Genes, Brains, and Human Potential The Science and Ideology of Intelligence

PINNING DOWN POTENTIAL 9

Any glance at the lit er a ture confi rms this. Behavioral ge ne ticists them-
selves are inclined to use terms like “bright,” “smart,” “talent,” and so on,
which are hardly scientifi c concepts. Take, for example, contributions to
the Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence (2011). Janet Davidson and Iris
Kemp note that “few constructs are as mysterious and controversial as
human intelligence,” and that “ there is little consensus on what exactly
it means... for one person to be more intelligent than another.” Susana
Urbina reviews some of the “excessive and unjustifi ed meanings that the
IQ label has acquired.” Robert Sternberg and Barry Kaufman simply
say “ there has never been much agreement on what intelligence is.”^10
I discuss this pretend intelligence at great length in chapter 3, and show
that IQ is not a mea sure of any general intelligence. It is the deceptive tool of
an inexact science looking for rather exact consequences. But it does that by
trying to match that ideological intelligence to an equally ideological gene.

THE IDEOLOGICAL GENE

Th e gene that is now conceived as the very basis of human potential is an
incredibly power ful entity. It is diffi cult to exaggerate its dominion. Po-
tential is conceived as “ge ne tic potential and the way that is expressed
phenotypically,” states an October 2014 editorial in the journal Neurosci-
ence and Biobehavioral Reviews. Th e genome—an individual’s complete
set of genes—is viewed everywhere as the primary repository of potential
and the origins of form and variation. So individual diff erences are largely
conceived as ge ne tic diff erences.
Indeed, leading scientifi c journals now regularly print statements
like “gene expression controls and dictates every thing from development
and plasticity to on- going neurogenesis in the brain” (statement of the edi-
tors of the journal Science, August  30, 2011). Psychologists like Steven
Pinker (How the Mind Works) claim that “a linear string of DNA can direct
the assembly of an intricate three- dimensional organ that lets us think,
feel and learn.” In Th e Selfi sh Gene, Richard Dawkins told us that “they
created us body and mind.” Even Nessa Carey, in her book Th e Epigenet-
ics Revolution (intended to rewrite our understanding of ge ne tics, the
cover says), describes DNA— the chemical of the genes—as “like a script,”

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