Intellectual Ability and Speed of Performance: Galen to Galton

See for example Eysenck Hans , “The concept of ‘intelligence’: Useful or useless?”, Intelligence, xii (1988), 1–16.

In Plato , Meno (Cambridge MA, 1924), 286–90, it is the basis for innate knowledge. For all classical texts I have referred the reader to the Loeb edition, but translations are my own.

See Kenny Anthony , The metaphysics of mind (Oxford, 1989), 66.

Aristotle , Topics (Cambridge MA, 1960), 411–13.

Galen , Ars medica, in Kuhn C. (ed.), Opera omnia (Hildesheim, 1964), i, 352; Singer Peter , Galen: Selected works (Oxford, 1997).

See Park Katherine , “The organic soul”, in Schmitt C. Skinner Q. (eds), The Cambridge history of Renaissance philosophy (Cambridge, 1998), 464–84.

Spearman Charles , “General intelligence, objectively derived and measured”, American journal of psychology, xv (1904), 201–93.

See also Danziger Kurt , Naming the mind (London, 1997), 83.

See for example Gould Stephen , The mismeasure of.man (New York, 1981), 149.

The ground is covered in Green Ian , The Christian's ABC: Catechisms and catechizing in England c. 1530–1740 (Oxford, 1996). Napoleon had already tried to control and secularize church institutions with his “imperial catechism”, which tested for his subjects' understanding of their duties towards himself (and God).

Thus applied psychology preceded pure psychology. See Danziger Kurt , Constructing the subject (Cambridge, 1990), 79, and Porter Theodore , Trust in numbers: The pursuit of objectivity in science and public life (Princeton, 1995), 209.

Piaget Jean , Logic and psychology (Manchester, 1953).

See Hasse Dag Nikolaus , “Avicenna on abstraction”, in Wisnovsky R. (ed.), Aspects of Avicenna (Princeton, 2001), 39–72.

In addition, there is the reflexive notion that our definitions of essential human abilities change because the essence of our psychological “nature” is itself changing: Roberts R. Stankov L. , “Individual differences in speed of mental processing and human cognitive abilities: Toward a taxonomic model”, Learning and individual differences, xi (1999), 1–17.

Haier Richard , “The use of positron emission tomography …”, Intelligence, xii (1988), 199–217.

Michell Joel , Measurement in psychology: A critical history of a methodological concept (Cambridge, 1999).

Hippocrates , On regimen (Cambridge MA, 1979), 281.

de Le Boë Frans , The practice of physick (London, 1717), 373.

For example Wober M. , “Towards an understanding of the Kiganda concept of intelligence”, in Berry J. Dasen P. (eds), Culture and cognition: Readings in cross-cultural psychology (London, 1974), 261–81.

Nicholas of Cusa's Apologia doctae ignorantiae is the classic example. This tradition tends to be merely sceptical or ironic.

Dols Michael , Majnun: The madman in medieval Islamic society (Oxford, 1992), 370.

Plato , Theaetetus (Cambridge MA, 1977), 197.

Robinson Daniel , An intellectual history of psychology (Madison, 1986), 52.

It was the Stoics who introduced the more familiar and influential term ‘impressions’. See Long A. A. Sedley D. N. (eds), The Hellenistic philosophers (Cambridge, 1987), i, 236–58.

Plato , The laws (Cambridge MA, 1926), i, 210.

He says here that the “all-wise Homer” praised “rough” and “dirty” souls. Any reference by Plato to Homer will be ironic, with sophists the usual target. The dirt is theirs.

Aristotle , De anima and De memoria (Cambridge MA, 1986), 168 and 294 respectively.

Draaisma Douwe , Metaphors of memory (Cambridge, 2000), 24.

Aristotle , Posterior analytics (Cambridge MA, 1960), 171.

See Détienne Marcel Vernant Jean-Pierre , Cunning intelligence in Greek culture and society (Atlantic Highlands NJ, 1978), 308.

Galen , Ars medica (ref. 5), i, 319.

See Ottosson Per Gunnar , Scholastic medicine and philosophy (Naples, 1984), and Joutsivuo Timo , Scholastic tradition and humanist innovation (Helsinki, 1999).

Torrigiano Pietro [d. c. 1320], Plusquam commentum in parvam Galeni artem (Venice, 1557), 39v–54r. Torrigiano may not have been the first to make these elisions. The best-known commentator before Torrigiano was Taddeo Alderotti [c. 1215–95], the pioneer of scholastic method in medicine. Copies of Alderotti are extremely rare, and I have been unable to consult one. In terms of direct influence on Renaissance medicine, Torrigiano's is the important text.

