The remarkable impact of The Bell Curve must therefore, and once again as always, be recording a swing of the political pendulum to a sad position that requires a rationale for affirming social inequalities as dictates of biology. (If I may make a somewhat lurid, but I think a propos, biological analogy, the theory of unitary, rankable, innate, unalterable intelligence acts like a fungal spore, a dinoflagellate cyst, or a tardigrade tun—always present in abundance, but in an inactive, dormant, or resting stage, waiting to sprout, engorge, or awake when fluctuating external conditions terminate slumber.)
Some reasons for The Bell Curve’s impact must be idiosyncratic—a catchy title, a fine job of editing by a legendary figure on the New York scene, a brilliant publicity campaign (I will confess to jealousy, and a desire to find the people responsible so that I can hire them away for my own books). But these particular factors must count for little in comparison with the overarching generality: newly fertile political soil. Should anyone be surprised that publication of The Bell Curve coincided exactly with the election of Newt Gingrich’s Congress, and with a new age of social meanness unprecedented in my lifetime? Slash every program of social services for people in genuine need; terminate support for the arts (but don’t cut a dime, heaven forfend, from the military); balance the budget and provide tax relief for the wealthy. Perhaps I am caricaturing, but can we doubt the consonance of this new meanspiritedness with an argument that social spending can’t work because, contra Darwin, the misery of the poor does result from the laws of nature and from the innate ineptitude of the disadvantaged?
I would add another reason for the particular appeal of genetic explanations in the 1990s. We are living in a revolutionary age of scientific advance for molecular biology. From the Watson-Crick model of 1953 to the invention of PCR and the routine sequencing of DNA—for purposes as varied as O. J. Simpson’s blood signature to deciphering the phylogeny of birds—we now have unprecedented access to information about the genetic constitution of individuals. We naturally favor, and tend to overextend, exciting novelties in vain hope that they may supply general solutions or panaceas—when such contributions really constitute more modest (albeit vital) pieces of a much more complex puzzle. We have so treated all great insights about human nature in the past, including nongenetic theories rooted in family and social dynamics, most notably (of course) Freud’s notion of psychosexual stages, with neurosis arising from suppressed or misdirected development in ontogeny. If insightful nongenetic theories could be so egregiously exaggerated in the past, should we be surprised that we are now repeating this error by overextending the genuine excitement we feel about genetic explanation?
I applaud the discovery of genes that predispose carriers to certain illnesses, or that cause disease directly in normal environments (Tay-Sachs, sickle-cell anemia, Huntington’s chorea)—for the greatest hope of cure lies in identification of a material substrate and a mode of action. As the father of an autistic son, I also celebrate the humane and liberating value of identifying inborn biological bases for conditions once deemed purely psychogenic, and therefore subtly blamed on parents (especially by professionals who swore up and down they harbored no such intent, but merely meant to specify sources in the interest of future prevention; autism, at different times and by various psychologists, became a result either of too much, or of too little, maternal love).
The brain, as an organ of the body, is as subject to disease and genetic defect as any other. I welcome the discovery of genetic causes or influences for such scourges as schizophrenia, bipolar manic depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. No pain can match that of a parent who “loses” a vibrant and promising child to the ravages of such illnesses, with their frequently delayed onset near the end of life’s second decade. Let us celebrate the release of parents from consuming guilt and, more important of course, the possibility of amelioration, or even cure, supplied by identification of causes.
But all these genuine discoveries involve definite and specific pathologies, diseases, or conditions that thwart what we may still legitimately call “normal” development—that is, the bell curve. (Bell curves are technically called normal distributions; they arise when variation is distributed randomly around the mean—equally in both directions, with greater probability of values near the mean.) Specific pathologies do not fall on the bell curve, but usually form clumps or clusters far from the curve’s mean value and apart from the normal distribution. The causes of these exceptions therefore do not correspond with reasons for variation around the mean of the bell curve itself.
Just because people with Down’s syndrome tend to have quite short stature as the result of an extra twenty-first chromosome, we would not infer that short-statured people in the normal distribution of the bell curve owe their height to possession of an extra chromosome. Similarly, the discovery of a gene “for” Huntington’s chorea does not imply the existence of a gene for high intelligence, or low aggressivity, or high propensity for xenophobia, or special attraction to faces, bodies, or legs of a sexual partner—or for any other general feature that might be distributed as a bell curve in the full population. “Category mistakes” are among the most common errors of human thought: we commit a classic category mistake if we equate the causes of normal variation with the reasons for pathologies (just as we make a category error in arguing that because IQ has moderate heritability within groups, the causes for average differences between groups must be genetic—see my review of The Bell Curve in essay 1 at the back). Thus, we should be excited about advances in identifying the genetic causes of certain diseases, but we should not move from this style of explanation to the resolution of behavioral variation in our general population.
