by Dan Bullard, March, 2009
In Stephan J. Gould's Mismeasure of Man Gould claims that head size and thus brain size does not have any relation to intelligence, and that IQ doesn't really mean anything anyway. Obviously these statements pleased left leaning folks to no end, because it implied that:
While this author cannot hope to do a better job refuting these fantasy delusions of Gould's than the great Arthur Jensen or the stunningly brilliant J. Philippe Rushton I will attempt to address this question from a different angle than my predecessors have.
Any anti-racist has to overcome a very clever "god given" talent that human beings are blessed with, an ability to size up a potential foe quickly and accurately. Even a cursory study of evolution teaches us that every plant and animal has two functions, stay alive, and procreate. For any animal to stay alive it has to be able to survive the often ruthless competition against its own kind. If any member of a race of animals does a better job competing against another member of his race, he will live longer, and thus potentially have more children. This is the essence of evolution, those who have the most children win and overwhelm the less fit members of their race.
Now, let's see if this ability works in your brain.
You might recognize one of them, that's Alan Colmes, a pretty smart guy. If you don't recognize the other guy, he's Azzo Bassou who lived in Morocco in the mid 1900s. He suffered from a condition known as microcephaly which literally means "small head". People with this genetic condition are usually severely mentally retarded. Azzo didn't wear clothes, could not speak and lived a very meager existence. On the other hand, Alan does wear clothes, very nice clothes, makes his living speaking, and probably lives a very nice life.
Now, let's try again
You might recognize the guy on the left, that's Karl Rove, known affectionately by the left as "Bush's Brain". The other fellow here is Schlitzie Surtees otherwise known as Schlitzie the clown who was the inspiration for Zippy the Pinhead. Schlitzie was very mentally retarded, it is estimated that he had the intelligence of a three year old. Schlitzie also suffered from microcephaly. You might also notice that Schlitzie is white, microcephaly affects people in every race so if you thought that Karl Rove looked smarter you were not reacting to Schlitzie's race as you might have in the example above.
I'm betting that when you see the two different individuals a sub-processor in your brain calculates the likely intelligence of each one and then informs your conscious mind to help you decide which one is most likely to outsmart you in a business deal. If each of these characters showed up at your door selling something, you would be more likely to fear being "ripped off" by Alan or Karl, the other two look so dumb they couldn't pull off a scam if their lives depended on it, and you might just buy what they are selling out of kindness.
As asserted above, your brain must constantly be on the lookout for potential foes, that's why women clutch their purses instinctively when walking past a scary looking person. Evolution has honed your brain's sub-processors to increase accuracy so that you don't end up clutching your purse when you approach someone who is not a threat and might instead make a good employer or even a good mate, lest you insult them with your autonomous reaction to their perceived threat level. Your brain is accurate at assessing a multitude of things about a person, even with just one glance. If any of your ancestors had failed to do so, you would not be here because they would have been killed, or perhaps starved because they lost everything to a swindler. Evolution has the power to determine who walks the earth and who doesn't, and you walk here because you came from ancestors who were better than their contemporaries who died.
Microcephaly is obviously a serious condition, but it does only one thing, it causes the brain to be small, that's it. This graphic shows the difference between a normal child and a child with microcephaly:
A small brain means a dumb brain, we know this from other evidence, the fossil record. Dr. Louis Leakey made a career of digging up hominid fossils and examining the evidence of man's evolution over the last 5 million years. This photo can make my point all by itself.
Louis Leakey has a pretty large head, the fossil skulls he is examining are from earlier forms of man, and that sub-processor in your brain is telling you that they were not very smart compared to the guy who dug them up. The history of man's evolution tells a story about a race that gets smarter and smarter and smarter, because smarter hominids can handle the challenges of living better. Here is a photo showing a set of hominid skulls all the way to modern man, the older the skull, the smaller it is indicating that there was a fairly constant increase in intelligence over time.
At this point it's important to remind you why we are here, Gould stated that head size bears no relation to intelligence, none. How could he claim that after what you have just seen? Do we have evidence of moon landings during the time of Homo Erectus when human brain size was around 1000 cubic centimeters? Or did humans have to wait until their brains grew to the current average for the only race that has walked on the moon, 1400 cubic centimeters?
Did Homo Erectus build skyscrapers, airplanes, automobiles? Do we ever find Homo Erectus bones next to remains of an ancient computer monitor, having died while reading a web page two million years ago? No, the modern world was created by people with large brains, not small brains, indicating that we are the pinnacle of human evolution, and brain size is why, brain size does matter, it makes all the difference.
Finally, to return to our points above, what determines the moral worth of a person? Imagine an asteroid is found to be hurtling towards earth and if it is not stopped, we will all die. Who would you ask to save us, Werner von Braun or Schlitzie the Clown? Is is better to populate the earth with Werners or Schlitzies? Or Colmes versus Bassous? Which would be better able to solve the problems we face as a species, whatever those threats might be? I think you know the answer, and if not, you are on the wrong side of the divide between smart and dumb, evolved or archaic, spacefarer or retard.
Click here to read part 2 of this paper.