Richard Lynn was so kind to send me a signed copy of his latest book. i immediately paused the reading of another book to read this one. some comments and quotes are below. quotes are from the ebook version of the book which i found on the internet.<\/p>\n
Richard Lynn, Tatu Vanhanan – Intelligence, a A Unifying Construct for the Social Sciences, 2012<\/a><\/p>\n Some general conclusions about the book. All in all this is a typical Richard Lynn book. It has a very dry style, and is somewhat repetitive. On the other hand, it is not overly long at 400 pages. Many of these are long lists of tables, so are not normally read except if one wants to look up specific countries. It would perhaps have been a good idea to just publish them on the internet for the curious and other researchers. The book contains a wealth of citations revealing a very impressive scholarship. The areas investigated on a global level are many, and the results interesting. The people who think that national IQs are “meaningless” and that human races do not exist or are social constructions (whatever that means, if anything) have the difficult job of explaining why, if these numbers are meaningless, do they fare so well in predicting things on a global level? In other words, why do they have so high validity for a multitude of things? One cannot just regard IQ as “academic intelligence” or some such thing if one can effectively use national IQs to predict things like the lack of proper sanitation. Most often national IQs are found to be better predictors than various non-IQ variables. Although one some occasions I would have liked the authors to use some more variables to see whether they made an impact. I think the authors are sometimes a bit too pessimistic about the possibilities of changing the situation for the low-IQ countries, but I agree with them that one should not expect many of these correlations to change drastically in the near future.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The introduction of the book neatly and shortly explains what the book is about:<\/p>\n The physical sciences are unified by a few common theoretical<\/span> Hitherto, the social sciences have lacked common unifying<\/span> It is difficult to disagree with this.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n one of the things that bother me with the Health chapter is that it doesnt try to compare with and adjoin with the data from The Spirit Level<\/em><\/a>. The authors of SPL contend that many of the things that Lynn&Vanhanan (LV) thinks is due to intelligence, is really due to economic (in)equality. unfortunately, LV does not try to control for this. it wud be interesting to see if the effects of high econ. equality goes away if one controls for intelligence. in other words, that the effects of econ. equality is really just intelligence working thru it.<\/p>\n For a video introduction to the SPL, see this:<\/p>\nReview<\/h3>\n
Thoughts and comments to various things<\/h3>\n
\nconstructs, such as mass, energy, pressure, atoms, molecules and<\/span>
\nmomentum, that are defined and measured in the same ways and<\/span>
\nexplain a wide range of phenomena in physics, astrophysics,<\/span>
\nchemistry and biochemistry. This has been beneficial for the<\/span>
\ndevelopment of the physical sciences, because it has allowed the<\/span>
\ntransfer of concepts from one field to others. It has allowed<\/span>
\ninterface subjects like chemical physics and biochemistry to<\/span>
\ndevelop their own insights and concepts on the basis of those<\/span>
\nalready developed in their parent fields. Physics is the most basic<\/span>
\nof the natural sciences, because the phenomena of the others can<\/span>
\nbe explained by the laws of physics. For this reason, physics has<\/span>
\nbeen called the queen of the physical sciences.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nconstructs of this kind. The disciplines of the social sciences,<\/span>
\ncomprising psychology, economics, political science,<\/span>
\ndemography, sociology, criminology, anthropology and<\/span>
\nepidemiology are largely isolated from one another, each with<\/span>
\ntheir own vocabulary and theoretical constructs.<\/span>
\nPsychology can be considered the most basic of the social<\/span>
\nsciences because it is concerned with differences between<\/span>
\nindividuals, while the other social sciences are principally<\/span>
\nconcerned with differences between groups such as socio-<\/span>
\neconomic classes, ethnic and racial populations, regions within<\/span>
\ncountries, and nations. These groups are aggregates of<\/span>
\nindividuals, so the laws that have been established in psychology<\/span>
\nshould be applicable to the group phenomena that are the concern<\/span>
\nof the other social sciences.<\/span>
\nOur objective in this book is to develop the case that the<\/span>
\npsychological construct of intelligence can be a unifying<\/span>
\nexplanatory construct for the social sciences. Intelligence is<\/span>
\nmeasured by the intelligence test that was constructed by Alfred<\/span>
\nBinet in 1905. During the succeeding century it has been shown<\/span>
\nthat intelligence, measured as the IQ (the intelligence quotient),<\/span>
\nis a determinant of many important social phenomena,<\/span>
\nincluding educational attainment, earnings, socio-economic<\/span>
\nstatus, crime and health. Our theme is that the explanatory value<\/span>
\nof intelligence that has been established for individuals can be<\/span>
\nextended to the explanation of the differences between groups,<\/span>
\nthat have been found in the other social sciences, and in<\/span>
\nparticular to the explanation of the differences between nations.<\/span>
\nThus, we propose that psychology is potentially the queen of<\/span>
\nthe social sciences, analogous to the position of physics as the<\/span>
\nqueen of the physical sciences. (p. 1-2)<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n