Table Of ContentGENETIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS
IN HUMAN ABILITY
GENETIC AND
ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS
IN HUMAN ABILITY
A Symposium held by the Eugenics Society in September-October 1965
Edited by
]. E. MEADE
Professor of Political Economy
University of Cambridge
A. S. PARKES
Mary Marshal Professor of the Physiology of Reproduction
University of Cambridge
Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V.
1966
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number
66-29858
ISBN 978-1-4899-6236-2 ISBN 978-1-4899-6499-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-6499-1
© 1966 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by The Eugenics Society in 1966.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1966
EDITORS' FOREWORD
DuRING 1963, the Council of the Eugenics Society decided to
extend the Society's activities by organizing a series of symposia
designed to bridge the gap between the biomedical and the
social sciences. The first, held in September 1964, under the
title Biological Aspects of Social Problems was highly successful
and fully justified both the publication of the proceedings and
the continuation of the projected series. Accordingly, the second
symposium, entitled Genetic and Environmental Factors in Human
Ability, was held on 30th September and 1st October 1965.
As on the first occasion, this second meeting brought together
people who might otherwise never have had the opportunity
to exchange ideas, and it was generally agreed to have been
most useful. The proceedings of this meeting, which was opened
by Sir Robert Platt, as President of the Eugenics Society,
are recorded in the present volume; which we feel will be a
worthy successor to the preceding one. For this, the Society
is greatly indebted to all those who took an active part in the
meeting by contributing formally or in discussion.
As Honorary Treasurer and Honorary Secretary of the
Society, we have again accepted formal responsibility for the
editing of the present volume, but, as on the previous occasion,
the day-to-day work and responsibility has fallen on Mrs
K. Hodson, editor of The Eugenics Review; to her are due the
best thanks of the Society and of all readers of this book.
]. E. MEADE
s.
A. PARKES
CONTENTS
PAGE
EDITORs' FoREWORD v
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. SIR RoBERT PLATT ix
THE NATURE AND MEANING OF INTELLIGENCE TESTS.
Chairman: SIR RoBERT PLATT
Development of current ideas about intelligence tests. P. E.
VERNON 3
Some aspects of the relationship between communication and
performance in tests. B. B. BERNSTEIN and D. YouNG 15
Social background, intelligence and school structure : an
interaction analysis. HILDE T. HIMMELWEIT 24
Intelligence testing and comprehensive education. DoUGLAS
PIDGEON 42
SELECTION FOR HIGHER EDUCATION.
Chairman: LoRD RoBBINS 53
Principles and procedures of university selection. jEAN FLouo 55
Environmental and innate factors and educational attainment.
STEPHEN WISEMAN 64
The limits of prediction. jAMES DREYER 81
Selection and the problem of conformity. LIAM HunsoN 90
Conclusion. LoRD RoBBINS 100
AsPECTS OF SuBNORMALITY.
Chairman: DR BRIAN KIRMAN l 03
Pregnancy and perinatal association with mental subnormality.
jAMESWALKER 105
Assessing the size of the problem of subnormality. 121
ALBERT KusHLICK
vii
Vlll CONTENTS
PAGE
Biochemical aspects of mental subnormality. C. E. DENT 148
Chromosomal aspects of mental subnormality. VALERIE CowiE 163
Conclusion. DR BRIAN KrRMAN 173
DIFFERENTIAL FERTILITY AND INTELLIGENCE.
Chairman: DR J. A.FRASER RoBERTS 175
Social and economic differentials in fertility. B. BENJAMIN 177
Differential fertility by intelligence. C. 0. CARTER 185
Heritability of intelligence. R. M. C. HUNTLEY 201
Genetic consequences of selection pressure. D. S. FALCONER 219
Conclusion. DR J. A. FRASER RoBERTS 233
INDEX OF SUBJECTS 235
INDEX OF AuTHORS 239
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
SIR RoBERT PLATT
Cambridge
IN wntmg the General Introduction to this Symposium
volume I assume a dual role: first of all as Chairman of the
first session of this Symposium and secondly as the new Presi
dent of the Eugenics Society, an office which I am extremely
proud to hold and no little surprised to have been invited to
hold. I hope this Society will continue to prosper under my
presidency and if it fails to do so I can only say it will not be
due to any lack of interest on my part in the kind of lectures
and discussions which it is its business to organize.
