next) is the mechanism for this change. For natural selection to occur four conditions must be met. Organisms must reproduce offspring, resemble their parents through inheritance, exhibit variation within the population, and compete successfully for resources. As natural selection operates there are two possible consequences in the outcome. If natural selection stabilizes by favoring existing conditions then adaptation occurs. “The better fitted an individual is to its environment, then the better adapted it is (31).” In order for survival to take place, an organism must have helpful adaptive traits. Conversely, if natural selection needs to change into a new mutant form, then evolution occurs. Evolution is basically the change in generational gene frequencies.

Despite this simplicity, arguments arise in evolutionary explanation. This may be due to researchers asking different kinds of questions. Typical explanations for evolutionary events may include factors of conditions, causes, constraints, or consequences, the “four C’s of evolution.”
Q: Why are there different types of evolutionary explanation? How does each approach explain evolution differently?

Darwin’s original concepts included descent with modification coupled with natural selection. Demonstrating how natural selection occurred was not fully explained until the 1930’s, however. At this time new theories developed known as Neo-Darwinism, or Modern Synthesis. This model incorporated Mendelian genetics with a fuller understanding of inheritance. In the 1860’s Gregor Mendel discovered the basic workings of genes by experimenting on pea plants. He was able to conclude that physical traits carry genes that are passed down to subsequent generations intact (without blending). It soon became apparent that phenotypes are influenced by several genes depending on which ones are dominant or recessive, though “no simple relationship exists between a mutation and the degree of phenotypic change it might produce (39).”
Q: What are the foundational differences between Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism? How have new understandings of population genetics changed evolutionary theory?

Other aspects of selection also occur. “Where natural selection adapts an organism for survival in its environment, sexual selection adapts it to the needs of obtaining a mate (42).” This can be seen at the individual level as species selfishly compete among themselves in order to reproduce. However, altruism can arguably exist as well when animals are seen to work for others giving up their own chances at mating. Selection is therefore present at the group level allowing for the social group to succeed rather than the individual. Different levels have demonstrated how we have advanced our understandings of the workings of adaptation.
Q: What are other levels of selection seen in nature?

Pattern and Process in Evolution

This chapter addresses modern debates in evolutionary theory, most notably the question of whether natural selection explains all aspects of change or whether there are other possible mechanisms at work. Basically, how do we explain change? In order to study the patterns of change, it is relevant to comprehend speciation. Given the multiple definitions of a species, due to the complexity of explaining continuity over time and the demarcation of where one species starts and the next begins, it is important to know how a new species arises. One explanation is anagenesis, which occurs through evolution of one species slowly over time. A new species arises when the descendants become so different they no longer resemble the original organism. Another possibility is cladogenesis. This occurs when a species becomes isolated and evolves separately on its own in accordance to the environment it is subjected to. Islands, mountain ranges, and oceans are all barriers which may split species. Because smaller populations have less variation, they are susceptible to faster changes. The latter event is known to create adaptive radiation, the branching that occurs after an evolutionary novelty like feathered flight or bipedalism.

The aforementioned Neo-Darwinian theory sees speciation at the micro-level, basically that natural selection is a slow gradual process of change over time. The gap in the fossil record, the fact that few transitional forms have been found, has led to more recent macro-level explanations for change. The punctuated equilibrium theory proposed in part by our favorite paleontologist Steven Jay Gould would disagree with gradualism stating that species remain relatively constant over long periods of time and when change comes it happens very fast. What is of interest within macroevolution theories is the study of trends within groups of species such the increase of brain size during human evolution. Within this theoretical framework lies the concept of species selection; due to static species over time traits must evolve in a direction within the clade and not the individual species. Extinction is most likely to occur for species with unique environments and low adaptation capabilities, and selection could be happening at the group level. All debates about evolutionary patterning are imperative for understanding “the context in which human evolution must be assessed and explained (55).” What is agreed upon is that linear progression did not occur and the tree of life is very bushy for each species.
Q: Would you rather argue for gradualism or punctuated equilibrium?

Another important element when studying evolutionary theory involves looking at what influences change. Three motives have been recognized, the first being inherited factors of a lineage, second concerning the interactions between species and groups (competition), and thirdly the natural environment. The second point, “biotic context” is interesting when it implies that change can exist purely based on behavior.
Q: Can evolution occur without environmental factors? Can you give examples of struggle among groups and within species that could lead to change?

Environment, it can agreed upon, does influence the survival of organisms. Cladogenesis may take place through either topographic or climatic alterations, both of which are effected by plate tectonics. The environment shifts constantly due to the fluidity of the earth’s crust and the plates that it rests upon. Due to this fluctuation landmasses have become isolated along with the plants and animals dependant of its resources. Either organisms evolve or they die out and become extinct. Plate tectonics have been a major justification for the explanation of species’ origins. Because of the barriers they create there are greater chances for the diversity of life. This has led to the habitat hypothesis stating “species’ response to climate change represent the principal engine of evolutionary change (65).” Evolutionary geography models have also changed over time becoming much more complex.
Q: How may climate change and habitat have affected hominin evolution?
Q: According to the Turnover-Pulse hypothesis, because environmental factors are so important, is it possible for a major climatic event to cause change across multiple species?

Another pattern worth pursuing is how much of a role extinction plays in evolution. Now seen as an important part of the process, it tends to be linked with environmental change. After the Cambrian explosion, close to 30 billion species have evolved on earth. With only 30 million in existence today it is clear that extinction is important to study. At one time catastrophism was the popular worldview thinking that “individual events that wiped out all of existing life, setting the stage for new waves of creation (75),” was the reasoning. Charles Lyell, however, argued for uniformitarianism, believing instead that slow forces were at work over long periods of time. Though the latter won out the debates, it is still clear that catastrophes must have occurred given geological evidence (extinction of the dinosaurs). It may be beneficial to view extinction as a combination of bad luck and selection when determining why some species survive and others do not.
Q: What attributes could help a species chance of surviving?
Q: Why should the study of mass extinction be a significant factor in the study of evolution?

The Geological Context

In looking at human evolution most evidence is found in the geological record. Therefore a firm understanding of earth science is also required. In conjunction with this is the need to establish accurate dating methods. Without dates much of what is found is irrelevant in search for answers about our human past. For fossils, direct dating methods on the material itself do not exist and employing other modes for finding out how old something is is possible. Scientists use both relative and absolute dating techniques in this quest, which we have discussed in the previous class.

