Author: Bernie Devlin
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461206693
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 379
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Book Description
A scientific response to the best-selling The Bell Curve which set off a hailstorm of controversy upon its publication in 1994. Much of the public reaction to the book was polemic and failed to analyse the details of the science and validity of the statistical arguments underlying the books conclusion. Here, at last, social scientists and statisticians reply to The Bell Curve and its conclusions about IQ, genetics and social outcomes.
Author: Christine Ma
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781912282470
Category : Educational psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 92
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Book Description
"Herrnstein & Murray's The Bell Curve is a deeply controversial text that raises serious issues about the stakes involved in reasoning and interpretation. The authors' central contention is that intelligence is the primary factor determining social outcomes for individuals--and that it is a better predictor of achievement than income, background or socioeconomic status. One of the major issues raised by the book was its discussion of 'racial differences in intelligence, ' and its contention that there is a link between the low observed test scores and social outcomes for African-Americans and their lack of social attainment. While the authors produce and interpret a great deal of data to back up their contentions, they ultimately fail to tackle the problem that neither 'intelligence' nor 'race' have widely accepted definitions in biology, anthropology or sociology. In consequence, the book it has been termed both 'racis©t'; and 'pseudoscientifi©c'; thanks to what its critics see as both its faulty reasoning and its uncautious interpretation of evidence. The debate continues to this day, with academics on both sides engaged in fierce arguments over what can be argued from the data that Herrnstein and Murray used."--Provided by publisher.
Author: Richard J. Herrnstein
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674001770
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 350
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Book Description
This impressive collection features Richard Herrnstein's most important and original contributions to the social and behavioral sciences--his papers on choice behavior in animals and humans and on his discovery and elucidation of a general principle of choice called the matching law. In recent years, the most popular theory of choice behavior has been rational choice theory. Developed and elaborated by economists over the past hundred years, it claims that individuals make choices in such a way as to maximize their well-being or utility under whatever constraints they face; that is, people make the best of their situations. Rational choice theory holds undisputed sway in economics, and has become an important explanatory framework in political science, sociology, and psychology. Nevertheless, its empirical support is thin. The matching law is perhaps the most important competing explanatory account of choice behavior. It views choice not as a single event or an internal process of the organism but as a rate of observable events over time. It states that instead of maximizing utility, the organism allocates its behavior over various activities in exact proportion to the value derived from each activity. It differs subtly but significantly from rational choice theory in its predictions of how people exert self-control, for example, how they decide whether to forgo immediate pleasures for larger but delayed rewards. It provides, through the primrose path hypothesis, a powerful explanation of alcohol and narcotic addiction. It can also be used to explain biological phenomena, such as genetic selection and foraging behavior, as well as economic decision making.
Author: Richard J. Herrnstein
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 143913491X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 916
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Book Description
The controversial book linking intelligence to class and race in modern society, and what public policy can do to mitigate socioeconomic differences in IQ, birth rate, crime, fertility, welfare, and poverty.
Author: Russell Jacoby
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 772
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Book Description
Russell Jacoby and Naomi Glauberman have edited a book on race, class, and intelligence that will stand for the foreseeable future as the authoritative guide to the extraordinary controversy ignited by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray's incendiary bestseller, The Bell Curve. The editors have gathered together both the best of recent reviews and essays, and salient documents drawn from the curious history of this heated debate. The Bell Curve Debate captures the fervor, anger, and scope of an almost unprecedented national argument over the very idea of democracy and the possibility of a tolerant, multiracial America. It is an essential companion and answer to The Bell Curve, and provides scholarship and polemic from every point of view. It is a must-read for the informed citizen in search of all the views fit to print.
Author: Charles Murray
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061745677
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 790
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Book Description
A sweeping cultural survey reminiscent of Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence. "At irregular times and in scattered settings, human beings have achieved great things. Human Accomplishment is about those great things, falling in the domains known as the arts and sciences, and the people who did them.' So begins Charles Murray's unique account of human excellence, from the age of Homer to our own time. Employing techniques that historians have developed over the last century but that have rarely been applied to books written for the general public, Murray compiles inventories of the people who have been essential to the stories of literature, music, art, philosophy, and the sciences—a total of 4,002 men and women from around the world, ranked according to their eminence. The heart of Human Accomplishment is a series of enthralling descriptive chapters: on the giants in the arts and what sets them apart from the merely great; on the differences between great achievement in the arts and in the sciences; on the meta-inventions, 14 crucial leaps in human capacity to create great art and science; and on the patterns and trajectories of accomplishment across time and geography. Straightforwardly and undogmatically, Charles Murray takes on some controversial questions. Why has accomplishment been so concentrated in Europe? Among men? Since 1400? He presents evidence that the rate of great accomplishment has been declining in the last century, asks what it means, and offers a rich framework for thinking about the conditions under which the human spirit has expressed itself most gloriously. Eye-opening and humbling, Human Accomplishment is a fascinating work that describes what humans at their best can achieve, provides tools for exploring its wellsprings, and celebrates the continuing common quest of humans everywhere to discover truths, create beauty, and apprehend the good.
