Customer Reviews

The IQ argument: race, intelligence, and education,

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This book is extremely interesting on at least three counts: its content, its historical importance, and its publishing history. Unfortunately, it's is also very difficult to get hold of, and the reasons are unedifying.

THE AUTHOR

Hans Eysenck (1916-97) was one of the most important and influential psychologists of the 20th century, being at the time of his retirement the most-cited social scientist in the World. He was especially known for advocating "the highest degree of scientific rigour in the design of psychological experiments and [being] very critical of much loose thinking current at present under the guise of 'psychology'" (from the cover of a Pelican book).

In the course of his career he produced several pioneering books demystifying psychology for the general public: in particular a seminal trilogy (later expanded to a quartet) for Penguin. He was an exceptionally lucid and entertaining writer, and the books sold millions of copies and were translated into several other languages. The trilogy comprises:

Uses and Abuses of Psychology (1953)
Sense and Nonsense in Psychology (1957)
Fact and Fiction in Psychology (1965)

1971's Race, Intelligence and Education (published in the US with the less incendiary title of The IQ Argument), was the book that changed him practically overnight from one of Britain's most respected psychologists to its most vilified.

THE CONTROVERSY

RI&E was written, in the author's own words, "because of the considerable uproar caused by the publication, in 1969, of an invited article by Arthur Jensen in the Harvard Educational Review (1, pp 21-123), in which he emphasized the role of genetic factors in intelligence [...].

"[Jensen] and his family received threats that bombs would be planted in their house; he was personally attacked, his lectures broken up, his invited contributions to scientific conferences shouted down, reviewers misrepresented what he said, lied about the facts, and made him out to be a racist and a fascist. [...]

"All I did was to collect the relevant facts, and put them together, leaving it to the reader to judge. [...]

"Perhaps I should have been warned by the fate that befell Arthur Jensen. Perhaps I was optimistic in thinking that England was sufficiently unlike America to make reasonable discussion of fundamental problems possible. Clearly I was naive in thinking that emotional certainty could be touched by scientific evidence and rational argument. When the book appeared the roof fell in." (3, pp 18-19)

"When my book 'The IQ Argument' appeared in the U.S. the S.D.S. (oddly named 'Students for a Democratic Society') threatened wholesalers and retailers with arson and violence if they stocked or sold it, and as a consequence it was practically impossible to obtain the book in the United States. Newspapers refused to review it [...]" (3, p 52)

What was it about the book, then, that produced all this hostility? What assertions are so horrifying, that not merely must they be denied, people must be prevented even from reading and considering them? This question, given the author's eminence and (previous) popularity should make RI&E of some interest (at least) to anyone with the most cursory interest in the subject.

THE BOOK

In fact, RI&E is as eminently readable, logical and rigorous as the author's previous works. If there is any factual error in it, I have been unable to discover it. Indeed, it's a better summary of the available evidence (for the average reader) than Jensen's own work, which tends to be somewhat technical.

The contents are as follows:

Introduction
1. The Jensenist Heresy
2. What is race?
3. What is intelligence?
4. The intelligence of American negroes
5. Changing human nature
Epilogue: The social responsibility of science
Further reading

I would like to elaborate further, but to do it justice would take me well beyond Amazon's generous space allowance.

EDITIONS

The British edition was published not by Pelican, but by Maurice Temple Smith, for reasons I have been unable to discover for certain. Like its American sibling (and annoyingly), it lacks an index, which leads me to deduct a star; but it has the further peculiarity that it contains several photographs that have little or no discernible relation to the text.

The American edition contains an additional preface emphasising two further points:

1. No conceivable facts could justify segregation, and
2. Good will alone is not enough; efforts to remedy disparities must be made on the basis of facts and not wishful thinking:

"If the reader does not like some of the facts that emerge, I hope against hope that he will not blame me for their existence."

(Wishful thinking in itself, of course, Shoot the Messenger being standard policy).

Add to this the fact that my British edition is falling apart and the American one is not, and I would say the latter is the better buy, other things being equal.

CONCLUSION

Of course, you may consider the issue unimportant; a view I've seen most articulately expressed in a 1976 article by Chomsky (4, pp. 199-200). But millions of dollars are being spent on compensatory education programmes in many countries, and their success or failure depends on the issues discussed here.

Whatever your views, then, if you were interested enough in the issue to read Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, then you should also read this (and vice versa, of course); there are few better summaries (of the evidence to that point, at least) accessible to the layman.

REFERENCES

1) Jensen, A.R. (1969). How much can we boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement? Harvard Educational Review, 39. Republished in

2) Jensen, A.R. et al. (1969). Environment, Heredity and Intelligence. Harvard Reprint Series No 2 (ISBN 0-916690-02-4)

3) Essay by Eysenck in Pearson (Ed.), (1997, 2nd edition). Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe. Washington: Scott-Townsend (ISBN 1-878465-23-6)

4) Chomsky, Noam (1987). The Chomsky Reader. New York: Pantheon (ISBN 0-394-75173-6)

This book is extremely interesting on at least three counts: its content, its historical importance, and its publishing history. Unfortunately, it's is also very difficult to get hold of, and the reasons are unedifying.

