Biological determinism is the object of this book's attention. This is the belief that intelligence can be accounted for by biology and that a particular group's fate is determined by biology.
The book opens with a scene from ancient Greece, with Plato giving his opinion about the nature-nurture question.
Sweden is the home of Gunnar Mrydal and the place where his studies took place. Mrydal was active in the biological determinism movement in the 1940s.
Harvard is where Louis Agassiz taught. Agassiz was the leading theorist of the American movement for polygenism.
Philadelphia is the home of Samuel George Morton who did empirical work on polygenism by measuring skulls in the mid eighteen hundreds.
Ellis Island, in New York harbor, was a place.....