Human history rests on sources from fossil and archaeological contexts. Taphonomy, which studies the intricacies of burial and fossil formations, tells us that many deposits are difficult to interpret due to multifarious interruptions such as scavenger raids. Typically, the only bones to remain intact are the strongest ones like jawbones and teeth. What is most important is that the remains be buried as soon as possible. This raises the chances that a specimen might be fossilized (transformation into the lithosphere) and discovered later. Taphonomists have identified most remains as a result of shifting water from rivers and lakebeds and have even located bones in ancient caves.
Much debate revolves around whether deposits result from human, animal, or geological activity. Cut marks on bones may imply carnivorous activity, scavenger commotion, trampling from later herds, or stone tool use. However difficult it may be, taphonomic approaches are crucial to understanding environment, diet, and even culture thousands of years ago.
Q: What other examples are there in distinguishing human behavior from animal activity in the fossil and archaeological record?

Myths, Narratives, and Folk Tales in Human Evolution

Misia Landau's 1991 book Narratives of Human Evolution had a major impact on the way we think about the science of paleoanthropology. She surveyed the early professional literature on human evolution with particular reference to changing ideas and evolutionary scenarios presented to explain the origin of the hominids, and what she found was unexpected and surprising. Most accounts of human origins included the same four events: bipedality, terrestriality, encephalization, and culture. Where these accounts differed was in the order in which they were said to have occurred, and the relative importance accorded them by different authors. At a deeper level, Landau suggested that all of these stories of human evolution followed the same narrative structure in which a protagonist is challenged and eventually triumphs against all odds. Using Vladimir Propp's classic Morphology of the Folk Tale as her guide, Landau persuasively argues for an essential similarity between the hero tale in much of the world's folk literature (as developed by Propp) and the evolutionary stories that professional anthropologists have long told about human origins. We learn that the hero is us.
What does it mean to say that anthropologists have been telling stories about human evolution? And in particular, that they have been telling the same story over and over, with the actual details changed from one version to another, but the essential elements of the story being essentially the same? Can we still claim to be doing "science" when what we write even in oiur profressional literature looks like "folk tales"? Let's discuss this in class today.

Critique of The Bell Curve; Three Centuries' Perspectives on Race and Racism

Critique of The Bell Curve

Gould starts his critique of The Bell Curve by stating it “contains no new arguments and presents no compelling data to support its anachronistic social Darwinism” and that it more reflects the “depressing temper of our time” (pg. 367). He is thus attributing the argument put forth in The Bell Curve falls into the same biological deterministic fallacy as his entire book Mismeasure of Man seeks to expose and eradicate.

The first half of Herrnstein and Murray’s book rehashes the 19^th century argument of social Darwinism by arguing that intelligence, depicted by a single number through IQ tests, puts groups of people in a hierarchical linear order based on their genetic inheritance of intelligence. Class-based and racially stratified society is ‘scientifically’ normalized by this old logic because of the faith in the objective truth of IQ testing. Thus, it is Lewis M. Terman’s argument modernized and therefore the argument of The Bell Curve fails because its basic premises are false.

The second half of the book then analyzes the “central fallacy in using the substantial heritability of within group IQ … as an explanation for average differences between groups” (pg. 369). Gould is reusing the same argument posed in his book against the belief in difference through irrevocable genetics – this time against Herrnstein and Murray and their ‘pervasive disingenuousness’ of omitting facts, misuse of statistical methodology, and the unwillingness to admit the consequences of their own study.

Disingenuousness of Content:

Gould fights Herrnstein’s assertion that “what we hope will be our contribution to the discussion [of genetically based difference in intelligence] … [is that] The answer doesn’t much matter” (pg. 370) by showing the disingenuousness of such a statement when the known political ramifications in our society has been shown through studies just like this and the historical social response. Therefore, the supposed objective stance by just ‘stating the statistics’ is not just ignorance but complete disingenuousness of content.

Disingenuousness of Argument:

Gould here analyzes the scientism of the supposed statistical truths behind The Bell Curve and reviewers at the time ignorantly suspecting fallacies of argument, but not checking the actual statistics. Gould argues instead how one-dimensional the book actually is because it ignores the history of such a contentious subject. The bulk of the Herrnstein and Murray’s analysis (‘done in one computer-run’ (pg 371)) deals with multiple regression as a statistical technique and National Longitudinal Survey of Youth as the information source. Therefore, Gould argues that reviewers could have picked up on the errors of Herrnstein and Murray if they were not ‘frightened by numbers’ because the fallacies of argument come in two categories: omissions and confusions; and content.

Omissions and Confusions: Gould cites Herrnstein and Murray’s claim that the general factor of intelligence (spearman’s g) has been decided as the first failure of the study, which angers Gould because of how contentious this subject is with the author’s reporting it as a fact. The way they get away with it is by not explaining factor analysis, which leads Gould to ask: “how can authors base an eight-hundred-page book on a claim for the reality of IQ as measuring a genuine, and largely genetic, general cognitive ability – and then hardly mention, either pro or con, the theoretical basis for their certainty?” (pg 372). By using the same argument posed in Chapter 6 of his book, he shows how using factor analysis (and the people that have used factor analysis such as Spearman and Thurstone) is the only way to explain multiple regression, and by obfuscating this analysis they completely miss a central concept that can be refuted.

Secondly, Gould shows how cultural bias through the technical meaning of statistical bias (S-Bias) and vernacular bias (V-Bias), the entirely different concept that causes popular debate. S-bias means, “that the same score, when achieved by members of different groups, predicts the same consequence”, but V-bias is based on popular questioning and interpretation of the S-Bias, which is said not to exist. Therefore, cultural bias comes out of the interpretation of neutral statistics and the social problems it creates are extensive, to say the least.

Content: Gould analyzes how the authors graph their data of IQ and parental socioeconomic status based solely on the form of relationships through plotting only the regression curve without showing the variation around the curve – therefore showing nothing about the strength of the relationship that variation will either support or not support. It is because their relationships are weak, Gould analyzes, that Herrnstein and Murray hide their data – even going so far as to hide the goodness of fit for multiple regressions in Appendix 4 of the book because their relationships are so weak (to which Gould analyzes their correlation coefficients to find very low causal relationships – indeed not a coincidence).

