The Measure of Merit (eBook)

Talents, Intelligence, and Inequality in the French and American Republics, 1750–1940

John Carson (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
543 Seiten
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-28835-2 (ISBN)

Infos

A wide-ranging account of American and French understandings of merit, talent, and intelligence over the past two centuriesHow have modern democracies squared their commitment to equality with their fear that disparities in talent and intelligence might be natural, persistent, and consequential? John Carson tells the fascinating story of how two nations wrestled scientifically with human inequalities and their social and political implications.Surveying a broad array of political tracts, philosophical treatises, scientific works, and journalistic writings, Carson chronicles the gradual embrace of the IQ version of intelligence in the United States, while in France, the birthplace of the modern intelligence test, expert judgment was consistently prized above such quantitative measures. He also reveals the crucial role that determinations of, and contests over, merit have played in both societiesthey have helped to organize educational systems, justify racial hierarchies, classify army recruits, and direct individuals onto particular educational and career paths.A contribution to both the history of science and intellectual history, The Measure of Merit illuminates the shadow languages of inequality that have haunted the American and French republics since their inceptions.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 28.10.2025
• Zusatzinfo: 3 tables.
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Allgemeine Psychologie
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Staat / Verwaltung
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Schlagworte: Accountability • Affirmative Action • Alfred Binet • Analogy • anecdotal evidence • Arthur O. Lovejoy • association of ideas • Charles Spearman • Consciousness • credential • decentralization • Determination • Education • elitism • Equal Opportunity • Eugenics • Explanation • G. Stanley Hall • Henry H. Goddard • hereditarianism • Heritability • Holism • Human Intelligence • ideal type • Ideology • Individual Psychology • inference • Ingenuity • Innate intelligence • Intelligence Assessment • Intelligence Quotient • Intelligentsia • James Mark Baldwin • Juste Milieu • Just-noticeable difference • Malet • Marquis de Condorcet • Measurement • Melville J. Herskovits • Meritocracy • Morality • of education • On Intelligence • Perfectionism (psychology) • Philosopher • Philosophy • Phrenology • Positivism • Pragmatism • psychological evaluation • psychologist • Psychology • Race and intelligence • Relativism • result • Science • Self-Image • Self-Interest • sensibility • Solidarism • Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scales • State of nature • suggestibility • Superiority (short story) • Temple of Reason • The Administrative State • theory • Thought • treatise • Virtues (number and structure)
• ISBN-10: 0-691-28835-6 / 0691288356
• ISBN-13: 978-0-691-28835-2 / 9780691288352