Author: Charles Murray
Publisher: Forum Books
ISBN: 0307405397
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 226
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Book Description
"The most talked-about education book this semester." —New York Times From the author of Coming Apart, and based on a series of controversial Wall Street Journal op-eds, this landmark manifesto gives voice to what everyone knows about talent, ability, and intelligence but no one wants to admit. With four truths as his framework, Charles Murray, the bestselling coauthor of The Bell Curve, sweeps away the hypocrisy, wishful thinking, and upside-down priorities that grip America’s educational establishment. •Ability varies. Children differ in their ability to learn, but America’s educational system does its best to ignore this. •Half of the children are below average. Many children cannot learn more than rudimentary reading and math. Yet decades of policies have required schools to divert resources to unattainable goals. •Too many people are going to college. Only a fraction of students struggling to get a degree can profit from education at the college level. •America’s future depends on how we educate the academically gifted. It is time to start thinking about the kind of education needed by the young people who will run the country.
Author: Charles Murray
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1538744007
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 689
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Book Description
All people are equal but, as Human Diversity explores, all groups of people are not the same -- a fascinating investigation of the genetics and neuroscience of human differences. The thesis of Human Diversity is that advances in genetics and neuroscience are overthrowing an intellectual orthodoxy that has ruled the social sciences for decades. The core of the orthodoxy consists of three dogmas: - Gender is a social construct. - Race is a social construct. - Class is a function of privilege. The problem is that all three dogmas are half-truths. They have stifled progress in understanding the rich texture that biology adds to our understanding of the social, political, and economic worlds we live in. It is not a story to be feared. "There are no monsters in the closet," Murray writes, "no dread doors we must fear opening." But it is a story that needs telling. Human Diversity does so without sensationalism, drawing on the most authoritative scientific findings, celebrating both our many differences and our common humanity.
Author: Charles Murray
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1641771984
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 118
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Book Description
The charges of white privilege and systemic racism that are tearing the country apart fIoat free of reality. Two known facts, long since documented beyond reasonable doubt, need to be brought into the open and incorporated into the way we think about public policy: American whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians have different violent crime rates and different means and distributions of cognitive ability. The allegations of racism in policing, college admissions, segregation in housing, and hiring and promotions in the workplace ignore the ways in which the problems that prompt the allegations of systemic racism are driven by these two realities. What good can come of bringing them into the open? America’s most precious ideal is what used to be known as the American Creed: People are not to be judged by where they came from, what social class they come from, or by race, color, or creed. They must be judged as individuals. The prevailing Progressive ideology repudiates that ideal, demanding instead that the state should judge people by their race, social origins, religion, sex, and sexual orientation. We on the center left and center right who are the American Creed’s natural defenders have painted ourselves into a corner. We have been unwilling to say openly that different groups have significant group differences. Since we have not been willing to say that, we have been left defenseless against the claims that racism is to blame. What else could it be? We have been afraid to answer. We must. Facing Reality is a step in that direction.
Author: Stephen Jay Gould
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393340406
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 458
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Book Description
The definitive refutation to the argument of The Bell Curve. When published in 1981, The Mismeasure of Man was immediately hailed as a masterwork, the ringing answer to those who would classify people, rank them according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits. And yet the idea of innate limits—of biology as destiny—dies hard, as witness the attention devoted to The Bell Curve, whose arguments are here so effectively anticipated and thoroughly undermined by Stephen Jay Gould. In this edition Dr. Gould has written a substantial new introduction telling how and why he wrote the book and tracing the subsequent history of the controversy on innateness right through The Bell Curve. Further, he has added five essays on questions of The Bell Curve in particular and on race, racism, and biological determinism in general. These additions strengthen the book's claim to be, as Leo J. Kamin of Princeton University has said, "a major contribution toward deflating pseudo-biological 'explanations' of our present social woes."
