Two Opposed Ideas
6th June 2018
Steve Sailer reviews the new book She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity.
The energetic science journalist Carl Zimmer might seem well-endowed by ancestry to broker a moderate compromise between the warring tribes on the subject of heredity. In She Has Her Mother’s Laugh, he reports that his DNA test shows he is 43 percent Ashkenazi through his father, former Republican congressman Dick Zimmer, while his mother, a Goodspeed, is largely from pre–Ellis Island stock.
Zimmer has come up with a double track solution to meet popular demand for vilification of the old scientists while still making sense of the history. Thus, Zimmer starts off in the Gouldian vein with lots on how evil and wrong were the old Protestants like Linnaeus and Galton. He brings in Gould’s pals Richard Lewontin, Leon Kamin, and Steven Rose to set everybody straight.
But, hundreds of pages later, Zimmer goes back to admit that Linnaeus and Galton and the like had made huge innovations. And, by the way, he concedes: You know that IQ testing stuff? Well, it’s basically good science.