Of all the baleful false dichotomies that stymie our understanding of the world’s complexity, nature vs. nurture must rank among the top two or three (a phony division only enhanced by the euphony of these names). I don’t think that any smoke screen infuriates me more than the biodeterminist’s frequent claim “But we are the sophisticated ones; our opponents are pure environmentalists, supporters of nurture alone; we recognize that behaviors arise by an interaction of nature and nurture.” May I then emphasize again, as the text ofThe Mismeasure of Man does throughout, that all parties to the debate, indeed all people of good will and decent information, support the utterly uncontroversial statement that human form and behavior arise from complex mixtures of genetic and environmental influences.
Errors of reductionism and biodeterminism take over in such silly statements as “Intelligence is 60 percent genetic and 40 percent environmental.” A 60 percent (or whatever) “heritability” for intelligence means no such thing. We shall not get this issue straight until we realize that the “interactionism” we all accept does not permit such statements as “Trait x is 29 percent environmental and 71 percent genetic.” When causative factors (more than two, by the way) interact so complexly, and throughout growth, to produce an intricate adult being, we cannot, in principle, parse that being’s behavior into quantitative percentages of remote root causes. The adult being is an emergent entity who must be understood at his own level and in his own totality. The truly salient issues are malleability and flexibility, not fallacious parsing by percentages. A trait may be 90 percent heritable, yet entirely malleable. A twenty-dollar pair of eyeglasses from the local pharmacy may fully correct a defect of vision that is 100 percent heritable. A “60 percent” biodeterminist is not a subtle interactionist, but a determinist on the “little bit pregnant” model.
Thus, for example, Mr. Murray, in high dudgeon about my review of The Bell Curve (reprinted here as the first essay in the concluding section), writes in the Wall Street Journal (December 2, 1994), excoriating my supposed unfairness to him:
Gould goes on to say that “Herrnstein and Murray violate fairness by converting a complex case that can yield only agnosticism into a biased brief for permanent and heritable differences.” Now compare Mr. Gould’s words with what Richard Herrnstein and
I wrote in the crucial paragraph summarizing our views on genes and race: “If the reader is now convinced that either the genetic or environmental explanations have won out to the exclusion of the other, we have not done a sufficiently good job of presenting one side or the other. It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences. What might the mix be?”
Don’t you get it yet, Mr. Murray? I did not state that you attribute all difference to genetics—no person with an iota of knowledge would say such a foolish thing. My quoted line does not so charge you; my sentence states accurately that you advocate “permanent and heritable differences”—not that you attribute all disparity to genetics. Your own defense shows that you don’t grasp the major point. Your statement still portrays the issue as a battle of two sides, with exclusive victory potentially available to one. No one believes such a thing; everyone accepts interaction. You then portray yourself as a brave apostle of modernity and scholarly caution for proclaiming it “highly likely … that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences.” You have only stated a truism entirely outside the real issue. When you make the proper distinction between heritability and flexibility of behavioral expression, then we might have a real debate beyond the rhetoric of phrasing.
I shall not pursue my critique of The Bell Curve here, for I present this effort in the first two essays of the concluding section. I only wish to state that I decided to produce this revised version of The Mismeasure of Man as a response to this latest cyclic episode of biodeterminism. It might seem odd that a book written fifteen years ago could serve as a rebuttal to a manifesto issued in 1994—more than odd, in fact, since our basic notions of causality may be thereby inverted! And yet, as I reread The Mismeasure of Man, and made so few changes beyond correcting typographical errors and excising the few references entirely topical to 1981, I realized that my fifteen year old book is written as a rebuttal to The Bell Curve. (Lest this statement seem absurdly anachronistic, I hasten to point out that Herrnstein’s 1971 Atlantic Monthly article, a point by point epitome of The Bell Curve, did form an important part of the context for The Mismeasure of Man.) But my claim is not absurdly anachronistic for another more important reason. The Bell Curve presents nothing new. This eight hundred page manifesto is little more than a long brief for the hard-line version of Spearman’s g—the theory of intelligence as a unitary, rankable, genetically based, and minimally alterable thing in the head. The Mismeasure of Man is a logical, empirical, and historical argument against this very theory of intelligence. Of course I could not know the specifics of what the future would bring. But just as Darwinism can provide as good an argument against future episodes of creationism as against the antievolutionists of Darwin’s own day, I trust that a cogent refutation of a bankrupt theory will hold, with all its merit intact, if someone tries to float a dead issue with no new support at some future moment. Time, by itself, holds no alchemy to improve a case. If good arguments cannot transcend time, then we might as well throw out our libraries.
Reasons, history and revision of The Mismeasure of Man
1. Reasons
My original reasons for writing The Mismeasure of Man mixed the personal with the professional. I confess, first of all, to strong feelings on this particular issue. I grew up in a family with a tradition of participation in campaigns for social justice, and I was active, as a student, in the civil rights movement at a time of great excitement and success in the early 1960s.