Disingenuousness of Program:

Gould asserts that The Bell Curve is a manifesto of conservative ideology, to which the notion of ‘advocacy above all’ attempts to cover up its massive flaws in data. The second to last chapter proves this by providing a conservative apocalyptic vision of society wherein the lowly intelligent underclass is taken care of by the ‘custodial state’, making the higher class, higher IQ public have to take care of their inferior lower class. The last chapter then is a conservative call for ‘the good old days’ where higher class, higher IQ people have their roles use their high intelligence, while the lower class is used to maintain society through more menial tasks – all covering up the obvious historical inequality of the class-based system for the benefit of appealing to upper-middle class values.

Here, Gould evokes chapter 7 of his book to expose the fallacy of g as a single, innate, but reified ‘thing’ to be the basis for our understanding of intelligence; to which he (quite poetically) adds: “how strange that we would let a single false number divide us, when evolution has united all people in the recency of our common ancestry – thus undergirding with a shared humanity that infinite variety which custom can never stale. E pluribus unum.” (pg. 378)

Questions:

-Gould addresses at length the disingenuousness of Herrnstein and Murray’s argument, to which they simply argue ‘these are the facts, we didn’t make them, we don’t interpret them, we just report them’. How does this get culturally produced? And, what is so dangerous about this?

-Don’t Herrnstein and Murray’s last two chapters refute their central claim of ‘just reporting the facts’?

-Everyone knows the ‘I’m not a racist’ argument of ‘I have a bunch of black friends’. How is this fallacious argument like Herrnstein and Murray’s?

-What are modern examples of biological determinist arguments?

Ghosts of Bell Curves Past:

The second part of Gould’s critique of The Bell Curve deals with the historical nature of the biodeterminist belief in the ordering of the races by intelligence. Gould here analyzes Gobineau’s 19^th century writings and the relation to the argument formed by Herrnstein and Murray in 1994. Where Gobineau’s overt racism aligned the fate of civilizations being determined by racial composition, with decline attributed to the ‘dilution of pure stocks by interbreeding’ (pg. 380), the argument posed in The Bell Curve poses the same argument with a different technological and methodological approach in the modern age of factor analysis supporting a priori assumptions. This links Gobinist thought, through the measure of bodies in the late 19^th century, to the hereditary studies of IQ testing of the modern era.

Gould then gives us The Mismeasure of Man in a nutshell: that the ‘Gobinist’ version of mental testing that argues for an innate intelligence generalized across human groups relies on four interrelated premises. Any one premise deemed false and the whole scientific enterprise of biological determinism is ruined:

1. Intelligence rests upon a single factor of intellectual capacity, or g.

2. The amount of intelligence of every individual can be reduced to a single number, or IQ.

3. The single number measures an inborn quality of genetic makeup, which is highly heritable from generation to generation.

4. An individual’s IQ is stable, permanent, and subject to little change through social intervention or education.

Therefore, because Herrnstein and Murray commit all of these false premises, Gould’s argument throughout Mismeasure makes The Bell Curve just another example of biological determinism as an extension of a culturally biased Gobinist study.

Gould ends his critique with a 1994 Newsweek article about a Bronx high school committed to providing high educational standards to disadvantaged students. Gould is hopeful but distressed when the writers use the positive statistics that the high school has provided by their programs as defiance to ‘Darwinism’. This shows, much to Gould’s chagrin, how the writer’s misnomer of Darwin (in place of what they think to be ‘biology’ in terms of fixed genetic limits) symbolizes our social ignorance on many levels of the gains in evolutionary biology.

Questions:

- Dealing with the Newsweek article, is misinterpretation and misinformation still a problem for evolutionary biology? Or, have Gould’s arguments been placed in the realm of popular, factual discourse? (This is admittedly a red herring, but I think it brings up some good points.)

Three Centuries’ Perspectives on Race and Racism

Age-Old Fallacies of Thinking and Stinking

The first part of Gould’s article deals with the 17^th century writings of the English writer Sir Thomas Browne, who refuted (at length) popular misconceptions of the day, much as science does to expose truths out of popular myth. Particularly, Browne is interested in the common 17^th century notion that Jews, as a racial group, stink. Gould uses this example to refer to what he calls ‘surrogacy’, or, how certain popular claims – from Jews stinking to Blacks being unintelligent – act as surrogates for the same kind of fallacious logic. He refers to the form of argument always being the same, being ‘permeated by identical fallacies over the centuries” (pg. 397).

Here he makes the connection to the arguments posed in The Bell Curve of how peoples from African descent on average have less intelligence than every other group in the world. He ties this to the gains in the fields of paleoanthropology and human genetics, where various findings are pointing to the fact that Homo sapiens emerged from Homo erectus in Africa, then spread out to the rest of the world; or the out-of-Africa view. Specifically, Homo sapiens did not migrate out of Africa until 112,000 to 280,000 years ago, with evidence pointing closer to 112,000 years ago. So, non-African racial diversity has happened only over the last 100,000 years or so, with Homo sapiens having lived exclusively in Africa for a much longer time. This is supported by the fact that people of African descent have more genetic variation between each other than the rest of the supposedly ‘non-African world’ has combined.

Racial Geometry

The second part of Gould’s article deals with the 18^th century scientist J.F. Blumenbach and his taxonomic system of dividing humans into five groups or ‘varities’: Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay. These groups were defined by geographic location and appearance and they replaced the four divisions that Blumenbach’s mentor Linnaeus had devised (Americanus, Europeus, Asiaticus, and Afer). The switch by Blumenbach, Gould analyzes, was his attempt to order humans subjectively on putative worth, with Caucasians on top due to their physical beauty. The name ‘Caucasian’ itself derives from Blumenbach’s belief that the mountain range in Russia is where the people are most aesthetically beautiful and therefore where Caucasians originated.

This leads Gould to concede that he does not believe Blumenbach was being overtly racist in his geometric rankings -- in fact he believes Blumenbach to be the least racist and most egalitarian of the enlightenment age – but his taxonomy is based on societal beliefs influencing him at the time. In Gould’s words: “When scientists adopt the myth that theories arise solely from observation, and do not scrutinize the personal and social influences emerging from their own psyches, they not only miss the causes of their changed opinions, but may also fail to comprehend the deep and pervasive mental shift encoded by their own new theory” (pg 406).

Therefore, his model of Homo sapiens separating into different groups ‘degenerating’ from their perfect state of those from the Caucus Mountains to two symmetrical lines of racial categories, must be taken into context of the influence of his time on his own theories (of which is a major theme of Mismeasure) – that way we can see how in books like The Bell Curve how the society influences what is supposed to be scientifically objective, but just a product of the times.

