Modern-Day Galileo: J. Philippe Rushton (1943-2012)

Big Think ^ | Oct. 10th, 2012 | Satoshi Kanazawa

[River Hawk]

Last week the world of science lost one of its most courageous and brilliant practitioners, and I have lost a dear friend and colleague. On 02 October, J. Philippe Rushton passed away at an infuriatingly young age of 68.

I first learned of Phil’s work in 1999 when, as a then member of the Social Psychology Section of the American Sociological Association, I received a complimentary copy of the abridged edition of Race, Evolution and Behavior, which Phil had sent to all 600+ members of the Section at his personal expense. I read it right away, then I purchased and read the unabridged version.

When I met Phil in person for the first time the following year, I could not believe that a man so intensely hated in public (nearly always by idiots who did not know him personally and who did not know anything about science) could be so gentle, genial, and generous in person. His very kind and mild manners always impressed me, especially in stark contrast to how people thought and assumed he was.

Here’s one of my most favorite pictures in the world, which I call “The four most hated men in science, and Jim Flynn.” The four most hated men are, from left to right, J. Philippe Rushton, Helmuth Nyborg, Richard Lynn, and yours truly, with James R. Flynn at the center. The picture was taken at the 2007 conference of the International Society for Intelligence Research, by a young intelligence researcher Jonathan Wai. I proudly display this picture in my office at LSE. My latest book The Intelligence Paradox: Why the Intelligent Choice Isn’t Always the Smart One is partly dedicated to Phil, as well as to the other two most hated men in the photo and other courageous pioneers in the field of intelligence research. I can’t believe there can’t be any more pictures like this with Phil.

Here’s another picture of Phil and me, also taken by Jon at the same conference. It simultaneously displays Phil’s gentle nature and my characteristic inability to make eye contact. The behavior geneticist Robert Plomin is in the background.

There’s another picture that I love, even though neither Phil nor I are in it. In the early 1990s, during the height of the controversy about his work and student protests against him on the campus of the University of Western Ontario, where Phil taught most of his career, a photographer from the student newspaper, the Western Gazette, captured an image of a black student protestor vandalizing Phil’s office and spray-painting on the door “Racists pig live here.” If that’s not supreme irony, I don’t know what is. There is one very small consolation in Phil’s tragically early death: Phil was not an artist, he was a scientist. When an artist dies, his art dies with him, which is why there has not been (and will never be) Beethoven’s 10th Symphony or Guernica II. Unlike art, however, science is cumulative. The rest of us can honor his memory and his scientific legacy by continuing his work. Phil was simultaneously a tremendous role model and a very tough act to follow. He was a model of scientific integrity. Unlike Galileo, he never recanted.

[SatinDoll]

I have an IQ over 120 and have a college degree. My sister has an IQ of 95 and cannot read above a 4th grade level. Her son, my nephew, has an IQ of 151 but hates school and wants to be a mechanic. Because my nephew’s parents were drug addicts who abandoned their son at age four, I reared him. So, where did that high IQ number come from?

I do not consider the “inheritance” of IQ as being the only factor in the intelligence any group BECAUSE it is one of many inherited and environmental factors in a group of people. As I’ve already said, the intelligence bell curve for an ethnic or racial group may indicate a cultural attitude towards education, the result that “some cultures stress working hard in school” while others do not.

In the United States we have groups of people who came here for a variety of reasons. People who emigrated from China and Japan did so because they sought opportunities not available at home and wanted to improve their economic success. Black slaves were forced here against their will, and those with leadership ability, generally associated with intelligence, were murdered to produce a docile population. The dynamics of a group’s genetics is the result of the survivors who reproduce within that group.

What I said in the above paragraph may have a great deal to do with the difference in IQ between Asians and Blacks. That doesn’t mean individuals with high and low intelligence only appear in one ethnic or racial group and not the other.

[driftless2]

I don't consider intelligence something totally inherited either. It's both nature and nurture. But if inherited IQ is not the biggest determinant in careers and occupations requiring a lot of smarts, then you could find appreciable numbers of physicists, mathematicians, scientists, etc. with low or average IQs. I don't think you can. And I'll add I don't believe in superior races because I don't believe in the concept of race. But for whatever reasons certain ethnic groups have developed higher rates of intelligence, IQ if you want, than other groups.

Over time that may change. The Greeks aren't producing more Socrates, Platos, Archimedes, Aristotles, or other Greek geniuses of 2000+ years ago. Greeks aren't inferior. I'm sure there are many Greeks a lot smarter than me. I'm sure there are many Black and Mexican Americans smarter than me. Heck, Tom Sowell is probably the smartest American alive everything considered. But I'll reiterate...at the present time certain ethnic groups have higher rates of intelligence than other groups. The facts are irrefutable.