Scholars are often wary of citing such commitments, for, in the stereotype, an ice-cold impartiality acts as the sine qua non of proper and dispassionate objectivity. I regard this argument as one of the most fallacious, even harmful, claims commonly made in my profession. Impartiality (even if desirable) is unattainable by human beings with inevitable backgrounds, needs, beliefs, and desires. It is dangerous for a scholar even to imagine that he might attain complete neutrality, for then one stops being vigilant about personal preferences and their influences—and then one truly falls victim to the dictates of prejudice.
Objectivity must be operationally defined as fair treatment of data, not absence of preference. Moreover, one needs to understand and acknowledge inevitable preferences in order to know their influence—so that fair treatment of data and arguments can be attained! No conceit could be worse than a belief in one’s own intrinsic objectivity, no prescription more suited to the exposure of fools. (Phony psychics like Uri Geller have had particular success in bamboozling scientists with ordinary stage magic, because only scientists are arrogant enough to think that they always observe with rigorous and objective scrutiny, and therefore could never be so fooled—while ordinary mortals know perfectly well that good performers can always find a way to trick people.) The best form of objectivity lies in explicitly identifying preferences so that their influence can be recognized and countermanded. (We deny our preferences all the time in acknowledging nature’s factuality. I really do hate the fact of personal death, but will not base my biological views on such distaste. Less facetiously, I really do prefer the kinder Lamarckian mode of evolution to what Darwin called the miserable, low, bungling, and inefficient ways of his own natural selection—but nature doesn’t give a damn about my preferences, and works in Darwin’s mode, and I therefore chose to devote my professional life to this study.)
We must identify preferences in order to constrain their influence on our work, but we do not go astray when we use such preferences to decide what subjects we wish to pursue. Life is short, and potential studies infinite. We have a much better chance of accomplishing something significant when we follow our passionate interests and work in areas of deepest personal meaning. Of course such a strategy increases dangers of prejudice, but the gain in dedication can overbalance any such worry, especially if we remain equally committed to the overarching general goal of fairness, and fiercely committed to constant vigilance and scrutiny of our personal biases.
(I have no desire to give Mr. Murray ammunition for future encounters, but I have never been able to understand why he insists on promulgating the disingenuous argument that he has no personal stake or preference in the subject of The Bell Curve, but only took up his study from disinterested personal curiosity—the claim that disabled him in our debate at Harvard, for he so lost credibility thereby. After all, his overt record on one political side is far stronger than my own on the other. He has been employed by right-wing think tanks for years, and they don’t hire flaming liberals. He wrote the book, Common Ground, that became Reagan’s bible as much as Michael Harrington’s Other America might have influenced Kennedy Democrats. If I were he, I would say something like: “Look, I’m a political conservative, and I’m proud of it. I know that the argument of The Bell Curve meshes well with my politics. I recognized this from the beginning. In fact, this recognition led me to be especially vigilant and careful when I analyzed the data of my book. But I remain capable of being fair with data and logical in argument, and I believe that the available information supports my view. Besides, I am not a conservative for capricious reasons. I believe that the world does work in the manner of the bell curve, and that my political views represent the best way to constitute governments in the light of these realities.” Now this argument I could respect, while regarding both its premises and supporting data as false and misinterpreted.) I wrote The Mismeasure of Man because I have a different political vision, and because I also believe (or I would not maintain the ideal) that people are evolutionarily constituted in a way that makes this vision attainable—not inevitable, Lord only knows, but attainable with struggle.
I therefore studied this subject with passion. I had participated in the lunch counter sit-in phase of the civil rights movement. I had attended Antioch College in southwestern Ohio, near Cincinnati and the Kentucky state line—therefore “border” country, and still largely segregated in the 1950s. There I had taken part in many actions to integrate bowling alleys and skating rinks (
previously with “white” and “Negro” nights), movie theaters (previously blacks in the balcony and whites downstairs), restaurants, and, in particular, a Yellow Springs barber shop run by a stubborn man (whom I came to respect in an odd way) named Gegner (meaning “adversary” in German and therefore contributing to the symbolic value) who swore that he couldn’t cut a black man’s hair because he didn’t know how. (I first met Phil Donahue when he covered this story as a cub reporter for the Dayton Daily News.) I spent a good part of an undergraduate year in England, effectively running an extensive and successful campaign with another American (though we couldn’t be public spokespeople, given our “wrong” accents) to integrate the largest dance hall in Britain, the Mecca Locarno ballroom in Bradford. I had joys and sadnesses, successes and defeats. I felt crushed when, in a wave of understandable though lamentable narrowness, the black leaders of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee decided to remove whites from the organization.
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