The Moral State of Tahiti – and of Darwin

The last part of Gould’s article explores Darwin’s writings and its reflection of paternalism as popular sentiment at the time of his writing. Gould analyzes Darwin’s first published writing “The Moral State of Tahiti” co-authored with Robert FitzRoy, his colleague on The Beagle. The article was written in response to the Russian explorer Otto von Kotzebue’s argument that Christian missionaries were destroying native cultures by doing more harm than good. Darwin and FitzRoy countered with their paternalistic interpretations of the Tahitian people and how Christianity has made them better people from their savage beginnings.

By today’s standards, this is an ethnocentric, racist argument, but as Gould argues, Darwin was writing from the paternalistic nature of the society that he grew up in. Darwin goes on to write even in his mature years based on the same belief in a “hierarchy of cultural advance, with white Europeans on top and natives of different colors on the bottom” (pg 416). He particularly despised the Fuegians of South America and wrote at length of the superiority of men over women. But, as Gould states “Darwin was a meliorist in the paternalistic tradition, not a believer in biologically fixed and ineradicable inequality” (pg 419). Therefore, because Darwin believed in improvement in mankind, from ‘savagery’ to ‘civilization’, Gould argues that without this belief – no matter how racist, sexist, and ethnocentric his paternalism is by today’s standards – Darwin would have “lost his date with history” (pg 420). In addition, it was his paternalistic morality that led him to be a fervent abolitionist and advocate of human rights, by believing in the equality of man – even if it did mean despising certain racial and ethnic groups – but it goes along with Gould’s argument all along, how society’s beliefs and standards influence our biases and practices.

Gould ends with an anthropological call-to-arms of the pluralistic study of cultural diversity in the face of conservative cynicism of leftist ‘political-correctness’ (finely showcasing his Marxist humanistic influences) in the goal of countering Darwin’s most famous line: “If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin” (pg 424).

Questions:

-These three sections of the article deal with Gould’s argument of scientific logic being a product of their times, what are modern examples of this? Or, how is the scientific process dismantling popular logic?

-What do you think of Gould’s argument that Darwin’s British paternalistic thought processes as a rather fortunate timely logic for the creation of evolutionary biology? Where does this place human agency?

Links:

American Psychological Association's response to The Bell Curve: http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/siegle/research/Correlation/Intelligence.pdf

Charles Murray's 2005 article The Inequality Taboo: http://www.bible-researcher.com/murray1.html

Wikipedia Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve

Gould: A Positive Conclusion and Swift Debunking

Gould: A Positive Conclusion and a Swift Debunking

Throughout The Mismeasure of Man, Gould has examined several key contributors to a recurring theme of biological determinism. Gould was able to expose the fallacies, errors, and fraud that key figures in “science” utilized as the basis for their theories on race and intelligence as being something that could be inherited, reified, and ranked. Gould (p.351) suggests that the concept of unilinear progress is not only a determining factor of social rankings; it is also suggestive of an incorrect idea of the development of science. Gould uses the metaphor of science as a barrel of accumulating knowledge to explain how science develops. He indicates that some would view debunking as negative because it would only eject a few rotten apples (bad theories) from this barrel. Gould disagrees by explaining that the barrel is constantly at capacity, and the rotten apple must be discarded in order to create space for better apples. Gould Specifies (p.352):

Scientists do not debunk only to cleanse and purge. They refute older ideas in the light of a different view about the nature of things.

It is this perpetual development, debunking, reinvention, and at times revitalization within science that generates new ideas and theories, but in order for the debunking to have a long-term effect it must, as Gould points out (p.352), utilize more competent biology to remove erroneous ideas rooted in social prejudice. Due to the increase of knowledge about human biology, evolution, and genetics, biological determinism has suffered several defeats in theoretical fundamentals supporting it. Gould (p.352) argues that the significant lack of genetic variation among human populations is one of the primary biological principles for dispelling biological determinism; this variation is a contingent reality in evolutionary history.

Is the human species at a point where we can make arguments of “fact” regarding sciences such as biology, or are we just perpetuating the debunking machine by replacing more rotten apples with better ones? Debunking has been a common occurrence throughout history. Most likely there have been ideas that were discredited without the support of knowledge. What if Mendel’s ideas were tossed out? Would it be inevitable that eventually someone would have discovered inheritance?

On Biology and Human Nature

Humans are inevitably a part of nature. The complex system of organization that makes up the human organism operates on the same principles of life as do other forms. Do we maintain uniqueness if we share our biological systems? Gould (p.354) states that human novelty has had an immense impact upon the earth because of the new kind of evolution, or the adaptation humans have exploited: culture. The brain is where this special and peculiar ability resides. Has cultural evolution been the “smoking gun” of how the species has managed a strangle hold on the world? An Australopithecine might disagree, but a shotgun trumps an Oldowan chopper, right?

All the advancements and transformations have occurred at a higher frequency in the shortest amount of time in history (written or geologic). Gould (p.355) argues that cultural evolution can happen at such an accelerated rate because it operates by the inheritance of acquired traits. Biological evolution occurs at a much slower rate. Another important trait of cultural evolution is that it is reversible where biological evolution is not.

The classical arguments of biological determinism in what we have scrutinized fail as a result of them being founded within products of cultural evolution. In other words, biological determinism has not foundational basis because they are measuring socio-cultural bias and not biological traits. As a result in the advancements in science, the very biological basis of the human species extinguishes the arguments of biological determinism. Gould describes that the inheritance and modification of acquired behavior is more effective than biological evolution in relationship to the human organism. Do you agree with that assumption or has too little time of a grander scale gone by? It is easy to assume that cultural evolution is what allows us to be somehow unique and more advanced than the chimpanzee. Have we developed beyond our means?

Gould (p.357) believes that modern biology has created a model that straddles the claim that biology has nothing to educate us about human behavior and the theory that specific behavioral traits are a result of the selective adaptations that are embedded with our genes. Gould also provides 2 major areas for biological comprehension.The first is in fruitful analogies and the limited use thereof. Gould describes the use of analogies as a means of inferring genetic similarity as one of the most frequent errors of reasoning. Just as a correlation in factor analysis may expose common relationships, but it doesn’t identify and explain the cause.The second is biological potentiality versus biological determinism. Biological potentiality is the concept that underlying generating rules are what perpetuate human behavior and not the deterministic idea that the genetic basis of human nature exists among specific behaviors. Gould (p.359) points out that sociobiologists have made a primary error seeking the genetic basis of human behavior at the wrong level.

