PINNING DOWN POTENTIAL 3
been constant attempts to moderate the message in an awkward nature-
nurture debate: individual diff erences depend on environments as well as
genes. Under neath, though, the hereditarians and environmentalists have
really shared much of the basic conceptual furniture: the nature of genes,
of environment, of development, and even the assumption that potential
can be mea sured, as in intelligence quotient (IQ) testing. So the debate
has never moved beyond questions of emphasis over what makes the most
diff erence— genes or environments.
As a consequence, the history of the science seems to have depended
more on how much of the ge ne tic logic the social body could stomach
than on fundamental scholarly challenge (of which there has been much).
As is now well known, enthusiastic ac cep tance of the logic in the 1920s
and 1930s was followed by disgust over the consequences in Nazi Ger-
many and elsewhere. A period of benign environmentalism followed in
the postwar period. But then the hereditarians came back with even more
hard- hitting claims: with, they said, new methods and new data, a smart
new title— behavioral genetics— but still with some skepticism to over-
come. More recently, that wave has turned into a mass assault, confront-
ing us, they have claimed, with even stronger ge ne tic credentials; but also
with kinder, even emollient, messages of benign interventionism, with
benefi ts for all. Th e science of human potential has certainly never been
boring.
Th is book suggests that now is a good time to be looking at that sci-
ence afresh. New technologies and exciting visions have brought a new
outpouring of scientifi c claims about genes and brains and human poten-
tial. Th e old skepticism is waning, and behavioral ge ne tics is riding the
tide of more receptive social conditions. Faced with widening social in-
equalities and increasing social tensions, governments are looking for
biological and psychological rationales with which to appease their popu-
lations. Massive funds have become available for shedding light on causes
of social in equality that will not threaten the status quo.
So every day, it seems, press releases and news headlines inform us
of the latest sensational discoveries. Th ey bombard the public mind, but
really say much the same as before: inequalities are in our genes, which
are in our brains, determining our level of potential as seen in our
intelligence.
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