The Development of Theory

This book is a good study in how theory comes into being. Scientists, influenced heavily by Darwin's Theory of Evolution, feel that there has to be a biological basis for intelligence, and they being to look for it. That is what this book is about. The early theories were based on biological determinism, or the belief that intelligence was biological. If intelligence is an inherited trait, then there has to be a way to measure it. This is what early scientists try to do with craniometry, which was the measuring of the brain size that was used as an indicator of intelligence.

Gould presents the information that shows how theories are developed. A scientist's work is presented, another scientist duplicates the methodology and compares results. If the results are not the same, then an explanation must be offered as to why. This is what Gould...