Two different arguments have led Gould to determine that broad behavioral ranges occur as a consequence of the evolution and structure of the human brain. The first argument relies on the vast range of human behavior from peaceful to aggressive. Human behavior is malleable based on the context of the situation. Gould (p.361) believes that is likely that natural selection acted to maximize the range of human behavior. The second argument is that the structural design of our brain has led to our increased capacities for human success.

Gould invokes the idea of neoteny to close his chapter. Is flexibility within the human species really the hallmark of human evolution? By retaining a more juvenile capacity to adapt and learn, has the human species found a niche in not evolving? Is the structure of our brain a product of a lengthy biological journey, or is it a rapidly advancing adaptation generated by culture within the biological range of variation? Can culture really act as an agent of change at a level that rivals biology?

Links-

Gould on Human Nature

http://condor.depaul.edu/~mfiddler/hyphen/gould-humanature.htm

Burt, Spearman, Thurstone, and Factor Analysis

Cyril Burt, Spearman, Thurstone, and Factor Analysis

Gould’s chapter on Cyril Burt commences by briefly outlining four instances of fraud committed by Cyril Burt during his career. These instances included multiple occurrences of data fabrication on identical twins, I.Q. correlations in kinship, intelligence decline in Britain, and most peculiarly, attempting to establish himself as the creator of the technique which is the focus of this chapter: factor analysis. Although Burt’s fraud was apparently a result of the actions of a mentally-ill individual (p.266), Gould (p.269) calls some of the later acts of fraud “the afterthought of a defeated man. Regardless of his later problems, Burt’s earlier errors immensely affected twentieth century society.

Factor analysis is considered the most important technique in modern multivariate statistics and was developed by Burt’s predecessor and mentor, Charles Spearman. Spearman was a distinguished psychologist and statistician who began to study correlations between mental tests. Spearman believed that some simpler structure may be responsible for the positive correlations in the mental testing. Spearman (p.286) defines two possibilities to the underlying structures. The first option is that the positive correlations might be reduced to a small set of nonaligned aspects. The second explanation is that the correlations may be reduced to a single, general factor, or a cause. Spearman defines the former as oligarchic, and the latter as monarchic. In addition, he also identifies a residual variance, or anarchic component that represents information that is peculiar to each test and unrelated to any other test. This residual information and the idea of a single general factor comprise his “two-factor theory” which becomes a key object of analysis and discussion for Burt, Spearman, and the American L.L. Thurstone.

Factor Analysis and Correlation

Factor analysis is a method of inquiry with a theoretical abstract foundation designed to reveal any basal structures within groups of data. Gould (p.268) explains that it is a “bitch” to work with. It is also described as a device for determining the tangible framework of intellect which has been initially founded on cognitive errors. Factor analysis is also a mathematical means of shrinking an intricate system of correlation into fewer dimensions.

Correlation comes in the following mathematical flavors:

Positive correlation- In a mathematical equation the combined tendency to change in the same direction of up to +1 is considered positively correlated. The closer the numeric value is to +1 the stronger the correlation.

Negative correlation- The combined tendency of a measurement to change in opposite directions up to a value of -1. The closer the value to -1 the stronger the negative correlation.

Zero correlation- The value for having no correlation is 0.

The correlation coefficient, which is symbolized by r, measures the form of an ellipse of plotted points in a graph. The more elongated the ellipse, the stronger the correlation between measurements.

Problems with correlation

One of the fundamental problems with correlation is how it may be used to create false causality. The fact of correlation does not indicate that there is an underlying cause to the correlation. Gould points out that in fact the majority of correlations in our reality are of the noncausal variety. He (p.272) declares that the wrong idea of correlation and causality is most like among the two or three most detrimental and standard errors of human reasoning.

What are the other crucial errors of human reasoning? Some statisticians still believe in the causality influence in factor analysis. If there is correlation, is there an apparent underlying cause that can be identified without further information? What do you think a statistician who believes in causality would use to support his argument?

Principal Components

In factor analysis, factoring occurs much like it does in algebra; the equation is simplified by the removal of common multipliers. In the case of factor analysis, this is geometrically represented by placing axes through the ellipsoid of the matrix. This main axis line recovers the greatest amount of information. This line is called the first principal component. Additional axes are required to capture the remaining information. This is accomplished by placing an additional perpendicular line that resolves more remaining information than any other perpendicular line related to the first principal component. This line is called the second principal component.

Two-factor Theory and Spearman’s g

Charles Spearman developed factor analysis and his two-factor theory as a procedure to discover whether the variance in a matrix of correlation coefficients could be reduced to a single general factor or to numerous individual group factors (p.287). For Spearman’s purposes, he determined that there was only a single or monarchic general factor which is known as Spearman’s g in two-factor theory. Spearman’s g is the first principal component of correlation of mental tests.

In addition to g, Spearman also identifies s as a residual variance that is unique to each individual test. These principal and residual components would be combined with his theory of general energy and specific engines to provide a framework for the heritability of g. Spearman’s theory can be simply described as the general energy (g) of the brain works and activates a set of specific mental engines with a specific location. The more general energy there is the more intelligent a person is. A person’s intelligence is now defined by the general energy that is a result of an individual’s inborn structure.

In Spearman’s defense, Gould (p.302) argues that Spearman held conventional views on intelligence and was not an architect of heredetarian theory. In rebuttal, Gould (p.300) does indicate some of Spearman’s primary claims are synonymous with most heredetarian beliefs:

Assertion 1- Intelligence is a unitary “thing.”

Assertion 2- The inference of a physical substrate for intelligence.

Cyril Burt’s Uncomprimising hereditarianism.

Cyril Burt utilized factor analysis to argue for innate intelligence. In addition, he believed that class differentiation was a result of innate intelligence. Gould (p.304) describes Burt’s proof as scant and superficial data that relied on circular reasoning.

Regardless, Burt was able to devise a two-part position that he stuck by throughout his career:

Assertion 1- Intelligence is a general factor that is largely, if not entirely inherited.

Assertion 2- Intelligence is a reified factor; it is an abstract concept transformed to a

“thing.”

Burt set out 3 goals for himself in his 1909 paper (which he cited as proof of innate intelligence):

Goal #1- to determine if general intelligence can be detected and measured.

Goal #2- to determine if the nature of general intelligence can be isolated and analyzed

for meaning.

