Heredity and Intellect

The Geography of Intellect is a contribution to what has become known as the “nature-nurture controversy”—and the authors have taken up their cudgels in behalf of “nature.” Their theses are not unfamiliar: 1) the same laws of heredity apply to mental as to physical traits and 2) as individual men vary in their natural endowments, “races, peoples and classes are unequally endowed genetically with mental resources.”

These theses, as well as the component arguments mustered in their support, have been in contention for years. As the authors indicate, while every educated person agrees that genius, amentia or dementia is the combined consequence of heredity and environment, there is a legitimate area of disagreement surrounding the quantitative issue of the comparative weight of each. While the law governing the transmission of genic materials is the same whether we are concerned with physical or psychic traits, the influence of the environment over the latter is certainly quantitatively, if not qualitatively, different, although the measure of influence exerted by the socio-cultural environment has not been determined to the satisfaction of the majority of specialists in the disciplines concerned. This must be conceded, irrespective of the authors’ commendable efforts to relate individual and group psychic differences to neurophysiological bases.

AG

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A. James Gregor

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The Geography of Intellect is a contribution to what has become known as the “nature-nurture controversy”—and the authors have taken up their cudgels in behalf of “nature.” Their theses are not unfamiliar: 1) the same laws of heredity apply to mental as to physical traits and 2) as individual men vary in their natural endowments, “races, peoples and classes are unequally endowed genetically with mental resources.”

These theses, as well as the component arguments mustered in their support, have been in contention for years. As the authors indicate, while every educated person agrees that genius, amentia or dementia is the combined consequence of heredity and environment, there is a legitimate area of disagreement surrounding the quantitative issue of the comparative weight of each. While the law governing the transmission of genic materials is the same whether we are concerned with physical or psychic traits, the influence of the environment over the latter is certainly quantitatively, if not qualitatively, different, although the measure of influence exerted by the socio-cultural environment has not been determined to the satisfaction of the majority of specialists in the disciplines concerned. This must be conceded, irrespective of the authors’ commendable efforts to relate individual and group psychic differences to neurophysiological bases.