Both translations are included in the edition of Torrigiano cited above.

Leoniceno Niccolò , Galeni ars medicinalis (Venice, 1508).

See for example d'Abano Pietro [1250–1315], Conciliator controversiarum, quae inter philosophos et medicos versantur (Venice, 1548), 114. Ingenium in this sense may be imputed to women, who are incapable of abstract thought. It can also be diabolic. There is a further range of literary references in which ingenium is something like “character” or “spirit”, as in “the human spirit”, “the Roman character”, etc.

See Cicero , On oratory (Cambridge MA, 1942), 80, where he defines it in detail. What he commends about ingenium is exactly what Plato disliked about speed. The De oratore was revived only around Leoniceno's time; this was the text that then introduced the term into the general vocabulary. On rhetorical usages of the term, see Hidalgo-Serna E. , “The philosophy of ‘ingenium’”, Philosophy and rhetoric, xiii (1980), 245–63.

Leoniceno insisted on a knowledge of Greek, for comparison with Latin translations. His 1492 volume on Pliny launched into print not only medical humanism but scientific humanism in general. See Nutton Vivian , “Greek science in the sixteenth-century Renaissance”, in Field J. James F. (eds), Renaissance and revolution: Humanists, scholars, craftsmen and natural philosophers in early modern Europe (Cambridge, 1993), 15–28.

See D'Abano , op. cit. (ref. 36).

For a more nuanced view of Galen's position, see Lloyd Geoffrey , “Scholarship, authority and argument in Galen's Quod animi mores”, in Manuli P. Vegetti M. (eds), Le opere psichologice de Galeno (Pavia, 1988), 11–42.

Ibn Sina's account is actually more complex than this. See Bruyn George , “The seat of the soul”, in Rose F. Bynum W. (eds), Historical aspects of the neurosciences (New York, 1982), 55–81; Harvey E. Ruth , The inward wits: Psychological theory in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (London, 1975); and Siraisi Nancy , Taddeo Alderotti and his pupils: Two generations of Italian medical learning (Princeton, 1981), 209ff.

Milton , Paradise lost, v, I.100ff.

Ibn Sina's Renaissance descendants made these virtually coterminous with the “virtues”, which he had separated out.

Magnus Albertus , Summae de creaturis (Venice, 1519), 118. On his importance to the history of psychology see Park Katherine , “Albert's influence on late medieval psychology”, in Weisheipl J. A. (ed), Albertus Magnus and the sciences (Toronto, 1980), 501–36.

See Park , op. cit. (ref. 41), 481.

This needs qualifying. In the exceptional cases of the “prophet” and the melancholy genius, contemplatio was so quick that it took place in zero time. See Brann Noel , The debate over the origin of genius during the Italian Renaissance (Leiden, 2002), 89. For the classical complexity of this matter see Sorabji Richard , Time, motion and the continuum (London, 1983), 139.

Oddi Oddo Degli [1478–1558], Expositio in librum artis medicinalis Galeni (Venice, 1574), 132. Historiographical discussion of the merits of differing translations becomes common at a certain point: See also Sciano Salvo , Commentaria praeclarissima artis medicinalis Galeni (Venice, 1597), 320. According to Scaliger Joseph , Exotericarum exercitationum liber de subtilitate (Lyons, 1615), 1, Oddi took Cicero's and Aristotle's accounts to be identical.

Argenterio Giovanni [1513–72], In artem medicinalem Galeni commentarii tres (Turin, 1566), 218. The targeted opponent is Akakia Martin (1497–1551), Galeni ars medica (Venice, 1544). A similar point is made by the later commentator Santorio Santorio , Commentaria in artem medicinalem Galeni (Venice, 1630), 200.

Fiera Battista [1465–1538],Commentaria novae doctrinae in Artem medicinalem diffinitivam Galeni (Mantua, 1515), ii, n.p.

Publication coincided with the Church's attack on those who held that immortality of the soul could not be philosophically proven and was a matter for faith alone (the so-called “Pomponazzi affair”).

Gockel Rudolf [Goclenius, 1572–1621], Hoc est, de hominis perfectione (Wittenberg, 1590).

de Dryvère Jérémie [1504–54], In Galeni commentarii (Lyons, 1547), 120.

