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Re: Broca's Brain
Ralph L Holloway (rlh2@COLUMBIA.EDU)
Thu, 1 Aug 1996 17:41:39 -0400
On Thu, 1 Aug 1996, Ronald Kephart wrote:
> Stephen Jay Gould also discusses Broca, among others, in his book The Mismeasure
> of Man (Norton: 1981). This book, by the way, should be required reading for
> every anthropologist.
>
> Ron Kephart
> University of North Florida
I certainly agree, providing John S. Michael's "A new look at Morton's
Craniological Research", 1988, CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY, 29:349-354, is also
read, as he found no evidence of what Gould accused Morton of doing,
namely using a heavier thumb to pack the seed in non-European crania when
measuring cranial capacity. As Michael points out, The Racism of those
days stands and Gould's portayal of it a clear value. The facts seem to
remain, however, that the worlds populations, however one categorizes
them, do not have equal brain weights, for whatever reasons, including
body size and nutrition. I know of no secure, reputable, and replicable
scintific work done that indicates different human groups differ in
intelligent cortically-mediated adaptive behavior (not IQ tests) with a
causal connection to brain size (note, please, I said "causal", not
correlational).
Having read Gould's new edition of "Mismeasure...", I am surprised
that he continues to ignore Michael's interesting CA report, as well as
some of the other samples mentioned by Rushton in his latest papers and
book.
Respectfully,
Ralph L. Holloway
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