|
|
Re: how many bastards are there, anyway?
John Varela (jav@os2bbs.com)
17 Aug 1996 18:34:59 GMT
In <4uu00h$94p@jaxnet.southeast.net>, Matt Beckwith <beckwith@jaxnet.com> writes:
>>It was an incidental issue which arose out of a discussion of the
>>ramifications around a recent discovery that a boy's intelligence is
>>inherited from his mother, not from his father ... the gene for
>>intelligence (but don't ask me to define the term) having now apparently
>>been established as being carried on the X chromosome.
>
>This I find difficult to believe. Perhaps they found a gene on the
>X-chromosome which determines IQ to a certain extent. But I bet there
>are others on other chromosomes. It just wouldn't make sense to have a
>person's intelligence only determined by inheritance from the mother.
>And nature usually evolves life forms that make sense.
I saw news reports about intelligence being inherited only from the mother. It
caused me to wonder how this interacts with the current controversy over whether
intelligence can be measured with a single number, such as IQ. If intelligence
is found on only one or a few genes, it would seem to support the single-number
advocates.
I saw no discussion of this question in the press reports, nor did I see any
description of how they defined the "intelligence" that is only inherited on the
X chromosome. If the definition of intelligence is IQ, and IQ is inherited on
only one gene, then to say that "intelligence" is inherited from one gene looks
like circular reasoning to me.
--------------------------------------------
----- John Varela jav@os2bbs.com -----
--------------------------------------------
|