Valles Francisco [1524–92], Galeni ars medicinalis commentariis (Alcalá de Henares, 1567), 31.

da Monte Giambattista [1498–1551], In artem parvam Galeni explanationes (Lyons, 1556), 310. Talk of differentiae suggests that the reference is to Aristotle's Categories rather than to the Posterior analytics.

Da Monte also hints here at Galen's “mobility of opinion”, identified in the very next sentence of The art of medicine as inconstancy of intellect and will. “Sometimes they persist in one thing,” says Da Monte, “then in another, then another”. This was a deficiency which, unlike slowness, most certainly was pathological and had moral overtones. It was embodied in the usual suspects such as women, Jews and Moors, and was especially characteristic of the mobile vulgus or “mob” for short. Mobilitas is alive and well today: The prescribed cure is Ritalin.

Tozzi Luca [1638–1717], In artem medicinalem Galeni ; in Opera omnia (Venice, 1711), ii, 1–206, p. 42.

As, for example, the widely consulted Rivière Lazare [1589–1655], Institutiones medicae (Lyons, 1656). The imagination was “that to which the varying disposition of the ingenium and the passions of the soul are referred”.

Santorio , op. cit. (ref. 48), 191, for example, approves quickness of apprehension in the same breath as approving the Hippocratic text which describes intelligence as a balance between fast and slow.

Descartes René , Regulae ad directionem ingenii (Amsterdam, 1998), 136, 139.

Locke John , An essay concerning human understanding (Oxford, 1975), 156.

Hartley David , Observations on man (London, 1749), i, 30.

Mill James , Analysis of the phenomena of the human mind (London, 1869), ii, 345.

Brann , op. cit. (ref. 46), 3.

D'Abano , op. cit. (ref. 36), diff. 37.

Kilmister Clive , “Genius in mathematics”, in Murray P. (ed.), Genius: The history of an idea (Oxford, 1989), 181–95. On the association in Newton's own mind between his elect status, his scientific genius and his interest in prophecy, see Barnett Stephen , “The prophetic thought of Sir Isaac Newton, its origin and context”, in Taithe B. Thornton T. (eds), Prophecy: The power of inspired language in history, 1300–2000 (Stroud, 1997), 101–18.

Warwick Andrew , Masters of theory: Cambridge and the rise of mathematical physics (Chicago, 2003), 130ff.

Daston Lorraine , “Enlightenment calculations”, Critical inquiry, xxi (1994), 182–202.

Ashworth William , “Memory, efficiency, and symbolic analysis: Charles Babbage, John Herschel, and the industrial mind”, Isis, lxxxvii (1996), 629–53.

Goodey C. F. , “From natural disability to the moral man: Calvinism and the history of psychology”, History of the human sciences, xiv (2001), 1–29.

Fenn Richard , The persistence of purgatory (Cambridge, 1995), 73ff.

Schaffer Simon , “Babbage's intelligence: Calculating machines and the factory system”, Critical inquiry, xxi (1994), 203–27.

See Wooldridge Adrian , Measuring the mind: Education and psychology in England, c. 1860 – c. 1890 (Cambridge, 1994), 75.

Galton Francis , Hereditary genius: Memories of my life (London, 1908).

Galton scarcely used the word ‘intelligence’. The particular concept which it describes only emerged with Binet and Spearman, around the time of Galton's death. In France the word was a trademark of anti-clerical republicanism, in England of the godless crew at University College. However, both traditions had remote origins in the doctrine of the elect. In France this came from Jansenism via Jacobinism, in England from Calvinism via the Dissenters.

See the chapter on honour in James M. E. , Society, politics and culture: Studies in early modern England (Cambridge, 1986).

Galton Francis , Inquiries into human faculty and its development (London, 1883), 234. No doubt his appeal to the clergy was partly rhetorical.

Wooldridge , op. cit. (ref. 72), 75.

For a French version of this phenomenon, discussed in terms of speed among other things, see Bourdieu Pierre , “Epreuve scolaire et consécration sociale”, in Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, xxxix (1981), 3–70.

Hacking Ian , The taming of chance (Cambridge, 1990), 107 (italics in original).

Boring Edwin , A history of experimental psychology (New York, 1929), 133.

Müller Johannes , Elements of physiology (London, 1842), 678ff.

Benschop Ruth Draaisma Douwe , “In pursuit of precision: The calibration of minds and machines in late nineteenth-century psychology”, Annals of science, lvii (2000), 1–25.

