This book was immediately hailed as a masterwork when first published in 1981, the answer to those who would rank people according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits. And yet the idea of innate limits--of biology as destiny--dies hard, as witness the attention devoted to "The Bell Curve," whose arguments are here so effectively anticipated and thoroughly undermined by biologist Gould. In this revised edition, Dr. Gould traces the subsequent history of the controversy on innateness. Further, he has added five essays on questions of "The Bell Curve" in particular and on race, racism, and biological determinism in general.--From publisher description.

Introduction to the revised and expanded edition : thoughts at age fifteen -- The frame of The Mismeasure of man -- Why revise The Mismeasure of man after fifteen years? -- Reasons, history and revision of The Mismeasure of man -- I. Introduction -- 2. American polygeny and craniometry before Darwin : Blacks and Indians as separate, inferior species -- A shared context of culture -- Preevolutionary styles of scientific racism : monogenism and polygenism -- Louis Agassiz, America's theorist of polygeny -- Samuel George Morton, empiricist of polygeny -- The case of Indian inferiority : Crania Americana -- The case of the Egyptian catacombs : Crania Aegyptiaca -- The case of the shifting Black mean -- The final tabulation of 1849 -- Conclusions -- The American school and slavery -- 3. Measuring heads : Paul Broca and the heyday of craniology -- The allure of numbers -- Introduction -- Francis Galton, apostle of quantification -- A curtain-raiser with a moral : numbers do not guarantee truth -- Masters of craniometry : Paul Broca and his school -- The great circle route -- Selecting characters -- Averting anomalies -- Big-brained Germans -- Small-brained men of eminence -- Large-brained criminals -- Flaws in a pattern of increase through time -- Front and back -- The cranial index -- The case of the foramen magnum -- Women's brains -- Postscript -- 4. Measuring bodies : two case studies on the apishness of undesirables -- The ape in all of us : recapitulation -- The ape in some of us : criminal anthropology -- Atavism and criminality -- Animals and savages as born criminals -- The stigmata : anatomical, physiological, and social -- Lombroso's retreat -- The influence of criminal anthropology -- Coda -- Epilogue -- 5. The hereditarian theory of IQ : an American invention -- Alfred Binet and the original purposes of the Binet scale -- Binet flirts with craniometry -- Binet's scale and the birth of IQ -- The dismantling of Binet's intentions in America -- H.H. Goddard and the menace of the feeble-minded -- Intelligence as a Mendelian gene -- Goddard identifies the moron -- A unilinear scale of intelligence -- Breaking the scale into Mendelian compartments -- The proper care and feeding (but not breeding) of morons -- Preventing the immigration and propagation of morons -- Goddard recants -- Lewis M. Terman and the mass marketing of innate IQ -- Mass testing and the Stanford-Binet -- Terman's technocracy of innateness -- Fossil IQ's of past geniuses -- Terman on group differences -- Terman recants -- R.M. Yerkes and the army mental tests : IQ comes of age -- Psychology's great leap forward -- Results of the army tests -- A critique of the army mental tests -- The content of the tests -- Inadequate conditions -- Dubious and perverse proceedings : a personal testimony -- Finagling the summary statistics : the problem of zero values -- Finagling the summary statistics : getting around obvious correlations with environment -- Political impact of the army data -- Can democracy survive an average mental age of thirteen? -- The army test and agitation to restrict immigration : Brigham's monograph of American intelligence -- The triumph of restriction on immigration -- Brigham recants -- 6. The real error of Cyril Burt : factor analysis and the reification of intelligence -- The case of Sir Cyril Burt -- Correlation, cause, and factor analysis -- Correlation and cause -- Correlation in more than two dimensions -- Factor analysis and its goals -- The error of reification -- Rotation and the nonnecessity of principal components -- Charles Spearman and general intelligence -- The two-factor theory -- The method of tetrad differences -- Spearman's g and the great instauration of psychology -- Spearman's g and the theoretical justification of IQ -- Spearman's reification of g -- Spearman on the inheritance of g -- Cyril Burt and the hereditarian synthesis -- The source of Burt's uncompromising hereditarianism -- Burt's initial "proof" on innateness -- Later arguments -- Burt's blindness -- Burt's political use of innateness -- Burt's extension of Spearman's theory -- Burt on the reification of factors -- Burt and the political uses of g -- L.L. Thurstone and the vectors of mind -- Thurstone's critique and reconstruction -- The egalitarian interpretation of PMA's -- Spearman and Burt react -- Oblique axes and second-order g -- Thurston on the uses of factor analysis -- Epilogue : Arthur Jensen and the resurrection of Spearman's g -- A final thought -- 7. A positive conclusion -- Debunking a positive science -- Learning by debunking -- Biology and human nature -- Epilogue -- Critique of The Bell curve -- The Bell curve -- Disingenuousness of content -- Disingenuousness of argument -- Disingenuousness of program -- Ghosts of Bell curves past -- Three centuries' perspectives on race and racism -- Age-old fallacies of thinking and stinking -- Racial geometry -- The moral state of Tahiti, and of Darwin.