
The Mismeasure of Man
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Narrated by:
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Arthur Morey
When published in 1981, The Mismeasure of Man was immediately hailed as a masterwork, the ringing answer to those who would classify people, rank them according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits. Yet the idea of of biology as destiny dies hard, as witness the attention devoted to The Bell Curve, whose arguments are here so effectively anticipated and thoroughly undermined. In this edition, Stephen Jay Gould has written a substantial new introduction telling how and why he wrote the book and tracing the subsequent history of the controversy on innateness right through The Bell Curve. Further, he has added five essays on questions of The Bell Curve in particular and on race, racism, and biological determinism in general. These additions strengthen the book's claim to be, as Leo J. Kamin of Princeton University has said, "a major contribution toward deflating pseudo-biological 'explanations' of our present social woes."
©1981 Stephen Jay Gould, Renewed 1996 by Stephen Jay Gould (P)2011 TantorListeners also enjoyed...




















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A capable tour de force
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A story of history that makes you shake your head in disbelief but also an excellent story of cognitive bias and its influence on science. A story that can still occur today.Excellent and eye opening
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the only problem I had with this book is it is written like an academic paper rather than a book. you have to a lot of repetition of ideas and way to indepth descriptions.
Later in the book when he went into factor analysis I felt so lost because I didn't have the images infront of me, or knowledge to understand how they work. this lead to me struggling to understand what exactly he means when he debunks logical fallacies.
Tip the narrator is so slow I found 1.6x speed the only way I could listen.
don't listen around outher people he keeps quoting the old authors and if they don't here the whole chapter people would just think you are listening to racist propaganda which is the opposite of what this book is.
a book you must struggle through
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Totally changed my view of Darwin
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Timely refutation of wrong views on race
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Darwin: To paraphrase, The misery of our poor having nothing to do with their innate inferiority but as a result of our institutions, great are our sins.
Robert Bryan
Simply the best book I have ever read
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I don't think the concepts of the book were particularly surprising and the author didn't say anything new. It was interesting to hear how blinded or biased real scientists could become when researching a topic of personal significance. The first half of the book, for this reason, was, overall, decent.
The second half of the book started with discussion of factor analysis. There are visual aids one can access online to help make this section accessible, but I was not in a position to access them during my listening. For this reason, or my inattention, or my apathy, I didn't not follow the factor analysis discussion and it seemed to drag on.
At the end of the original book, the author has added an epilogue and a couple essays. The essays, though sometimes repetitive of topics in the main text, we're more interesting to me and helped illuminate some of the fuzzier passages from earlier. I especially appreciated the discussions that advocated nuance in looking for answers that weren't wholly biological or wholly environmental, neither racist nor utopian. (I obviously have explained this less well than the author.)
The biggest surprise for me was the author's comparison of the ideas from "The Bell Curve" to crazy racist things said by earlier scientists and thinkers. I haven't read the bell curve and am too young to remember the hype at the time. I would like to believe that people today don't actually believe in real difference between "races", but as an adult it is hard to be blind to the crazy racist things people STILL believe.
A mixed bag
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Excellent Repudiation
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it has also a second layer of training on how to do responsible science.
a must for everyone in academic research
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Long winded
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