This objection ignores the broader emphasis on education in all East Asian societies. China, Korea, and Japan have long been "exam cultures," even if we exclude the civil service exam. This exam grew out of values that were embedded in Confucianism and present throughout East Asia:He makes a good case but, as I've said before, I don't believe I'm in any position to judge. It seems to me that much more research would be needed before we could decide definitively one way or another.
More interesting I thought are his speculations on the difference between East and West in this area:
But why did this exam culture develop in East Asia and not in Europe? Greco-Roman society similarly valued study of classical literature and proficiency in archaic Greek and Latin (as opposed to the contemporary Koine Greek and Vulgar Latin). With the advent of Christianity, however, classical “pagan” literature became viewed with suspicion. Emphasis shifted toward study of the Bible, and such study usually involved entry into celibate religious orders. Insofar as academic success was linked to heritable predispositions, the overall impact of natural selection would have been negative.True enough as far as it goes. But how many of those with bright minds actually became celibate and spent their lives on scholarly pursuits? While at various times in the European Middle Ages the percentage of priests, monks, and nuns was relatively high - 10% is a high number I recall reading - most of these would have been involved in the rather mundane aspects of their vocations, such as ministry and administration and even manual labor. The number who did serious scholarship, such as those at the University of Paris, the institution of Thomas Aquinas, must have been quite small as a percentage.
Another aspect of this is, how much or often did academic success lead to a celibate and/or monastic life? Many who entered the Church did so for lack of alternatives, so one might imagine that only a fraction of the intellectually gifted left no children. Furthermore, celibacy wasn't strictly enforced for centuries, though it appears to have been the rule, and the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Churches had and have less strict rules, for instance celibacy for bishops only.
In short, the claim that celibacy impacted in any large way average IQs in Europe requires much more supporting evidence, in my opinion.
I agree with you:
ReplyDeleteThe Roman Catholic Church did not require celibacy of the clergy until 1079 AD, under the guidance of Pope Gregory VII, later codified by councils of 1123 and 1139. (Wiki)
....
First its first thousand years or so, Christianity did not mandate celibacy. Even after that time, it was found primarily in the Roman church, and, even there, was not well enforced. Many clergymen, for example, would not marry but took concubines and mistresses, by whom they had many children. The Eastern Christian churches were never enthusiasts, and, with the Reformation in the 16th century, celibacy declined even further, since the Protestants never had any use for it.
I would have thought that the selective pressure of many centuries of complex and centralized agricultural society, with a strong government to suppress internal violence would probably be sufficient to account for higher IQ, higher conscientiousness and lower aggression...
ReplyDeleteWithout need to evoke the exam system.
Also, I think we need to remember that natural selection on humans in the past probably worked more by reducing mortality than by increasing fertility:
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2010/02/why-are-women-so-intelligent.html
Probably these selection pressures were somewhat stronger and lasted somewhat longer in East Asia than anywhere else.
The proportion of religious (priests, monks, nuns) in Medieval Europe was about One percent accroding to the estimates I have seen.
Note (I think the following is right!) In Eastern Orthodoxy, priests must either be celibate or married (often with large families); monks are celibate and Bishops are usually selected from monks - including priests who later become monks (e.g. after their wife has died).
Isn't it more likely that the genetic traits would have existed before the cultural artifacts of mass examinations or complex religious orders?
ReplyDeleteThe genetic dispositions had to be there in the first place to even dream of creating such things, so the selective pressure in question would have had to exist earlier than merely the last one to two thousand years.
In this long complaint that Hollywood is dying the author claims:
ReplyDeleteWhich brings us to the embarrassing part. Blaming the studios for everything lets another culprit off too easily: us. We can complain until we're hoarse that Hollywood abandoned us by ceasing to make the kinds of movies we want to see, but it's just as true that we abandoned Hollywood. Studios make movies for people who go to the movies, and the fact is, we don't go anymore—and by we, I mean the complaining class, of which, if you've read this far, you are absolutely a member. We stay home, and we do it for countless reasons: A trip to the multiplex means paying for parking, a babysitter, and overpriced unhealthy food in order to be trapped in a room with people who refuse to pay for a babysitter, as well as psychos, talkers, line repeaters, texters, cell-phone users, and bedbugs. We can see the movie later, and "later" is pretty soon—on a customized home-theater system or, forget that, just a nice big wide-screen TV, via Netflix, or Amazon streaming, or on-demand, or iPad. The urgency of seeing movies the way they're presumably intended to be seen has given way to the primacy of privacy and the security of knowing that there's really almost no risk of missing a movie you want to see and never having another opportunity to see it. Put simply, we'd rather stay home, and movies are made for people who'd rather go out.