Goal #3- Whether the development of intelligence is a result of the environment and

individual acquisition, or dependent on inheritance.

Burt enacted an experiment that included a study of 86 boys of varying education and class to demonstrate hereditary intelligence. He then administered 12 tests of cognitive function in addition to ranking boys from the input of expert observers. Burt used his results to form an argument against environmental influence. Two fundamental flaws in his argument reside in his experiment design and in his statistics. Given the low sample size of his population (n=86) and the use of a subjective and biased ranking system, Burt’s arguments for heredity in this experiment should be nullified. This seems to be a common attribute of all of the hereditarianists we have studied thus far.

Burt was able to expand on Spearman’s approach by creating an inverted technique, and an expansion of Spearman’s two-factor theory. Burt created an inversion of factor analysis that he called Q-mode analysis. This analysis was based on correlation between people instead of tests. He developed this type analysis based on his interest in finding the relationship among individuals in a unilinear ranking system based on inherited mental value (p.323). As a result, Burt’s work helped perpetuate the major political victory in Britain of heredetarian theories of mental testing (p.323). Gould describes the 11+ examination equivalent to the impact of the Immigration restriction Act of 1924. As a result of these tests, eighty percent of the pupils were regarded as unfit for higher education.

Given the impact of such a test and the knowledge of the fallacies of data and method, what new “heredetarian” approaches are visible in American society today? Are there any covert approaches?

Burt also expanded Spearman’s two-factor theory to incorporate group factory by which he identified through studying not the primary component, but by focusing on the secondary and subsequent principal components. The basis is that the primary principal component must run between and not through the sub clusters that are formed from these lesser principal components. Burt’s theory became a four-factor theory in comparison to Spearman’s two-factor theory. The extra two factors are group factors and accidental factors. Accidental factors are a single trait measured on a single occasion.

Thurstone and Rotation of Axes

L. L. Thurstone was the American equivalent to Spearman and Burt. Thurstone fell into the same reification trap by discrediting Spearman’s g because it wasn’t real enough (p.326). Thurstone believed that both Spearman and Burt failed to identify the true vectors of the mind because it placed factor axes in the wrong geometrical location because of the first principal component of g. One of the problems that he points out is the negative projection of some of the data. If a factor is representative of a true vector, it would either be present or not. Therefore, there should only be a positive value, or correlation, or zero value.

In addition to the bipolar problem, Spearman’s g presents a problem for Thurstone because it was supposed to be an all-encompassing grand average, but its position is dependent on subjective test selections and shifts from one test to another (p.327). Thurston constructs a solution designed to resolve the negative qualities as well as the “g” problem. Thurston takes the calculations of the Spearman-Burt principal components and rotates them until they reside near actual clusters of vectors. The result, which he calls simple structure, provides an equivalent, not better, solution in factor analysis. What this did not solve is the problem that includes all of the aforementioned historical characters; reification emanates from their perceptions.

Although this is a very condensed and stripped-down account of Gould’s chapter on factor analysis, several key points can be extracted:

• Factor analysis can be an effective tool for the interpretation of data, but not as a means of determining causality from a correlation model unless there is more empirical data to support a causal relationship[.



• Spearman, Burt, and Thurstone’s approach to human intelligence is fundamentally flawed because it asserts reification; human intelligence is a physical and quantifiable trait. Reification brings concepts out of the abstract and into the real world.



• Spearman, Burt, and Thurstone also operate within the confines of hereditarianism, believing that human intelligence exists mainly in the realm of the innate. They also provided a unilinear scale to create and rank human beings based on this innate intelligence.



• Gould’s book has indicated that history is often cyclical. This is best represented by the heredetarian basis and how it has reappeared under different guises over time.

The concept of factor analysis has many applications in the real world, especially in mathematics and statistics. How does the new method of bias-reinforcement compare to the past methods that we have read about? Does factor analysis bear any relevance on human intelligence other than identifying degrees of correlations that are most likely noncausal?

Links to learn more about factor analysis-

http://www.psych.cornell.edu/Darlington/factor.htm

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/UFA.HTM

http://www.its.ucdavis.edu/telecom/r11/factan.html

The Hereditarian Theory of IQ: An American Invention

Alfred Binet and the original purpose of the Binet scale

Binet flirts with craniomerty

When Alfred Binet decided to study the measurement of intelligence, he used an age old method of measuring skulls, and flavored the conclusion set forth by his countryman Paul Broca. He collected his data by going to various schools and measuring the heads of pupils designated by the teachers as their smartest and stupidest. After three years and several publications, Binet was no longer sure of the conclusion that intelligence is correlated with head size. Binet’s research found that larger head sized favored the “good” student, but the difference between the “good” and “poor” student amounted to mere millimeters. Secondly, Binet didn’t observe a large difference in anterior region of the skull, where higher intelligence was supposedly found. It is where Broca in his analysis found the greatest disparity between superior and less fortunate people (177). Binet concluded that even those most of the results pointed in the right direction it was still useless to asset the intelligence of an individual, because the differences between the smart and poor student was too small. He also found that poor students varied more than their smart students, because the smallest and largest value usually belong to the poor pupil.
Furthermore, Binet become aware of his own unconscious bias. “I feared,” Binet wrote, “ that in making measurements on heads with the intention of finding a difference in volume between an intelligence and less intelligence head, I would be led to increase, unconsciously and in good faith, the cephalic volume of intelligence heads to decrease that of unintelligence heads (177).” Binet was able to confirm his unconscious bias by re-measuring the heads of “idiots and imbeciles” in a hospital; where he found an average diminution of 3mm, a good deal of more average difference between the skulls of smart and poor students. In the end, Binet did recalculate his work and found an extreme average of 3 to 4 mm, but it still didn’t exceed the average potential bias. Thus, Craniometry, the jewel of nineteenth-century objectivity, was not destined for continued celebration (178).

