----- Original Message -----
From: Durant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>We were tallking about intelligence, not some rare genetic
>decease. It is not even an accepted fact that intelligence
>is inheritable. So - you are saying, that most of humanity
I don't want to get in a fight about IQ, but the scientists say it is at
least partially inherited Besides the discipline of evolutionary
psychology,
the molecular biologists (who have nothing to evolutionary theory) find that
genes have a great deal to do with human behavior:
"The emerging science of molecular biology has made startling discoveries
that show beyond a doubt that genes are the single most important factor
that distinguishes one person from another. We come in large part ready-made
from the factory. We accept that we look like our parents and other blood
relatives; we have a harder time with the idea that we also act like them.
In other species, we value and encourage genetic differences in
'personality.' Consider the difference between a Wisconsin dairy cow and a
bull from Pamplona, or a golden retriever and a pit bull. Human breeding is
less orderly, but children do share personality traits with their parents.
Every grown man has experienced a shock of realization when he does
something exactly like his father before him. Every mother has a similar
experience when a child behaves exactly like her. This is not bad; it's
beautiful. This does not mean we are doomed to become our parents; it means
we begin our journeys where our parents left off." [pp. 11,12, LIVING WITH
OUR GENES: Why They Matter More Than You Think, by Dean Homer & Peter
Copeland; Doubleday, 1988 ]
But getting people to accept new knowlege has always been difficult:
"… wherein it is set forth that the doctrine attributed to Copernicus, that
the Earth moves around the Sun and that the Sun is stationary in the center
of the world and does not move from east to west, is contrary to the Holy
Scriptures and therefore cannot be defended or held. In witness whereof we
have written and subscribed these presents with our hand this twenty-sixth
day of May, 1616." -- Robertro Cardinal Bellarmino
"Of all hatreds, there is none greater than that of ignorance against
knowledge." -- Galileo Galilei, June 30, 1616
Jay
