The best writer of popular science now active.
John Maynard Smith
London Review of Books
This is a marvellous book, and it is marvellous in lots of different ways. The history of these attempts to measure the intellectual and moral worth of individuals turns out to be a detective story to rival most of Agatha Christie.
Sunday Times
Superlative historical scholarship and critical analysis.
Nature
Can human intelligence be measured?
In this fascinating investigation Stephen Jay Gould traces the history of scientists' attempts to assess human intelligence from nineteenth-century craniometry (literally, the measurement of skulls) to today's far more sophisticated methods of IQ testing. Along the way he tackles the fundamental problems: the very idea of measurement seems reductive, suggesting that biology is destiny; moreover, as he vividly demonstrates, scientists' theories have too often been dangerous reflections of their own personal motives and racial/class/sexual prejudices.
Elegantly written and tightly argued, this book exposes the fatal flaws in intelligence testing and reaffirms the variety of human potential.
Stephen Jay Gould grew up in New York City. He graduated from Antioch College and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1967. Since then he has been Professor of Geology and Zoology at Harvard University. He considers himself primarily a palaeontologist and an evolutionary biologist, though he teaches geology and history of science as well.