Despite the sometimes disingenuous attempts by practitioners of these pseudo-sciences to make the connection, all fell short of any definitive, quantifiable relationship. Moving into the science of racial superiority, Gould then identifies a series of attempts by nineteenth century scientists to correlate physical features with levels of intellect, including phrenology, crainometry, and morphology. Gould uses American icons such as Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln to illustrate how pervasive this belief was, even among those we venerate as enlightened. Gould begins his study with a narrative history of the Western European and American search for proof of the hereditarian nature of mental prowess, particularly in the United States. In The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould, prominent American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science exposes the myths behind standardized testing of human intelligence and the latent racism of its application.
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