THE REAL ERROR OF CYRIL BURTHe spoke with eloquence about this error of thought:
The ordinary mind loves to reduce patterns to single atomlike exis-
tents—to treat memory as an elementary faculty lodged in a phrenological
organ, to squeeze all consciousness into the pineal gland, to call a dozen
different complaints rheumatic and regard them all as the effect of a spe-
cific germ, to declare that strength resides in the hair or in the blood, to
treat beauty as an elementary quality that can be laid on like so much
varnish. But the whole trend of current science is to seek its unifying prin-
ciples, not in simple unitary causes, but in the system or structural pattern
as such (1940, p. 237).
And he explicitly denied that factors were things in the head (1937,
p- 459):
The "factors," in short, are to be regarded as convenient mathematical
abstractions, not as concrete mental "faculties," lodged in separate
"organs" of the brain.What could be more clearly stated?
Yet in a biographical comment, Burt (1961, p. 53) centered his
argument with Spearman not on the issue of whether or not factors
should be reified, but rather how they should be reified: "Spearman
himself identified the general factor with 'cerebral energy.' I iden-
tified it with the general structure of the brain." In the same article,
he provided more details of suspected physical locations for entities
identified by mathematical factors. Group factors, he argues, are
definite areas of the cerebral cortex (1961, p. 57), while the general
factor represents the amount and complexity of cortical tissue: "It
is this general character of the individual's brain-tissue—viz., the
general degree of systematic complexity in the neuronal architec-
ture—that seems to me to represent the general factor, and
account for the high positive correlations obtained between various
cognitive tests" (1961, pp. 57-58; see also 1959, p. 106).*
*One might resolve this apparent contradiction by arguing that Burt refused to
reify on the basis of mathematical evidence alone (in 1940), but did so later when
independent neurological information confirmed the existence of structures in the
brain that could be identified with factors. It is true that Burt advanced some neu-
rological arguments (1961, p. 57, for example) in comparing the brains of normal
individuals and "low grade defectives." But these arguments are sporadic, perfunc-
tory, and peripheral. Burt repeated them virtually verbatim, in publication after
publication, without citing sources or providing any specific reason for allying math-
ematical factors with cortical properties.