Morton was an adherent to polygeny, the theory that the races of man have separate origins, which allows one to ethically endorse all sorts of racist practices. His discussion of Samuel George Morton, who measured over one thousand skulls in order to prove black mental inferiority, is fascinating (see pp. His gist is that science will always be a culturally embedded enterprise, so rather than deny that fact, scientists should work to understand their biases, because, ideally, science can "be a powerful agent for questioning and even overturning the assumptions that nurture it" (55). As he states it, "I criticize the myth that science itself is an objective enterprise, done properly only when scientists can shuck the constraints of their culture and view the world as it really is" (53). It's a nuanced critique of objectivity from someone who (unlike many who critique objectivity) is sympathetic to the overall epistemology of science.
Stephen Jay Gould takes on everyone who's ever tried to quantify human intelligence with a simple numerical value, be it measuring skull capacities or the Stanford-Binet "intelligence quotient." It's an illuminating look at how easy it is to blind yourself.
0 kommentar(er)
