Right or wrong, or perhaps somewhere in between, Clark’s is about as
stimulating an account of world economic history as one is likely to
find. Let’s hope that the human traits to which he attributes economic
progress are acquired, not genetic, and that the countries that grow in
population over the next 50 years turn out to be good at imparting
them. Alternatively, we can simply hope he’s wrong.
Here is the full review.
Addendum: Here is today’s NYT essay, arguing for the genetic unity of mankind, here is a previous Slate piece. Here is a good NYT excerpt:
During World War II, both black and white American soldiers fathered
children with German women. Thus some of these children had 100 percent
European heritage and some had substantial African heritage. Tested in
later childhood, the German children of the white fathers were found to
have an average I.Q. of 97, and those of the black fathers had an
average of 96.5, a trivial difference.
Second addendum: Here is Deirdre McCloskey’s review of Clark.
Hope is not a plan.
Dennis,
“Lower IQ types, whether black or white, don’t get in.”
You gotta be kidding, especially during wartime. And I can offer plenty of anecdotal evidence from my stint that you oughta be kidding during peacetime, too.
If you really gotta grab at a straw, you’d be better off trying to find a reason why high-scoring whites would not have been in Germany (college deferments or somesuch).
Lower IQ types, whether black or white, don’t get in.
Metcalf addresses this objection in his piece:
I haven’t read Greg’s book, but he seems to allow for cultural evolution as well as natural selection, saying that parents with certain habits impart them to the children they raise.
You should have noted that Nisbett’s piece is for subscribers.
James Flynn and Charles Murray discuss that study and others here.
Metcalf’s objection is silly, simply saying both groups are subject to selection without mentioning the degree of selection.
I’ve heard that some of the soldiers were North Africans rather than African-Americans of West African descent, which could make a difference.
I’ve only read reviews of Farewell To Arms but the premise seems awfully reductionist. I’m somewhat surprised by the claim that downwardly mobile offspring of the rich procreated to the extent that Britain ended up with a class of highly productive workers.
The rich in Britain during the Industrial Revolution era were mostly landed feudals who spent their time hunting and had very little use for learning, thrift, a work ethic and other bourgeoise values. The default occupations for sons who weren’t going to inherit everything were the armed forces and the priesthood. It’s hard to imagine that those of the rich who weren’t able to keep their earlier footing on the social ladder would be responsible for spreading values that had little to do with the class they came from.
Also how does he explain how other European nations like Germany were able to rapidly industrialise?
According to some genetist intelligence is trasmited by the mother . So the race of the father is indiferent.All the children in the study had german mothers.
No, merely not primary according to this view. The father’s DNA would still modulate the basic intelligence given.
I do not get the “During World War II” part. Weren’t most of the babies in this study fathered by American GIs after WWII ended?
Also with regard the German black/white study: At what age were the children tested? Did anyone go back and test them as adults? Kids tend to get closer to parental IQs as adults.
ef: This German black/white study is probably one of the top two or three datapoints presented as refutation that there is a black/white IQ difference.
No, it’s not; at least not in either of the two articles cited. Both of them acknowledge that there is an IQ difference.
Some quick googling turned up this from Nisbett which mentions a figure of 20-25% of the black fathers being North African. Nisbett says the North Africans would have to have implausibly high IQs for it to have made that much of a difference.
By the way, anybody interested in nature-nurture questions should keep an eye out for the milestone paper on human evolution by Cochran, Harpending, Hawks, Moyzis and Wang, which will be released Monday at 5pm EST.
I only ever hear about research into racial components of IQ when it reinforces local stereotypes (blacks aren’t as smart as whites, or Asians are smarter than whites). This makes it really hard for me to take this research seriously, because it’s reeks of bias. If I’m a researcher who believes there is a significant racial component to IQ, I should be arguing that Inuit are smarter than Australian aborigines, or native South Americans are smarter than Africans (a study which could be done in Brazil, I would think). Arguing that the masters have always been smarter than the slaves is always going to sound like racist bias.
MostlyAPragmatist, Michael H. Hart does just what you ask in “Understanding Human History”: he shows that Amerindians were more advances than sub-Sahran Africans despite their environmental disadvantages (and late state) and attributes this difference to their IQs. I think Rushton has also harped in the high IQs of Inuits as evidence for his “cold leads to smarts” theory.
From Dr. McCloskey’s review of Farewell to Alms:
“The trouble with this hope is that [Clark's] distinctive hypothesis is going to appeal only to the Steve
Sailers, Stephen Pinkers, and Seth Roberts of the world and is going to repel everyone else.”
All those damn Steves who don’t know what they are supposed to be repelled by! It warms my heart to see Dr. McCloskey appealing to the Wisdom of Repugnance.
Jim Flynn is so fond of the Eyferth study that you’d think he would have replicated its findings by now. Even Flynn should understand that unreplicated research is unreplicated research–conclusions are necessarily pending further study.
The folks who breathlessly cite Flynn as if he were some sort of dynamically brilliant antidote to scientific racism should ask themselves why in all these years, Flynn has not at least insisted that Eyferth be replicated.
DHYB
Niggers…what a disgusting race
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