As a physician I first became interested in genetics when,
as a medical student, I read Bateson on Mendelism (though
genetics was not taught to medical students very much in those
days) and I have spent my life in the study of man. My hobby,
you might say, as well as my occupation, has been the fascin
ating interest of the interplay of genetic and environmental
factors in patients and their illnesses, and perhaps even more
in their attitudes to those illnesses.
The scope of what is now included under the somewhat
elastic title of' eugenics' has no doubt changed from time to
time since Galton first introduced the term. Rather than
attempt at this moment any new definition-and there are
already plenty-of what eugenics really comprises, I would
draw attention to the wide scope of interest of the Eugenics
Society, as shown by the impressive list of past presidents,
ending with that very distinguished zoologist, Sir James Gray,
and as is shown also by the subject matter of these two
Symposia, the first on Biological Aspects of Social Problems, and
this, the second, on Genetic and Environmental Factors in Human
Ability.
Our aim is to bring together people from different branches
of learning-genetics, sociology, physiology, psychology, edu
cation and so on-with a common interest in applying their
ix
X GENERAL INTRODUCTION
particular study to the problems of man and especially to the
future of man. In order to do this they must-and this is
good for them and essential for the rest of us-speak a common
language ; it does not have to be the language that is used in
mathematical genetics or physics or something of that kind ;
it has to be the ordinary English language such as intelligent
people like ourselves can listen to and understand. If Arthur
Koestler is right in asserting that a new idea, a new conception,
a new discovery, is due usually to the coming together of two
quite different approaches to a problem, then this Society
should be able to throw up new ideas from time to time-the
kind of thing (although there will not be many such obvious
examples in human history) that Mendel did when he brought
together botany and mathematics practically for the first time.
However we still have not quite dealt with what is comprised
in eugenics because the ' eu ' of eugenics indicates that we
consider it part of our job to consider, and then try to judge,
values. That is always a difficult and dangerous thing to do.
It is my view that in the society in which we now live,
dominated as it is by scientific and technical achievements,
a society which has given up and discarded many old theories
and many old beliefs, some intellectuals have gone rather
too far in their fear of entering the difficult field of ethics.
I do not think it is the function of the Eugenics Society to take
on a mantle of omniscience and make pronouncements for all
time on these difficult problems, but I do think it should not
shirk the ethical issues which immediately arise when the future
of man is under consideration.
To come now to the matter of this Symposium, it might
seem that the interpretation of human ability would be
weighted in favour of intelligence ; I would remind you
that this is not the only human ability, neither is it the sole
factor in human ability. Intelligence is of basic importance,
of course ; but something else, which is difficult to define and
which we usually refer to as ' personality ', is also extremely
important ; and so also is sheer technical skill, which people
often forget in their thinking on human ability. I have from
time to time pointed out to my students that there are two
almost completely different kinds of learning. Given lectures
GENERAL INTRODUCTION X1
and discussions, illustrations and so on, plus a reasonable
educational background, a student can be made to understand
principles of the function of the lungs or oflogarithms or some
thing of that kind ; but, given a few lectures and illustrations
on the violin, he would still not be able to play a note, nor
would he probably play well for many years. These are quite
different kinds of learning, but technical skill is an extremely
important human ability, interestingly enough, one in which
the human race continues to progress: for instance, there is
never a big meeting of athletes, such as the Olympic Games,
at which records are not broken in one field or another. To
return to stringed instruments, when Tchaikovsky wrote his
violin concerto, it was turned down by two of the greatest
violinists of the time as unplayable. Now, I suppose, it is in
the repertoire of every violinist who looks upon himself as
being at concerto level.
Some of what I have said would perhaps have been said
more appropriately at the end of this Symposium than at the
beginning, and I am reminded of something that Sir Geoffrey
Jefferson once told me. He was asked to take the chair at a
conference and the secretary of the society said to him," We're
rather pushed for time. If you have any introductory remarks,
would you mind making them at the end ? " Perhaps that is
what I should have done.
