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

PINNING DOWN POTENTIAL 11

booklet for building a human.” And when referring to people’s durable
qualities, nearly every one now uses clichés like “It’s in their DNA.”
Perhaps this vision of the all- power ful gene arises from some deep
psychological need in people, perhaps due to being raised in patriarchal,
hierarchical socie ties and living in the cult of leadership and de pen dency
relations. So genes are themselves now revered as paternalistic agents with
controlling intentions, as if serving a deep need for an ultimate authority.
Accordingly, these ideological genes don’t merely contain codes or
blueprints; they “act,” “behave,” “control,” “direct,” are “selfi sh,” and so on.
Th e developmental psychologist Jean Piaget described such attribution
of purpose to inert materials as a form of animism. It is common among
young children, who tend to endow inanimate objects with the qualities
of consciousness, free will, and intention. It is also common among pre-
scientifi c cultures and refers to an inborn essence containing and mani-
festing the properties we observe.

AN IDEOLOGICAL BRAIN

Historically, too, an ideological brain has been created. A brain- centered

view of human intelligence long ago produced the obvious, if crude,

hypothesis of a relationship between brain size and intelligence. Victorian

scientists, already keen on anthropometry (body mea sure ment) soon

turned to craniometry (head mea sure ment) to estimate brain sizes, fi rst

from simple skull circumferences in the living and then from cranial vol-

umes in the dead. Th ey duly reported on the expected brain- size diff er-

ences between social classes and between males and females.

Meanwhile, explorer/anthropologists and colonialists were doing the

same on natives in the colonies; they reached equally reassuring conclu-

sions about the brains of diff er ent “races.” In addition, there have been

postmortem inspections of brains of high- achieving individuals, Einstein’s

among them. Even recently (2015), scientists claim to have discovered

another little fold in the great man’s brain not pres ent in others. It has, of

course, been pointed out many times that those methods are hopelessly

unreliable and meaningless. But even in recent times, psychologists like

Philippe Rushton have published strong opinions on brain size and race.

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