by Tom Kando
The September 13, 2021 issue of the New Yorker has an interesting article titled “Force of Nature” by Gideon Lewis-Kraus.
As a sociologist, I have dealt with this issue in many of my classes. That nurture is more important than nature has always been axiomatic to sociologists. How successful you are in life depends much more on environment than on heredity.
However, biological determinism (nature) has gained a lot of ground in recent years. Psychology’s holy grail is the identification of the PHYSICAL location of mental faculties, whether in the brain or in one’s genetic make-up.
There appears every decade or so research that challenges the conventional wisdom that nurture counts for much more than nature. This research suggests that genetic inheritability of things like intelligence plays a much bigger role than we are willing to admit.
For example, in 1969, Berkeley psychologist Arthur Jensen published an article in the Harvard Educational Review in which he argued that there is an I.Q. gap between the races, and the reason for this is at least partly genetic. Nobel laureate William Shockley agreed with this, stating that “my research leads me inescapably to the opinion that the major cause of the American Negro's intellectual and social deficits is hereditary and racially genetic in origin and, thus, not remediable... by practical improvements in the environment.”
1994 saw the publication of The Bell Curve, by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein. The book claimed a “genetic basis for a racial hierarchy in intelligence,” arguing that “social outcomes like poverty and inequality in earnings had a genetic foundation” (Force of Nature, p.50). Such publications always stir up a lot of dust. They are politically incorrect, they are scientifically questionable and the media love to give disproportionate attention to them. Harden is the latest instance of such controversial research, essentially taking up the banner of the genetic “inheritability” of intelligence.
With one difference:
Harden is progressive. She values social justice. She would like to reconcile her findings with continued liberal policies aimed at creating a more just society. She wishes for a “hereditarian left.” She wants to “convince the left that genes matter, and the right that they are not everything.” (Force of Nature, p.48) . Her humanitarian values conflict with her research, which shows that intelligence is to a significant degree genetically inheritable, something that can lead to the biological determinism that underlies immoral positions such as racism and eugenics.
I am not going to rehash the Nature-Nurture issue, the Biology-Sociology controversy. Just to refresh your memory with an example:
SAT scores and IQs of Jews and Asian Americans are higher than those of African Americans. Those of non-Jewish whites are also higher than those of blacks.
As a result, Jews, Asian-Americans and non-Jewish whites become better educated and in the end they earn more money. Simple, say the geneticists: White folks are richer than black folks because they are smarter, and both groups are BORN that way.
But the standard sociological explanation is by now almost platitudinous: It is CULTURAL. Jewish culture has always emphasized the importance of education. Asian American culture centers around strong family values, education, deferred gratification, etc. And when it comes to African-Americans, there is the legacy of gross discrimination in practically every area of life. Nurture (sociology) explains differences in economic status better than nature (biology). There is no need to posit “inheritable intelligence genes.”
* * * * * * *
But let’s grant, for the sake of argument, to the neuro-psychologists and the geneticists that intelligence and other aptitudes are inheritable to some extent. Maybe Wolfgang Mozart did inherit a few extra musical genes from his father Leopold (even though training was the more important factor even in this case, as it began when Wolfgang was an infant).
Even so, most of the literature that posits the hereditary transmission of intelligence is guilty of an almost
unanimous fallacy: It operationalizes success and achievement - the beneficial outcomes attributed to greater inherited intelligence - almost entirely as socio-economic status. The people on top are there because they were born smarter than the people at the bottom, and “being on top” almost always means being richer than the other guy.
But there are many different types of intelligence, aptitude and talent. I am not even talking about athletic ability, where heredity no doubt plays a major role. What about creativity, high-tech virtuosity, musicality, emotional and social intelligence, the ability to abstract, or to connect disparate elements, to systematize and organize, or to innovate, to think “outside the envelope,” or spatial intelligence, linguistic intelligence, verbal improvisation as in rap and musical improvisation as in jazz, skills in the visual arts, in poetry, chess, the genius of humor, etc.
My point is simple:
Various aptitudes may indeed be genetically inheritable. But making a lot of money is just one of them. It is absurd to argue that if you enjoy high socio-economic status, this proves that you are smart and that you were born that way, and if you are poor, it proves that you were born stupid. Some people are good at making money, others are talented in a multitude of other ways. We shouldn’t be stuck in simplistic, materialistic and monolithic thinking, reducing the measure of human intelligence and achievement to how much money one makes.
And make no mistake about it: Most of the discussion of what determines your life chances either tacitly or explicitly assumes that socio-economic status is THE main indicator of people’s intelligence - be it inborn or acquired. This is wrong.
© Tom Kando 2021;All Rights Reserved
