The Mismeasure of Man (Paperback)

~ (Author) "CITIZENS OF THE REPUBLIC, Socrates advised, should be educated and assigned by merit to three classes: rulers, auxiliaries, and craftsmen..." (more)
Key Phrases: simple structure axes, unilinear ranking, principal components orientation, Cyril Burt, Crania Americana, Sir Cyril (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

How smart are you? If that question doesn't spark a dozen more questions in your mind (like "What do you mean by 'smart,'" "How do I measure it," and "Who's asking?"), then The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould's masterful demolition of the IQ industry, should be required reading. Gould's brilliant, funny, engaging prose dissects the motivations behind those who would judge intelligence, and hence worth, by cranial size, convolutions, or score on extremely narrow tests. How did scientists decide that intelligence was unipolar and quantifiable, and why did the standard keep changing over time? Gould's answer is clear and simple: power maintains itself. European men of the 19th century, even before Darwin, saw themselves as the pinnacle of creation and sought to prove this assertion through hard measurement. When one measure was found to place members of some "inferior" group such as women or Southeast Asians over the supposedly rightful champions, it would be discarded and replaced with a new, more comfortable measure. The 20th-century obsession with numbers led to the institutionalization of IQ testing and subsequent assignment to work (and rewards) commensurate with the score, shown by Gould to be not simply misguided--for surely intelligence is multifactorial--but also regressive, creating a feedback loop rewarding the rich and powerful. The revised edition includes a scathing critique of Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve, taking them to task for rehashing old arguments to exploit a new political wave of uncaring and belt tightening. It might not make you any smarter, but The Mismeasure of Man will certainly make you think. --Rob Lightner --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

A rare book-at once of great importance and wonderful to read. (Saturday Review )

A rare book-at once of great importance and wonderful to read....Gould presents a fascinating historical study of scientific racism....A major addition to scientific literature. -- Saturday Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (June 17, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393314251
• ISBN-13: 978-0393314250
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (97 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #31,685 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars There has never been such a telling literary work..., July 17, 2006

By	Knuckleduster - See all my reviews

If you've been reading these reviews, you've started to notice a stark polarization of opinions and that they tend to fall neatly within certain sets of political motives and agendas. The same criticisms return again and again, and the more I see them, the more I have to ask, "am I the only reviewer who's even READ this book?"

Take for instance: "Gould can't hide his political agenda" -- ladies and gents, Mr. Gould does not even TRY to hide his politics. He put them up-front and center, and I believe he did so to further reenforce his key point that we are all inherently biased (no matter how much we might try to hide it or to convince ourselves that we're not) and that we absolutely cannot make the mistake of assuming that the "scientific" works we read are absolutely dispassionate, objective and impartial. Anybody who claims to be these things should be eyed with a small degree of skepticism; those who are outraged at the suggestion that they might be biased ought have that skepticism heaped upon them.

I could go on and on over the objections people raise about this book and respond like I did in the previous paragraph, or outright discount them (ie: quote from the book direct disproof of the criticism), but it would be tedious and redundant.

Whatever Gould's predispositions, whatever the extensiveness of modern research, he has made it clear and undeniable that there are some serious faults in the science of human intelligence and the reasoning which supports it. Furthermore, it's worth noting that Richard Dawkins -- quoted as being critical of Gould -- flatly rejects any concept of racial superiority.


I highly recommend this book, not just for scientists or those interested in Science's implications for 'ordinary' people, but for everybody as a daily reminder that we all (at least on occasion) allow our prejudices to warp our perception of the world.

If you read this book and don't come away a little more sober and introspective of yourself, then you weren't paying attention.

28 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars wonderfully humane account, November 28, 1999

By	Al Kihano (Iskandria) - See all my reviews

_The Mismeasure of Man_ is the best book I have read on intelligence testing, and I hope you read it, too. It is part a social history, part a theoretical deflation of the idea that intelligence can be measured with a single fixed number. Both parts are very interesting and can be read with profit by historians, lay readers, and people on both sides of the IQ debate. Even if Gould is no psychologist, psychologists must answer his arguments, which compel by dint of common sense.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned how very literate and artfully written this book is. Readers of Gould's essays will not be surprised by this, but if you're expecting to pick up a dry technical tome with unfathomable jargon, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Gould has written a great book without ``dumbing it down.''

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars good arguments, but pay attention to what it leaves out, May 11, 2001

By	Donald C. Wunsch II (Rolla, MO USA) - See all my reviews

I agree with the grad student whose review recommends reading both this book and The Bell Curve. Gould does an excellent job shooting down work that claims to find racial differences in intelligence. However, that is not the same thing as proving that those differences don't exist. But Gould superbly points out the degree to which preconceptions can influence "science," even subconsciously, and points out the need for a generous dose of skepticism when research purports to divine the intelligence (or cognitive) ability of groups. This skepticism should be heightened when the researcher goes beyond attempting to identify measurable aspects of intelligence and relate them to groups, and takes the additional step of suggesting social policy.