The scientific study of general intelligence: Tribute to Arthur R. Jensen H. Nyborg (Ed.), 2003, Elsevier, Oxford, UK, ISBN0080437931, xxvi+642 pp (original) (raw)

This is a gem of a book and a fitting honor to a distinguished scientist and scholar. The editor cites Detterman (1998) who, in an honorary issue of the journal Intelligence, asserted that Jensen will never receive the acclaim he deserves from the standard array of professional organizations. Perhaps things have changed. In 2003, Jensen received a Lifetime Distinguished Contribution Award from the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences, only the second time the Society has made such an award in its 20-year history. Also in 2003, Jensen received Kistler Prize from the Foundation for the Future (). The first three recipients of the Kistler prize were E.O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, and Luigi Cavalli-Sforza. Very distinguished company indeed! Arthur Jensen has single-handedly reinvigorated the scientific study of human intelligence and his magnum opus-The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability (Jensen, 1998) (henceforth, SMA)-will remain a definitive work for many years to come. As Jensen has shown, g lies at the nexus of a large set of causal empirical relationships that encompass every aspect of human life, from birth to death. This nexus links psychology to biology, genetics, neuroscience, sociology, demography, the humanities, and the arts. There is an emerging discipline called the Epidemiology of Human Intelligence. The book under review follows the Bell Curve (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994) and SMA in helping lay the foundations of that discipline. The first step in an epidemiological investigation is adequate delineation of the constructs under investigation. In chap. 1, John Carroll, in one of the last publications of his exceptionally distinguished career, fulfills this requirement beautifully and concisely, laying out the factorial foundations of g and special mental abilities. The second step is explication of the biology of the construct under study. The next five chapters begin this task by laying out the biology of g and describing numerous fascinating findings. The MRI studies linking IQ to brain size, for example, firmly establish a finding that only a few years ago Steven J. Gould told us was completely implausible. The third step is sociological and the next three chapters lay out the demography of g (geographic, race, and sex differences). The fourth step in an epidemiological study is explication of the causal network. The next seven chapters deal with the g nexus (genius, mental retardation, training, education, jobs, life, and crime). Dean Keith Simonton's chapter on 'Genius and g' is pure gold. Linda Gottfredson's chapter on 'g, jobs and life' is a major tour de force with the section on health literacy introducing the reader to a body of work that will eventually form the foundations of the practice of health psychology (more epidemiology). Along these lines, a chapter dealing with the brilliant epidemiological work of Ian Deary's group in Edinburgh linking data from the 1932 Scottish Mental Survey to later life outcomes would have Intelligence 32 (2004) 215 -219 Nuffield Council on Bioethics, F. (2002). Genetics and human behaviour: The ethical context. Enfield, England: Nuffield Council on Bioethics.