Brožek Josef Sibinga Maarten , Origins of psychometry: Johan Jacob de Jaager, student of F. C. Donders (Nieuwkoop, 1970), 12.

Donders , in Benschop Draaisma , op. cit. (ref. 82).

Cattell James , “Mental tests and measurement”, Mind, xv (1890), 373–81. Galton's comment is appended to the article.

See Benschop Draaisma , op. cit. (ref. 82), and Fancher Raymond , The intelligence men: Makers of the IQ controversy (New York, 1985), 48.

Peak Helen Boring Edwin , “The factor of speed in intelligence”, Journal of experimental psychology, ix (1926), 71–94; Thorndike Edward , The measurement of intelligence (New York, 1927); and a series of articles in response in Archives of psychology , xciii (1928). Opinion on the possibility of a correlation was divided.

Richards Graham , ‘Race’, racism and psychology: Towards a reflexive history (London, 1997), 21, 32.

Furneaux W. D. , “Intellectual abilities and problem-solving behaviour”, in Eysenck H. (ed.), Handbook of abnormal psychology (London, 1960), 167–93.

Jensen Arthur , “Reaction time and psychometric g”, in Eysenck H. (ed.), A model for intelligence (New York, 1982), 93–132. For the history of this phase see Roberts Stankov , op. cit. (ref. 14). There seems to be a fudge here: “information-processing” covers both the simple processes such as “reaction” and “response to stimulus”, etc., and the complex intellectual ones of abstraction and logic.

On their links with the demands of British colonial administration and the measurement of intelligence see Sutherland Gillian , Ability, merit, and measurement: Mental testing and English education, 1880–1940 (Oxford, 1984), 97 and 115.

Haier , op. cit. (ref. 15), and Song F. , “Screening for fragile X syndrome: A literature review and modelling”, Health technology assessment publications, vii (2003). According to the latter, “Considering that the lifetime care of each Fragile X Syndrome patient will cost the NHS about £380,000, the most expensive strategy (population prenatal screening) is still cost-saving in the long term”.

The authors are not trekkies in chatrooms but philosophers in ancient universities. For example Bostrom Nick , “How long before Superintelligence?”, International journal of futures studies, ii (1998).

The most effective come from within the discipline. Apart from Michell (op. cit., ref. 16) see Richards , “Getting the intelligence controversy knotted”, Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, xxxvii (1984), 77–79.

This is not just my own association of ideas. In his chapter on intelligence in Les idées modernes sur les enfants (Paris, 1910), 98–161, p. 103, Binet defines education as “l'art de faire passer le conscient dans l'inconscient”.

Kelley Truman , Scientific method (New York, 1932), 77.

For example Richard Herrnstein, quoted by Block N. and Dworkin G. in “IQ, heritability and inequality”, in Block Dworkin (eds), The IQ controversy: Critical readings (London, 1977), 417.

Berger M. , “The ‘scientific approach’ to intelligence: An overview of its history with special reference to mental speed”, in Eysenck (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 90), 13–43.

Ascham Roger , The schoolmaster (London, 1570), 25.

On why “folk psychology” may be a contradiction in terms, see Goodey C. F. Stainton Tim , “Intellectual disability and the myth of the changeling myth”, Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences, xxxvii (2001), 223–40.

Klineberg Otto , “An experimental study of speed and other factors in ‘racial’ differences”, Archives of psychology, xciii (1928), 5–106.

This may be why statistical terminology changed. Genius stopped being “error” and became “deviation from the mean”: See Mackenzie Donald , Statistics in Britain, 1850–1830 (Edinburgh, 1981), 56.

Joseph Jay , The gene illusion (Ross-on-Wye, 2003).

See Aaron P. G. , Dyslexia and hyperlexia: Diagnosis and management of developmental reading disabilities (Dordrecht, 1989). Quotations are from the American Association for Hyperlexia website.

Robinson , op. cit. (ref. 23).

See, among others, Gould , op. cit. (ref. 9), and Rose Steven , Not in our genes: Biology, ideology and human nature (London, 1984), 83ff.

Richardson Ken , The making of intelligence (London, 1999), 3.

See French Roger Cunningham Andrew , Before science: The invention of the Friars' natural philosophy (Aldershot, 1996), and Murray Alexander , Reason and society in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1978).

See Adas Michael , Machines as the measure of men (Ithaca, 1989).

See de Libera Alain , La querelle des universaux (Paris, 1996).