When an instrument crosses borders: measuring mind in early twentieth-century France and America

• Autores: John M. Carson III
• Localización: The Circulation of Science and Technology: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science. Barcelona, 18-20 November 2010 / coord. por Antoni M. Roca Rosell, 2012, ISBN 978-84-9965-108-8, págs. 638-642
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • How have modern democracies squared their commitment to equality with the fear that disparities in talent and intelligence might be natural, persistent, and consequential? This talk explores the story of how the American and French republics turned to the sciences of human nature, and specifically particular practices of measurement, to help make sense of the meaning of human inequality. These sciences’ exploration of the status and character of human mental differences, it contends, provided a range of political theorists, social scientists, and practical politicians with seemingly objective grounds for interrogating the limits of human equality and developing what could be represented as a justifiable basis for social distinctions. In general, mental philosophers and political theorists on both sides of the Atlantic argued that if the “false” distinctions of wealth or family background or beauty or any of the other accidents of birth could be eliminated, then the “true” ones, those reflecting fundamental aspects of a person’s nature, could come to the fore. However, over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the specific ways in which each society responded to the evolving sciences of human nature diverged sharply as these nations addressed the problem of balancing equality and difference. This talk will investigate the nature of that divergence and the crucial role that determinations of, and contestations over, ways of assessing intelligence played in both societies, constituting shadow languages of inequality used to help organize educational systems, justify racial hierarchies, classify army recruits, and direct individuals onto particular educational and career paths. It will also explore some of the hesitations about, and resistances to, these practices as they were elaborated and enacted.