Why Biology Is Not Destiny
Ah yes. Unlike the rest of the human body, the brain is the one organ independent of genetics and untouched by evolution.<p>&gt; The idea of a biological hierarchy of intelligence arose alongside the first theories of human evolution. It never goes away when discredited, just changes forms. In 1810, a year after the publication of the first modern evolutionary theory, two German doctors, Franz Joseph Gall and Johann Kaspar Spurzheim, inaugurated the science of phrenology<p>I see the usual trickery is on display in this article. Knowing that saying intelligence is totally independent of genes would sound too ridiculous even in 2022 (as proven by the absence of cats with human-level intellect), they add a poison pill to it by calling it &quot;<i>hierarchy</i> of intelligence&quot;, and then proceed to nitpick at this strawman they constructed, probably by arguing that, since intelligence isn&#x27;t one-dimensional, and different people are better at different tasks, you can&#x27;t strictly sort humans from less to more intelligent. Therefore anything goes.<p>Then it predictably proceeds to dig up phrenology (no article on genes and intelligence is complete without triumphantly debunking that), as if there has been no progress the last two centuries. May as well use alchemy and geocentrism to debunk chemistry and astronomy.<p>Anyway, I don&#x27;t know about &quot;hierarchy&quot;, but intelligence being linked to biology is anything but discredited: <i>Early twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between 57% and 73%,[6] with some recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80%.</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Heritability_of_IQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Heritability_of_IQ</a><p>Oh but that&#x27;s IQ, which is an imperfect measure, therefore anything goes... if one is determined to remain ignorant, no proof is good enough, and its smallest drawback turns into proof of the opposite - no link between genes and intelligence.