Binet’s scale and the birth of IQ

Binet in 1904 was commissioned by the minister of public education to develop techniques for identifying children who had problems learning. Binet decided to reject the use of craniomerty and Lombroso’s anatomical stigmata and focus more on psychological methods. He decided to bring together a series of short tasks. Some of these task were: counting coins, reasoning “ordering”, comprehension, invention, and censure. Each task was assigned an mental age and a child would begin his test by starting at the youngest mental age tasks, and proceeded until they could go no further. The last task completed would be their mental age, and their general intellectual level was calculated by subtracting the mental age from their true chronological age. Binet test was concerned with separating the natural intelligence and instruction. Binet stated, “ We give him nothing to read, nothing to write, and submit him to no test in which he might succeed by means of rote learning (180-181).” Furthermore, Binet would decline to discuss the meaning of the score he assigned the children for he reminds us that intelligence isn’t a single, scalable thing like height.
What Binet feared most about an IQ number was its negative uses in society. He thought that it could be used as an indelible label rather than a tool to identify the needs of the child. Therefore, Binet declined to label IQ as inborn intelligence and refused to regard it as device for ranking individuals based on the mental capacity. Binet’s statement on the issue was, “ Our purpose is to be able to measure the intellectual capacity of a child who is brought to us in order to know whether he is normal or retarded. We should therefore study his condition at the time and that only. We have nothing to do with his past history or with his future… we shall make no attempt to distinguish between acquired and congenital idiocy… and we leave unanswered the question of whether this retardation is curable, or even improvable (182).” It is clear that Binet is an antihereditarian. The major difference between Hereditarians and Antihereditarians are a matter of social policy and educational practices. Hereditarians believed that measures of intelligence are markers of inborn limits and children should be sorted and trained according to their inheritance and channeled into a profession. Antihereditarians believed the so-called “slow” children through special classes can increase their knowledge. Intelligence, in any meaningful sense of the word, can be augmented by good education; it is not a fixed and inborn quantity (184).

The dismantling of Binet’s intentions in America

Binet insisted upon three cardinal principles for using his test.
1. The scores are a practical device. They do not measure intelligence or any other
reified entity.
2. The scale is rough and used as a guide for identifying learning-disabilities; not a
device for ranking normal children.
3. Emphasis on improvement through special classes, and low scores shall not mark the
child as innately incapable.

However, his cardinal principles were overturned by American hereditarians who translated his scale into written form as a routine device for testing all children. The misuse of his test came from two fallacies: reification and hereditarianism, both were eager to use his test to maintain social ranks and distinctions. This chapter will only focus on the hereditarian theory and analyzes the major works of the three pioneers of hereditarianism in America: H.H. Goddard, L.M. Terman, and R.M. Yerkes (reification will be discussed in the next chapter). The hereditarian theory simply states, “ That inherited IQ scores marked people and groups for an inevitable station in life. And they assumed the average differences between groups were largely the products of heredity, despite manifest and profound variation in quality of life (187).”

Binet argued his work to be antihereditarian, but why was it so easy for the hereditarians to overturn his test and cardinal principles, and turn it into a device for testing all children?

H.H. Goddard and the menace of the feeble-minded
Intelligence as a Mendelian Gene

H.H. Goddard was the first to popularize the Binet scale in American. He translated Binet’s articles into English, applied his ideas to the test, and argued for their general use. He agreed with Binet on the idea that the tests worked to identify people just below the normal range, which Goddard christened the name morons. He used a scale unilinear scale of mental deficiency to identify intelligence as a single entity, which assumed intelligence was inborn and inherited in family ties. He stated that, “ The intelligence controls the emotions and the emotions are controlled in proportion to the degree of intelligence (190).” The rediscovery of Mendel’s work helped support Goddard’s idea that intelligence was a single entity. Mendel’s peas enabled the eugenicists to believe that the most complex parts of the body might be built by a single gene. A single gene for normal intelligence help support Goddard’s notion of an unilinear scale that marked intelligence as a single measurable entity. “For, Goddard had broken his scale into two sections at just the right place: morons carried a double dose of the bad recessive; dull laborers had at least one good copy of the normal gene and could be set before their machines. Moreover, the scourge of feeble mindedness might be eliminated by schemes of breeding easily planning. One gene can be traced, located, and breed out (193).” As for the situation of morons, Goddard did not oppose sterilization, but was more interested in housing morons in exemplary institutions were their reproduction can be curtailed.
After identifying the single gene for feeble-mindedness. It seemed simple enough for him not to allow morons to breed and keep foreigners out, who were also morons. He raised enough funding to conduct a for study in Ellis island, which was to administered his version of the Binet-scale to immigrants. The evaluation of the data suggested that between 40 to 50 percent of the immigrants were feeblemindedness. However, there were several problems with administering the Binet-test to immigrants. One reasons was most immigrants were poor and never gone to school let alone held a pencil in their hand. By 192,8 Goddard has changed his mind about his work and agreed that he had set the upper limit of moronity too high, and agreed most or not all morons could be trained and led useful lives, but he still retained his belief of inherited mentality.

Why do you think Goddard changed his mind? Did it have to do with political or social pressure or did he really feel he was wrong about his theory?

Lewis M. Terman and the mass marketing of innate IQ
Mass testing and the Stanford-Binet

Goddard introduced Binet’s scale to American, but Terman was the first to published the test. Terman’s revision of the 1911 Binet’s test in 1916 extended the scale to include “superior adults” and increased the number of task from fifty-four to ninety. Terman then a professor at Stanford University, gave his revision a name that has become part of our vocabulary, the Stanford-Binet test. He test stressed conformity with expectation and downgraded original responses. For example the question about the Indian’s respond to the white man walks sitting down. What was the white man riding? The only correct answer was ‘bicycle: and any other original answer was downgraded.
Binet’s test was meant to be administered by a train professional working with one child at a time, and could not be used as a general ranking. Terman wanted to test everyone in hopes of establishing a gradation of innate ability that could sort all children into their proper station in life. “What pupil should be tested? The answer is, all. If only selected children are tested, many of the cases most in need of adjustment will be overlooked. Some of the biggest surprises are encountered in testing those who have been looked upon as close to average in ability. Universal testing is fully warranted (206-207).” The Stanford-Binet test remained a test for the individual, but it became the model for all the written versions that followed. Terman adjusted the scale so that the average children would score 100 at each age, and established the standard deviant of 15 points. His test became the standard judgment and approval for all mass marketed written tests that followed. The argument was that the Stanford-Binet test measured intelligence; therefore, any test correlated with Stanford-Binet also measured intelligence.
Terman agreed with Binet on the grounds that the test was needed to identify children with learning disabilities, but differ in how Binet’s desired to help the disabled children. Terman states, “… in the near future intelligence test will bring tens of thousands of these high-grade defectives under the surveillance and protection of society. This will ultimately result in curtailing the reproduction of feeble-mindedness and in the elimination of an enormous amount of crime, pauperism, and industrial inefficiency (209).” He thought to plea for mass testing with the removal of the feeblemindedness and the criminals from society, intelligence tests will be able to place people in their respective professions. For IQ of 75 or lower should be the realm of unskilled labor, 75 to 85 semi-skilled labor, and above 85 more specific judgments could be made; however, this is merely establishing ranks, and Terman took the hereditarian stance and proclaimed class and race distinctions. In the end, Terman used several reasons for supporting hereditarianism. One example, is the IQ test he administered on twenty orphans. He relates the low scores must reflect the biology of the children. He moves easily from individuals, to social, classes to races, and proclaims do we need to prove what common sense already tells us. Terman proclaims, “… does not common observation teach us that, in the main, native qualities of intellect and character, rather than chance, determine the social class to which a family belongs? From what is already know about heredity, should we not naturally expect to find the children of well-to-do, cultured, and successful parents better endowed than the children who have been reared in slums of poverty (221)?” In the end just like Goddard, Terman recants his ideas to a degree. For in later works he mentions a few words of caution for heredity, and state that we also do not know how to partition the average differences between genetic and environmental influences.

