by Stephen Jay Gould ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 26, 1981
"Shared dogmas masquerading as objectivity" . . . idée fixe . . . circular reasoning . . . reification . . . unconscious bias . . . outright fraud. These are the accusations against the biological determinism of intelligence that Gould (The Panda's Thumb, Ever Since Darwin) musters in this latest, most systematic assault. He builds his case in a series of chapters describing prevailing pre-Darwinian and later 19th- and 20th-century thought—which overwhelmingly proclaimed the ascendancy of the white upper-class male (and the inferiority of all others). Among the more egregious common beliefs, it was held that prostitutes had a greater-than-normal separation between their first and second toes, a mark of their kinship to simians. By returning to primary data and, when possible, even recalculating the raw data, Gould demonstrates bias (conscious or not) in rounding out figures, sloppy measurements, exclusion of counterexamples, and more—thus vitiating all the vaunted skull volumes, brain weights, and other anatomical desiderata correlated with intelligence, morality, or leadership. The mis-measurers or misinterpreters include Samuel Morton, a once-celebrated American anatomist, and such familiar names as Broca, Lombroso, Goddard, Terman, Yerkes, Butt, Thurstone, Spearman, and Jensen. In one of the book's best chapters, Gould explains factor analysis and how this mathematical device for handling a matrix of correlations led to Spearman's magical "g"—the general factor of intelligence. Thurstone, in turn, completely obliterated "g" in his mathematical handling of the same sort of correlations, coming up with separate "primary mental abilities." Both, Gould clearly shows, then reified their constructs and to this day neither view has a biological/genetic leg to stand on. Burr is the man with the idée fixe, Gould declares; he latched on to the inheritance of intelligence, and to "g"; and even, in later years, claimed to have invented the mathematical method that produced it. Jensen, in turn, has restored "g" to a central position in his hereditarian view of intelligence and the validity of IQ testing. In the final chapter, Gould justifies this work of demolition—necessary, he thinks, to get science on the right track again. Here he also outlines his cricitism of sociobiology—for deriving specific traits (X's homosexuality) from specific genes, rather than seeing genes as reflecting general rules of behavior. More along those lines can be expected—and more from Jensen et al. too. With outrageous illustrations and examples of early tests, a stylishly provocative work.
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1981
ISBN: 0393314251
Page Count: 454
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1981
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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