THE AUTHOR

Hans Eysenck (1916-97) was one of the most important and influential psychologists of the 20th century, being at the time of his retirement the most-cited social scientist in the World. He was especially known for advocating "the highest degree of scientific rigour in the design of psychological experiments and [being] very critical of much loose thinking current at present under the guise of 'psychology'" (from the cover of a Pelican book).

In the course of his career he produced several pioneering books demystifying psychology for the general public: in particular a seminal trilogy (later expanded to a quartet) for Penguin. He was an exceptionally lucid and entertaining writer, and the books sold millions of copies and were translated into several other languages. The trilogy comprises:

Uses and Abuses of Psychology (1953)
Sense and Nonsense in Psychology (1957)
Fact and Fiction in Psychology (1965)

1971's Race, Intelligence and Education (published in the US with the less incendiary title of The IQ Argument), was the book that changed him practically overnight from one of Britain's most respected psychologists to its most vilified.

THE CONTROVERSY

RI&E was written, in the author's own words, "because of the considerable uproar caused by the publication, in 1969, of an invited article by Arthur Jensen in the Harvard Educational Review (1, pp 21-123), in which he emphasized the role of genetic factors in intelligence [...].

"[Jensen] and his family received threats that bombs would be planted in their house; he was personally attacked, his lectures broken up, his invited contributions to scientific conferences shouted down, reviewers misrepresented what he said, lied about the facts, and made him out to be a racist and a fascist. [...]

"All I did was to collect the relevant facts, and put them together, leaving it to the reader to judge. [...]

"Perhaps I should have been warned by the fate that befell Arthur Jensen. Perhaps I was optimistic in thinking that England was sufficiently unlike America to make reasonable discussion of fundamental problems possible. Clearly I was naive in thinking that emotional certainty could be touched by scientific evidence and rational argument. When the book appeared the roof fell in." (3, pp 18-19)

"When my book 'The IQ Argument' appeared in the U.S. the S.D.S. (oddly named 'Students for a Democratic Society') threatened wholesalers and retailers with arson and violence if they stocked or sold it, and as a consequence it was practically impossible to obtain the book in the United States. Newspapers refused to review it [...]" (3, p 52)

What was it about the book, then, that produced all this hostility? What assertions are so horrifying, that not merely must they be denied, people must be prevented even from reading and considering them? This question, given the author's eminence and (previous) popularity should make RI&E of some interest (at least) to anyone with the most cursory interest in the subject.

THE BOOK

In fact, RI&E is as eminently readable, logical and rigourous as the author's previous works. If there is any factual error in it, I have been unable to discover it. Indeed, it's a better summary of the available evidence (for the average reader) than Jensen's own work, which tends to be somewhat technical.

The contents are as follows:

Introduction
1. The Jensenist Heresy
2. What is race?
3. What is intelligence?
4. The intelligence of American negroes
5. Changing human nature
Epilogue: The social responsibility of science
Further reading

I would like to elaborate further, but to do it justice would take me well beyond Amazon's generous space allowance.

EDITIONS

The British edition was published not by Pelican, but by Maurice Temple Smith, for reasons I have been unable to discover for certain. Like its American sibling (and annoyingly), it lacks an index, which leads me to deduct a star; but it has the further peculiarity that it contains several photographs that have little or no discernible relation to the text.

The American edition contains an additional preface emphasising two further points:

1. No conceivable facts could justify segregation, and
2. Good will alone is not enough; efforts to remedy disparities must be made on the basis of facts and not wishful thinking:

"If the reader does not like some of the facts that emerge, I hope against hope that he will not blame me for their existence."

(Wishful thinking in itself, of course, Shoot the Messenger being standard policy).

Add to this the fact that my British edition is falling apart and the American one is not, and I would say the latter is the better buy, other things being equal.

CONCLUSION

Of course, you may consider the issue unimportant; a view I've seen most articulately expressed in a 1976 article by Chomsky (4, pp. 199-200). But millions of dollars are being spent on compensatory education programmes in many countries, and their success or failure depends on the issues discussed here.

Whatever your views, then, if you were interested enough in the issue to read Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, then you should also read this (and vice versa, of course); there are few better summaries (of the evidence to that point, at least) accessible to the layman.

REFERENCES

1) Jensen, A.R. (1969). How much can we boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement? Harvard Educational Review, 39. Republished in

2) Jensen, A.R. et al. (1969). Environment, Heredity and Intelligence. Harvard Reprint Series No 2 (ISBN 0-916690-02-4)

3) Essay by Eysenck in Pearson (Ed.), (1997, 2nd edition). Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe. Washington: Scott-Townsend (ISBN 1-878465-23-6)

4) Chomsky, Noam (1987). The Chomsky Reader. New York: Pantheon (ISBN 0-394-75173-6)