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The Mismeasure of Man Study Guide

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by Stephen Jay Gould
About 41 pages (12,388 words)
The Mismeasure of Man Summary

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Themes

The Development of Theory

This book is a good study in how theory comes into being. Scientists, influenced heavily by Darwin's Theory of Evolution, feel that there has to be a biological basis for intelligence, and they being to look for it. That is what this book is about. The early theories were based on biological determinism, or the belief that intelligence was biological. If intelligence is an inherited trait, then there has to be a way to measure it. This is what early scientists try to do with craniometry, which was the measuring of the brain size that was used as an indicator of intelligence.

Gould presents the information that shows how theories are developed. A scientist's work is presented, another scientist duplicates the methodology and compares results. If the results are not the same, then.....

This is a free excerpt of 135 words. This section contains 908 words. This study guide contains 12,388 words (approx. 41 pages at 300 words per page).

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The Mismeasure of Man from BookRags and Gale's For Students Series. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.

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