This entanglement runs down the history of
hereditarian social science, and today's sociogenomicists, like it or not, are heir to it.
The studies Nisbett cites as "proof" that home environments matter are not inconsistent with the
hereditarian view.
State supervision is a great factor in maintaining discipline.' (58) This is not to suggest that
hereditarian views held no place in the debate about state children and juvenile delinquents, as many solutions were promoted as beneficial from both an environmental and a
hereditarian point of view.
On one end,
hereditarian interpretations (e.g., Herrnstein & Murray, 1994) have tended to focus on inherent and genetic explanations of the achievement gap and group differences in performance.
However, Terman also left behind a paradoxical legacy in terms of his
hereditarian views of intelligence and how that translated in terms of race and class (Stoskopf, 2002).
Gottfredson, "What If the
Hereditarian Hypothesis Is True?," Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, vol.
Supporting evidence for this theory is not difficult to come by: during the middle decades of the century there certainly was a public backlash in Western societies against eugenics in response to its association with Nazism and paternalistic state control, as well as an ideological shift in society away from the movement's
hereditarian basis in the face of the rising popularity of environmentalist theories (as in 'nurture over nature') to explain human characteristics.
Genes and the promotion of positive human development:
Hereditarian versus developmental systems perspectives.
What is significant about the essay in relation to Erskine Caldwell's writings and different from the standard family study is that the elder Caldwell consistently argues against many poor-white stereotypes and against a
hereditarian explanation for the state of the Bunglers.
For example, MacDonald argues that this pattern continues, as evidenced by Stephen Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, which he characterizes as a highly politicized critique of evolutionary approaches to human behavior and
hereditarian views on IQ.
Indeed, Jencks apologized to his readers for conceding as much as he did to the
hereditarian case.
By now the examples are familiar--from Lombroso's work in the 1800s to identify criminals by anthropomorphic measurements, to the
hereditarian theories of some phrenologists, to the development of degeneration theory in the early twentieth century.