I have been meaning to put up quotes from my lunch-time reading, i'll start today with something i finished yesterday, then I'll post again with something i've gone back to reading today.

We must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection by viewing all basic capabilities of our brains as direct adaptations....

....We need not view Bach as a happy spinoff from the value of music in cementing tribal cohesion, or Shakespeare as a fortunate consequence of the role of myth and epic narrative in maintaing hunting bands.

Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man

The Mismeasure of Man is a refutation of The Bell Curve--the conservative darling of biological determinism of intelligence, success, etc...

The Bell Curve bored me to death when i read it. Gould's book reveals it for the shoddy piece of re-hased failed science that it is...and actually changed some of my ideas about the nature of intelligence and heritability. Intelligence isn't a simple thing. It isn't Nature Vs. Nurture, it is a million times more complex than that. What Gould refutes is the science of IQ testing, and the Bell Curve, and gives some excellent background on the Racist/classist ideas that spawned the misuse of Alfred Binet's attempt at Helping children.

the book reviews on that page get a bit rabid. wonder if they even READ the book.