This is another crappy thesis.
The reality is that we are sick of the crap that Hollywood serves up. Sick of the "white males bad", "NAM males are honorable, non-violent good guys" and "women are just as good as males at everything males do" shit.
BD,
ReplyDeleteI was gonna say wiki was wrong, but when I researched at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerical_celibacy
I was left with no idea where you come up with that claim.
Bd, and mangan,
ReplyDeletemy apology,
it seems many priests may have been already married. Hence continence, married men were still ordained. I don't know how common that was, but still. I feel silly.
Clerical celibacy was observed to a large extent in Catholic Ireland. The percentage of people per generation enrolling as priests, nuns, etc., was probably at least 10%. Most of these people that I knew had relatively high levels of intelligence and executive function (the latter is more important for civilization, IMO). My late grandfather also told me that those in his class most proficient at Latin and maths joined the seminary.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Richard Lynn Ireland has one of the lowest IQs in Europe and its recent economic mismanagement is perhaps reflective of that. The more relaxed celibacy standards of Eastern Catholicism explain why these countries such as Croatia and Poland have average IQs around 100.
For civilization to be preserved, systematic selection (which by no means has to be ruthless) for cognitive ability must be carried on. Western Catholicism definitely reduced intelligence in Ireland.
The classical pagan works werent viewed with suspicion; they were lost after the fall of the Roman Empire.
ReplyDeleteEven during the middle ages, families followed what should be called a 'Darwinian' rule when choosing/allowing a son to become a cleric - they were nearly always a second, third, or perhaps a fourth son. No father was foolish enough to make or allow his sons enter the priesthood without having secured heirs.
In reply to Reactionary 83: Croatia and Poland were exclusively Roman Catholic, though some Polish-controlled lands in Ukraine became Eastern (Greek) Catholic, so it would seem that the IQs of those countries can't be counted in favor of no-celibacy rule for the priesthood.
ReplyDeleteClerical celibacy was observed to a large extent in Catholic Ireland.
ReplyDeleteIt was observed in all Catholic countries.
According to Richard Lynn Ireland has one of the lowest IQs in Europe
According to the recent study by Rindermenn, Sailer, and Thompson, Ireland has an IQ slightly above the European average.
Western Catholicism definitely reduced intelligence in Ireland.
There's really not much evidence to support that assertion. And it make no sense to suggest that Western Catholicism would reduce intelligence in one Catholic country but not in others.
If you wanted to come up with a theory to explain a hypothetical lower IQ in Ireland, then constant emigration seems like a more practical suggestion than does Catholicism.
I always thought families sent excess children to religious orders. So if an Irish family had 8 children, maybe one daughter would become a nun and one son a priest. So it would seem that if the daughter and son were smart enough to join those religious orders, their brothers and sisters, with similar DNA, would probably have been as intelligent.
ReplyDeleteI know there are some families were one kid might be slow or even retarded. But in most families I've encountered, it seems that the kids are comparable in IQ. The main differences are usually behavioral and related to social hierarchy that results from birth order. For example, the eldest child might be more responsible than the youngest which accounts for some kids being underachievers relative to their siblings.
One conundrum of human biodiversity is the high mean IQ of East Asians, specifically Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese. On average, they outclass all other human populations on IQ tests, which were originally designed by and for Europeans. This intellectual success is matched by the economic success not only of East Asian societies but also of their overseas communities, often in the face of severe discrimination
ReplyDeleteThis not not even close to being true. Economically speaking, the high IQ Asian countries trail the countries of the West by a very large margin. On a per-capita basis China looks a lot like an African country. An African country with a billion people, perhaps, but it's still very poor.
The real conundrum is why high IQ in East Asia never translated into the sort of intellectual achievement which occurred in Europe.
Racism Schmacism: How Liberals Use the "R" Word to Push the Obama Agenda
ReplyDeleteEven out in paperback.
"If you wanted to come up with a theory to explain a hypothetical lower IQ in Ireland, then constant emigration seems like a more practical suggestion than does Catholicism."
ReplyDeleteI would have thought emigration would have raised Irish IQ, since a high proportion of Irish emigrants in the 19th Century were unskilled navies who went to work in England.
Conversely, modern emigration has possibly lowered English IQ since Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have cherry picked skilled English workers. The IQ of the average English immigrants to Cananda and New Zealand today would be well above the English average.
I would have thought emigration would have raised Irish IQ, since a high proportion of Irish emigrants in the 19th Century were unskilled navies who went to work in England.
ReplyDeleteThat was not emigration, technically speaking. Any more than you emigrate if you move from New York to New Jersey.
