"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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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