Do you think Terman’s explanation of class and race distinction is bias, and if so, is there any other better explanations to support his claim scientifically, or was he already hinting toward pass theories of craniometry, recapitulation, criminal anthropology, and his own work to support his distinction?

R.M. Yerkes and the Army Mental Tests: IQ comes of age
Psychology’s great leap forward

“We must learn to measure skillfully every form and aspect of behavior which has psychological and sociological significance (223).” The preceding quote by R.M. Yerkes states his goal of turning psychology into a science, and he proclaimed through mental testing that psychology had potential to become a rigorous science. Yerkes obtained his chance to compile a sufficient amount of data to support his hereditary IQ theory, with help from the army. During the outbreak of World War I, the military allow Yerkes and his men to administered 1.75 million IQ tests to all new recruits.
Yerkes assembled the great hereditarians of America, which included Terman and Goddard, to create three types of IQ test for the army. Literate recruits took the written Army Alpha test. While the illiterate recruits and the soldiers who failed the Alpha test took the pictorial Beta test, and any individuals who failed the Beta test were called in separately to be administered a formal Binet scale test. These test could now rank and stream everybody; thus, the era of mass testing had begun.
The results from the test stated three major facts. The first is the actual mental age of white American adults was 13 and not the standard age of 16 suggested by Terman. The second factor is that European immigrants can be graded by their country of origins. Again, stating that the Southern and Eastern Europeans are less superior than the Nordic Europeans. The third factor stated that Negros were at the bottom of the scale with an average mental age of 10.41. Yerkes supported that all tests were constructed to measure innate intelligence.
However several problems arose from administering the test. Some of these downfalls in testing was: procedures varied so much from camp to camp that the results could scarcely organized and compared, high levels for poor anxiety, poor conditions for seeing and hearing, inexperience with taking test, recruits taking the wrong test, and many were not called back to retake a test or receive individual Binet-scale tests. Other errors found that a bias that lowered the mean scores of blacks and immigrants, and a bias for interpreting the zero on test scores as evidence of innate stupidity, which many of the zeros should have been interpreted as many men didn’t understand the instruction and should have been invalid.
A serious problem with Yerkes test is the treasure-trove for anyone seeking environmental correlates of performance on “test of intelligence” (247). Yerkes found a relationship between intelligence and amount of schooling. Additionally, he found test scores for foreign-born recruits rose consistently with years of residency in America. Yerkes army test measured the education and familiarity with American culture not innate intelligence. How many people actually know who Christy Mathewson is? Again and again all his tests pointed to a correlation with environment, but Yerkes his ground in hope for a hereditarian salvation. C.C. Brigham, a disciple of Yerkes, and translated the army testing to support the views of hereditarianism. Brigham article became a source used by all propagandists for supporting restriction on immigrants and eugenically regulation of reproduction. In the end, Brigham recant his published work and stated that the army data was worthless in measuring innate intelligence, but the damage was done. His work along with the other three hereditarians, slowed the immigration for southern and eastern Europe. During the outbreak of World War II, more than 6 million southern and eastern, and central Europeans were barred from America. “We know what happened to many who wished to leave but had nowhere to go. The paths to destruction are often indirect, but ideas can be agents as sure as guns and bombs (263).”

How much impact to do you think the hereditarians had on limiting the restriction of immigrants into America? Do you think there were other important factors influencing the Restriction act of 1924, and is so what were these factors?

How much influence do you think Yerkes IQ army test have on the rest of the nation, in terms of mass producing written test? Why do you think the military regarded his test as being useless and a waste of time?

Do you think hereditarians had the better argument for ranking class, gender, or race, or do you think the previous theories were better?

Recapitulation vs. Neoteny

Gould makes an explicit comparison between the two developmental theories on p. 148 of The Mismeasure. Here is the relevant quote...

"Recapitulation required that adult traits of ancestors develop more rapidly in descendants to become juvenile features - hence, traits of modern children are primitive characters of ancestral adults. But suppose that the reverse process occurs as it often does in evolution. Suppose that juvenile traits of ancestors develop so slowly in descendants that they become adult features. This phenomenon of retarded development is common in nature; it is called neoteny (literally, "holding on to youth"). Bolk argued that humans are essentially neotenous. He listed an impressive set of features shared by adult humans and fetal or juvenile apes, but lost in adult apes: vaulted cranium and large brain in relation to body size; small face; hair confined largely to head, armpits and pubic regions; unrotated big toe. I have already discussed one of the most important signs of human neoteny in another context (pp. 132-135): retention of the foramen magnum in its fetal position, under the skull"

So Gould is clearly a supporter of the significance of neoteny in human evolution (see his Ontogeny and Phylogeny (Gould, 1977) for his most complete discussion of this issue).

He then goes on to spell out the meaning of these two theories for ranking of human races.

"Now, consider the implications of neoteny for the ranking of human groups. Under recapitulation, adults of inferior races are like children of superior races. But neoteny reverses the argument. In the context of neoteny, it is "good" - that is, advanced or superior - to retain the traits of childhood, to develop more slowly. Thus, superior groups retain their childlike characters as adults, while inferior groups pass through the higher phase of childhood and then degenerate toward apishness. Now consider the conventional prejudice of white scientists: whites are superior, blacks inferior,. Under recapitulation, black adults sould be like white children. But under neoteny, white adults shold be like black children."

Which chimpanzee looks more advanced (i.e., more similar to humans), the juvenile or the adult, and which theory does this support?