Richard Pisacreta wrote:

> I suggest the never ending controversy over what intelligence is, how to
> measure it (only psych can say we don't have a consensus on what it is, but
> here are five tests to measure it)
> How much of it is nature and how much nurture.

    I agree, this is the mother of controversial issues - if by controversial we
mean debate _outside_ the circle of experts who study it. Inside this circle
there is wide-spead agreement on many measurement issues, heritability, and so
forth. In fact, we measure intelligence as good as we measure any other complex
trait, as evidenced by the extensive ability of intelligence scores to predict
real-life outcomes.
    If you want another controversy that has not been in the news, look at
Kingsley Browne's _Divided Labours: An Evolutinary View of Women at Work_ (1998,
Yale). It's an evolutionary explanation of what is known as the "glass ceiling"
effect for women.
    If by controversy we mean a new paradigm in the making, then I'd vote for
evolutionary psychology. The issue here will be finding methods to evaluate
claims made by evolutionary psychologists. There is alot of speculation about
what is an adaptation (as opposed to an evolutionary by-product), what modules
are, and so forth.

--
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John W. Kulig                        [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of Psychology             http://oz.plymouth.edu/~kulig
Plymouth State College               tel: (603) 535-2468
Plymouth NH USA 03264                fax: (603) 535-2412
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"What a man often sees he does not wonder at, although he knows
not why it happens; if something occurs which he has not seen before,
he thinks it is a marvel" - Cicero.


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