As for the impact on IQ - who knows? You could argue that the sort of people who move to find a better job are the ambitious go-getters and that they leave behind people who are more cautious and "conservative". The impact on IQ in Ireland seems to have been minimal though.
A lot of the least intellligent Irish would have died in the famine.
ReplyDeleteHere is the former prime minister of Ireland talking.
“That decision will in history be written as the biggest mistake that American administration ever made, because Lehmans was a world investment bank. They had testicles [sic] everywhere.”
Furthermore, celibacy wasn't strictly enforced for centuries, though it appears to have been the rule, and the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Churches had and have less strict rules, for instance celibacy for bishops only.
ReplyDeleteIn short, the claim that celibacy impacted in any large way average IQs in Europe requires much more supporting evidence, in my opinion.
It would've weeded out conformists at a higher rate than the intelligent, IMO/educated guess.
I always thought families sent excess children to religious orders.
ReplyDeleteI always assumed it was the sort of thing that would look like paradise to a homosexual. Who grows up dreaming of being surrounded by their own sex, well away from the opposite? It would be nice to have non-BS stats on the homosexuality rate to compare to the institutional celibacy rate. (Keep in mind, even if you object to the idea of religious orders as medieval YMCAs, they at the very least provided for homosexuals a safe haven from the pressure of sexual and social norms)
One of the main things that led to the Reformation was the scandalous fact that priests who were supposed to be celibate were fathering entire broods of bastard children all over Europe - this was a huge thing at the time. The high IQ priests probably left more progeny behind -proportionately - than any other class aside from the aristocracy. And scholarship was concentrated in the priesthood only during the Dark Ages - after the turn of the millennium scholarship and learning began to be diffused to the lay aristocracy as well, at first mostly for purposes of administration, but soon for purposes of pure culture as well.
ReplyDeleteAnd priestly celibacy, I believe, was nonexistent in England and much of Europe until into the Middle Ages (I am not sure about the precise dates for this), and large parts of Europe were not even Christianized (Scandinavia) until fairly late. So during the Dark Ages, when men of learning were mostly Churchmen, they had children, probably lots of them.
I won't talk about why verbal exams seem not likely to have led to a rise in visuo-spatial IQ for Asians, as I've done that already but no one seems to pay any attention, and any discussion that doesn't absolutely focus on that crucial fact seems to me utterly puerile.
It is simply too easy to poke holes into any theory at this time. At this point the whole discussion seems to be taking place at a very low intellectual and historical level - everyone has their little pet theory and simply ignores and refuses to address historical facts which decisively contradict it. Exams in verbal proficiency led to high spatial Asian IQ? Why, I shall simply ignore that fact. Nothing to see here. Carry on. It WAS exams, you may be sure.
I think at this point all any logical person can say is that the theories that have been proposed are wrong - verbal exams measuring how well you memorized the Confucian classics cannot have led to high visu-spatial IQ, nor could the organizational needs of Chinese merchants, nor can European priestly celibacy, which was an ideal flagrantly flouted for nearly the entire history of the priesthood, before it was abandoned in large parts of Europe, account for anything.
We need more studies - we know now, to anyone not interested in being silly, what is NOT responsible. Time to figure out what IS,
Another interesting fact is that northern Europe was a barbarian backwater before the coming of Christianity, and only began the process of becoming civilized when the Christian churchmen brought learning and scholarship with them.
ReplyDeleteSo if the Church was a dysgenic force, how is it that Europe displayed the greatest intelligence during and after the arrival of this dysgenic force, and was clearly stupid and uncivilized before the arrival of this dysgenic force?
It seems to be that the arrival of the Church in northern Europe, in some way involving the reintroduction of learning and scholarship (much of it classical, elements of Plato, and later, of course, Aristotle, were huge in the Church) to a barbarian population, created some kind of mechanism for elevating the IQ of Europe. The two events simply coincide - it is well to remember that Europe was "stupid" before the Church, and "smart" after it. We cannot lose sight of this fact.
Today we'll take a closer look at celibacy in Sweden. Two typical Swedish teenagers, Abdurachman and Melody, learn about joys of sex in the uplifting cartoon movie created with money from the State Inheritance Fund. Further commentary is superfluous.
ReplyDeletep.s. if you think this is inappropriate posting, please delete.
I'll take the celibacy angle to another level. Why are Asian kids, whether East or South Asian, outperforming everyone else in the West?
ReplyDeleteFamily values.
Family values includes celibacy. Asian parents, whether Chinese or Indian or anything in between, are very strict and the focus in the home is on studies and getting into a good university, not on social life, proms, dating, helping your kid become popular, helping your kid get laid, etc.
All that energy that white/black kids and their parents put into building up a social and sexual life gets channelled into brainy pursuits for us Asians.
There. Its as simple as that.