Re: Rich, poor....Gould

["George K. Cunningham" <gkc@LOUISVILLE.EDU>]

Undoubtedly, Alan Dershowitz and Gary Larson are just who I would go to for
comments about  about evolutionary theory.  Stephen Gould is not someone who
is take seriously among evolutionary biologists and psychologist.  The
relationship between "g" and intelligence is one of the most solidly
grounded theories in the social sciences.

It is interesting how liberals love to bash the Christian yokels in Kansas
for removing evolution from their content standards, but don't have a word
to say when Gould and his Science for the People crowd deny any connection
between between biology and behavior and attack evoutionary biologist and
psychologists who are conducting much of the important research on the
topic.  Gould has done more harm to the scientific advancement of ideas
about evolution than the Kansas school board.

George K. Cunningham
University of Louisville
----- Original Message -----
From: George Sheridan <gsheridan@BOMUSD.EDCOE.K12.CA.US>
To: <ARN-L@listsrva.CUA.EDU>
Sent: Friday, November 12, 1999 12:24 AM
Subject: Re: Rich, poor....Gould


> Since we recently commented on Stephen Jay Gould and his books _The
> Mismeasure of Man_ and _Full House_, some list members might be interested
> in the cover story in the November 1999 issue of Natural History magazine.
> A number of eminent scientists (and assorted other personalities like
> attorney Alan Dershowitz and cartoonist Gary Larson of "The Far Side")
> comment on Gould's contributions to evolutionary theory, popular
> understanding of science, teaching and the case law that has so far kept
> creationism out of public schools.
>
> Dan Kevles, director of the Program in Science, Ethics and Public Policy
at
> Caltech, praises Gould's "[S]harp dissection of British psychologist
> Charles Spearman's 'g' factor and why it was meaningless as a measure of
> general intelligence."
>
> Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, declares "Gould's
> Mismeasure of Man--a frontal attack on the pseudoscience of racial ranking
> according to intelligence--has become a classic in skeptical
> debunking...Gould's skeptical (here read 'inquiring') 1970s critiques of
> sociobiology and his 1990s critiques of its descendant, evolutionary
> psychology, provided a necessary balance to the hyperadaptionism of some
> proponents who sought to whittle the complexities of human behavior down
to
> a handful of pseudolaws."
>
> In his regular monthly column in this issue, Gould offers an observation:
>
> "Although their authors usually presented such pictures as supposedly
> unbiased factual summaries, nearly all complex representations must,
> whether consciously or not, express favored theories about patterns and
> causes..."
>
> He is discussing charts depicting the history of life, but his point about
> intellectual assumptions as the source of unconscious bias is directly
> relevant to the critique of standardized tests.
>
>
> George Sheridan
>
> Northside School
> Black Oak Mine Unified School District
> P.O. Box 217
> Cool, California 95633
>
> Hope is...not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the
> conviction that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
>
> Vaclav Havel
>
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